The project Skillshare in the Hanseatic city of Lüneburg was supported from all parts of society by patrons
Edelgard Bulmahn
Former German minister of education and MP
The Skillshare Project Lüneburg will offer Wikipedia authors a platform for exchange, but most importantly an option to professionalize their work and to improve articles the online encyclopedia is supplying. Experienced Wikipedia authors will share their knowledge with newcomers and offer tips and tricks on how to more successfully work with the web site. To help each other by sharing knowledge with each other is a fundamental social-democratic ideal. In my past work as a Minister of Education and Research I tried to promote the open content movement on a broad scale of projects, since I see work that creates and supplies free knowledge as an immense potential, a modern society has to develop. I support the Skillshare project in Lüneburg, because it is designed to bring a web community into contact with the community of a city. The projects will not only aim at working together but at seeing others profiting from this work.
Wikipedia has not left the academic world untouched. For many students Wikipedia has become the first source of information when using the web. Universities are forced, in turn, to react with a discourse on how to use modern media. I explicitly welcome attempts to professionalize the medium that is created in joint work in cooperative work with academic institutions.
The project Skillshare is a great way to update the information content in Wikipedia while expanding the image of Lüneburg as an attractive technology and media industry. This has led us to a writing competition entitled "Made in Lüneburg" initiate, "says Jürgen grandson, Managing Director of the Economic Development Company for the city and county of Lüneburg.
Although we're all human beings, we are all different. This is not really a problem, yet the differences can make communication difficult at times. Some people are too loud and therefore not listened to; others are too silent, with the same result. Still others have simple problems like punctuation – when you read a badly punctuated text, you immediately think: “If this person is not even able to set a comma or period properly the rest of what I'm reading here is probably wrong too." The sad thing is, there may be a wealth of good ideas in such text, but they're not heard, for no other reason than lack of proper form.
The immense advantage of joint work like Wikipedia is – obviously – that we can avoid such problems because we are not working alone. Whatever you have to contribute, there is always someone else in the group who can contribute his or her skills where your contribution falls short. The ideal case is that together we achieve something that is far greater than the sum of all its parts.
In this spirit I wish all participants good experiences wherever they will work with each other and a great time at Skillshare
"All knowledge and any increase of knowledge end with a question mark, not with a point."
Hermann Hesse reminded us of this at the beginning of the 20th century: The process of learning does not have an ending. What has changed since then is that knowledge has become far less permanent. Never before in history has information become outdated so quickly; never before has it increased with such speed. Only those curious and ready both to confront and to question new trends and changes will continue to understand what is happening around them and in the world.
New media – and the most important of these is the Internet -- help us to stay informed. And Wikipedia is playing a key role in here. As a free encyclopedia it has gathered a wealth of information it supplies for free to anyone who needs it. More than 12 million articles – most of them of a high quality – written in more than 260 languages are waiting for internet users looking for information.
I am happy to see the Hanseatic city of Lüneburg as host and patron of a project designed to improve German Wikipedia articles, since Wikipedia in turn will only be fit for the future if it stays curious and focused on good research and on the constant improvement of the information it provides.
Skillshare is actually an invention of the craft! For centuries, the craft knowledge and skills by the masters of the journeymen and apprentices will be passed in order to reach the respective trade high-quality results.
Former German minister of education and MP
President of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg
