Grants:TPS/MarkTraceur/SCaLE 11x

User name

MarkTraceur

User location (country)

USA

Event name

SCaLE 11x

Event Web site

https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale11x/

Event date(s)

2013-02-22 through 2013-02-24

Event location (city)

Los Angeles

Amount requested (remember to specify currency!)

USD $620

Endorsements

Budget breakdown

• Travel: USD 200: Round-trip flight to LAX from SFO (on United or something cheap)
• Accommodation: USD 140 per night x 2 nights = USD 280 (staying at the event venue, it's usually around this price)
• Event registration: USD 60 (this may be waived for speakers, but their website doesn't appear to specify in an obvious way)
• Food: USD 80 total (I don't eat that much!)

Proposed Participation

I've submitted a proposal to talk about the Scribunto extension. I've worked with Lua before, and am working with it on MediaWiki in my spare time. I'd be really excited to talk about MediaWiki development in general, and this Lua talk seems like a great way to do it. I can also man a WMF booth while I'm there, if there are plans to have one, and I intend to watch some other great presentations and generally network with other free software people, possibly including some hacking sessions in the hotel hallways!

Note: I'll probably also submit some other similar proposals, possibly having to do with the Parsoid, unit testing, or other plugin/addon systems (like ours).

Goal and Expected Impact

Basically this will consist half of me teaching people how to use Lua, and half of me teaching people who already know how to program about how to use Lua to make really cool things on a wiki. Hopefully this will help draw people who would otherwise not be editors to start looking at the Module namespace, and help with the transition to Scribunto. I hope to bring new programmers into that same fold, but also teach them about how cool and easy it can be to work with MediaWiki! Double bonus!

Note

I'm a WMF employee, so I may be doing this wrong. Do please redirect me if I am.