Day 10 (Friday) in Washington DC

The weather cooled somewhat. I arrived at George Washington University by Circulator bus, then spent the morning in two GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sessions, listening to presentations on a collaboration with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and a panel with various national GLAM project coordinators. I also met the editor who put up the first QRpedia code in Australia.

For a change from GLAM, the post-lunch session I chose to attend was about anther area of interest if mine, mobile access to Wikipedia, where I learned that Wikipedia’a Android app is already fully translated in Welsh, and the mobile website just a handful of phrases away from being so. My Welsh-speaking colleagues back home have already agreed to my suggestion that they close that gap. That will be important for our Geovation bid and other projects using the Welsh language.

My final conference session of the day was about mapping, including OpenStreetMap. Earlier, I’d added some features of the Congressional Cemetery (including the “restroom”!) to that project, and a mapping party on Sunday should finish the job.

A walk to historic Georgetown followed, for a fringe event, the Wiki in Education meetup, generously hosted by the Saylar Foundation, who fed and watered the unexpectedly large crowd at their riverside premises. It was great to meet so many people, including a lot of professors and other educators, who are passionate about using Wikipedia and sister projects in their teaching. I picked up a lot of tips for my plans to liaise with language educators in the UK, to get Wikipedia article translations set as homework for their students.

On leaving Georgetown, a screaming flock of (Chaetura pelagica) flew over us. Though I’d already seen individuals, this was the first time I’d heard them. They’re very different to the Swifts we get in the UK, being smaller and paler.

A group if us took the Circulator back across town to 6th Street for a couple of beers at the “Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar“, a pop-up venue created as part of a fringe festival. I enjoyed a Doggie Style (!) Classic Pale Ale by Flying Dog and a Pitch Black IPA by Widmer Brothers. For the first time here, I saw moths flitting about, but wasn’t able to get close enough to any to recognise, or photograph them. We also saw a couple of historic buildings, jacked up in mid-air, on Jenga-like piles of wood, as the area around them is redeveloped.

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