This week, the Signpost reflects on three years of Wikipedia meetups.

Wikipedia was around for almost three years before it spawned the first recorded wikimeet or meetup. In December 2002, Kurt Jansson mused about having a Wikipedia gathering at the 19th Chaos Communications Congress, where he was giving a presentation. Elian joined Kurt's presentation and in the aftermath of the talk a third Wikipedian, Jakob Voss, revealed himself. Wikipedians have arranged meetups and presentations at that conference, in growing numbers, every year since then.

In January 2003, Jimbo suggested that Wikipedians meet in person; and that this might help resolve differences between them. A meetup page was started on Meta to gather suggestions for times and places to gather. The page noted that "[Jimbo] and Larry Sanger used to have bitter Usenet exchanges and when they met in person they became friends; so maybe a Wikipedia meetup would help the sense of community".

In particular, Jimbo had the idea of meeting twice a year in different regions of the world. Early location suggestions included FOSDEM 2003 and an Esperanto conference in Boston (mind the Esperantists; they make another appearance in paragraph 6).

In October 2003, the German Wikipedians started their own meetup page on the German Wikipedia, after Fantasy suggested a meeting in Munich. This soon took place, on 28 October, 2003; a meetup that is still proudly remembered on the German page as the world's first Wikipedia meetup. 5 people attended : elian, chd, Heizer, Fantasy, and Tkarcher.

A few larger meetups were planned for the summer of 2004 in Berlin, Genoa, Munich, and Paris. Jimbo was planning a tour through Europe, something more unusual in those days, and efforts were made to coordinate with him so that he could attend these meetups. Fantasy helped promote the idea and update wiki pages about it, including creating a new English Wikipedia page in the hopes that a similar meeting might be planned for the UK. An edit summary advised, "Just set a date and start advertising". Pages were soon created in other languages as well.

By June of 2004, a London gathering had been added to the list, and Jimbo began his travels with that meeting – 'the first time he had ever met more than one Wikipedian at a time' – on 5 June. The previous day he had met with Arno Lagrange, an active Esperanto Wikipedian who had travelled from France for the occasion, to discuss an Esperanto encyclopedia project.

This was followed by his attending a large meetup in Berlin on 12 June, during the Wizards of OS 3 conference, and the next week a meetup in Munich, where it all began, on 19 June. That very day, the first spanish-language meetup was held in Madrid.

On 4 July, Jimbo attended a major French Wikipedia meetup in Paris. This meeting was a milestone in many respects; it was the founding meeting for Wikimédia France, and also the first time Jimbo, Angela, and Anthere met in person.

Other milestone gatherings included the first Asian meetup, on 25 July in Beijing, and the first United States meetup, on 31 July in Boston, which Jimbo attended after returning to the States.

Meetups are often coordinated with visits from an active Wikipedian, or with conferences and other events where Wikipedia should have a presence. Since 2004, some efforts have been made to list upcoming events on Meta, and Jimbo began keeping his travel schedule on his userpage there.

Meetups have now been held in dozens of cities around the world, including Hong Kong, Osaka, Taipei, Sydney, Washington DC, New York, Tunis, and Reykjavík. Some people have tried to use external sites such as meetup.com to organize events, but most meetups are planned on wikis (there are dedicated meetup pages on over 15 Wikipedia languages).

The largest meetup to date was Wikimania 2005, with almost 400 attendees... but more on that next week.

Next up — About Wikimania.