The whole of next week, I’ll be amongst the world’s most passionate proponents of open knowledge congregating in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m participating in Wikimania, the annual international conference aimed at bringing together contributors of all the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects. The most popular is, of course, Wikipedia.

The conference allows the community and the general public to learn and share free knowledge initiatives and collaborative projects all over the world.

The 5th edition of the Conference is being held on August 26-28, 2009. The previous conferences were held in Frankfurt (Germany) in 2005, Boston (United States) in 2006, Taipei (Taiwan) in 2007 and Alexandria (Egypt) in 2008.

I hope to pick up some really important lessons that can be applied to many of the Wikimedia initiatives in India.

I almost didn’t make this trip. I had to go through a very traumatic visa process experience. First, there was confusion with the paperwork. Then followed confusion with the photos. Its amazing how the Mumbai Embassy and Delhi Embassy of Argentina can have two different policies about the angle of photos! As if this wasn’t enough, the courier guys mucked up my adddress and changed my gender. Now I had to prove that I’m Rupa, a girl living in Parrys Corner instead of Kiruba, a guy living in Virugambakkam.

After much hagling about my sex and all, I finally got hold of the blessed passport.

Phew!