User:Seb35/Signpost/WP!O

For the tenth anniversary of the French Wikipedia (which was exactly March 23, 2011), a group of Wikimedians organized a great event in Rennes, Brittany, France. During one week, from Monday, May 23 to Monday, May 30, twenty Wikipedia articles went out of the encyclopedia: they were displayed on ten panels in the city. The chosen articles (mobile version) had a link with the city of Rennes: either it was a building, either an historical person, or an historical fact. The point is that these panels didn’t display the usual picture at the beginning of the article, but an hole was made to see directly the real monument or subject behind the panel.

Some of the subjects include the palace of the Parliament of Brittany, the old University of Rennes, the well-known music festival "Les Transmusicales", or the Dreyfus affair whose second judgment took place at Rennes. During this week, many interviews and recordings were given, with a coverage in the local press, a special live programm about Wikipedia in an emission about digital technologies on the radio, and a report on Wikipedia was broadcasted in the regional television.

It was also a week of meetings: after the inauguration on Monday with some personalities, a conference was held on Wednesday about Wikipedia, enterprise wikis and local wikis, and finally Saturday a workshop was opened during the whole day, as well as conferences on Vikidia (an encyclopedia for children), how to write a good article, OpenStreetMap, a photo party, Wiki-Rennes (local wiki for local stories) and the Palace of Versailles experience.

The preparation took about 4 months for the local group, the NCO (Non-Cabale de l’Ouest, or Un-Cabal of the West) which is composed of about 7-8 Wikimedians who meet every Tuesday evening since 2 years. If you didn’t attend to the event :) you can still see the map of the panels in the city, or a set of posters resuming the history of Wikipedia. An interesting fact: the panels have been vandalized, as real virtual Wikipedia articles.