It's been a while since I've posted here; I've had a busy two weeks, and posting on my blog hasn't been a priority. Something I should do more often. Of course, as time backs up it seems harder and harder to actually get around to posting.
I wanted to bring the attention of my friends and colleagues, though, to a notice that Maj put on the Wikitravel shared logbook. As of 15 August 2007, Maj is no longer working on Wikitravel. In addition, my time has been curtailed quite a bit, and I'm concentrating only on community and content issues -- no more programming or sysadmin work.
This is all coming about for several reasons. The main one is that Internet Brands, the company that now owns wikitravel.org, wanted to have their own staff do the programming and sysadmin work. The end of our service contract seemed like an ideal time to effect this change.
On our side, it's been challenging for us to work with a large organization not specialized in Open Content and wiki sites. We've gotten along really well with the IB people, but we haven't always seen eye-to-eye on the best way to grow and develop the site. As the decision was made to remove us from our technical roles, Maj decided it was a good time to opt out entirely.
I'm going to miss her tremendously. As most people reading this already know, we started the Wikitravel project together, and over the last 4 years it's been a constant important part of our family life. Maj's information-architecture skills and dedication to travel have been crucial to the development of the site. She's been a strategizer, a spokesperson, a content organizer and a content builder. Probably most important for the future of the project, she developed almost single-handedly the Wikitravel Extra personal experience component of the site.
We've got a lot to keep us busy, though. We recently launched Keiki, a project to create an Open Content parenting guide. For myself, I've also started Vinismo, an Open Content wine guide (sensing a pattern here...?). And we'll be working with our partner Jani P. on Wikitravel Press, an independent project to publish printed travel guidebooks based on Wikitravel articles.
Despite the shakeups, I anticipate that the future of Wikitravel will be good. We have an incredibly strong and smart community, dedicated to an important and noble purpose. I'll remain involved on a part-time basis. We've got a lot of traction in public opinion and great Web traffic. I don't think that IB is going to make any bad decisions about the site, but if they do there's a local and global community of people that take Wikitravel and Open Content travel guides extremely seriously. I think things are probably going to be OK.
tags: wiki wikitravel opencontent maj work ib
On the subject of wiki
The South by Southwest 2008 Panel Picker app is up for public review right now. SXSW Interactive, in Austin, is one of the best tech conferences of the year. I've got a panel proposal up, on Wiki 2.0 -- I really want to talk about some of the interesting new wiki apps, new wikis, and new wiki business models coming up.
There are a couple of other wiki-related panels proposed -- including one on commercial wikis, which I presented about last year (Talks/SXSW07). Folks who are interested in wikis, or in SXSW, should take some time to give their feedback on the proposed panels and improved the level of discussion for 2008.