Language Engineering at Wikimania 2013

Wikimania is the biggest gathering of Wikimedians from all over the world. This year the event is being held at Hong Kong.

The Language Engineering team of the Wikimedia Foundation also plans to join in! The team has been working consistently on improving internationalization support in MediaWiki tools and in Wikimedia projects. At Wikimania 2013, the team will be present to talk and exchange ideas about these projects. Most of our sessions are part of the Languages track. Besides these sessions, the team will also be participating in the DevCamp and in other Technology sessions. Following is a the full list. Mark your calendars!

DevCamp

Date(s)	Room/Time	Things we could talk about
August 7	M108 - 1400	Language Maven Program Language Dashboard Translation tools Localization experiences from East Africa Internationalization issues and developments in the VisualEditor Input methods on Wikimedia mobile apps

Sessions and Talks

Date	Session Title	People	Abstract
August 9	MediaWiki i18n getting data-driven and world-reusable	Santhosh Thottingal, Niklas Laxström	MediaWiki internationalization (i18n) is improving every year. In this presentation we will introduce the recent new features and changes to MediaWiki i18n. We will also explain the motivations for new directions in the development including data-driven approach and reusable libraries. The presentation covers both PHP and JavaScript side of our i18n code.
August 9	Multilingual Wikimedia Commons - What can we do about it?	Niklas Laxström, Amir Aharoni	Categories, templates, documentation, images, gadgets, banners, interface. Language selection, internationalization and translation. What can we do from technical perspective to make Commons truly multilingual. What can we already do with existing tools like Translate and Universal Language Selector. What is blocking us from using them. What issues need new solutions to be developed and what are the issues that we developers are not aware of yet?
August 10	Improving the user experience of language tools	Pau Giner	Problems in language support affect dramatically the user experience in our products. Without proper language tools, millions of users cannot contribute and consume knowledge. The Language Engineering team has been following a user-centered design process to create tools to support language selection, alternative input methods, font support, and collaborative translation. This talk presents the designs for these tools, the rationale behind the design decisions, the challenges we found for creating and testing multilingual prototypes, and the feedback obtained from the community during our usability studies.

Workshops

Date	Workshop	Description
August 9	Wikimedia translation sprint	Wikimedia uses many pieces of software and documentation and notifications that can be translated, so that every user may able to use that software in their native language. It is proven that using software in one's native language increases productivity considerably. As software is ever changing and evolving, there is a continuous need for translators. In the Wikimedia movement, this is done mostly by volunteers. During this workshop you will get a quick introduction to using the Translate extension and be able to make a difference to open source software users and fellow Wikimedians that speak the same language you do.

Panel

Date	Panel	Description
August 9	Hacking our teams: Flexible ‘agile’ development at the WMF	A panel discussion with the scrummasters of some of the highest priority engineering projects at the WMF. Our teams use a range of methods broadly designed to empower our developers for success that is sustained over time. We will discuss: How we work, in general and specifics (with as little jargon as possible); Why we work this way (why it works so damn well, and what it works better for); What we try to avoid (challenges we have faced); and What we worry about (challenges we still have).
August 9	Ask the Developers	This session provides a forum for the community to ask questions to developers, make suggestions, and discuss long standing issues. The hackings days allow developers to meet and work together, but they lack an opportunity to exchange information with the community. This session is supposed to provide this opportunity.