Of all the professional development events I attended as part of this course the presentation by Liam Wyatt (or Witty Lama) was the most surprising. I came into the presentation with no expectations or even any idea what it would be about. When Liam began to talk about Wikipedia I was intrigued. Wikipedia is a tool that I have used almost every day of my student and personal life, if I need some quick information on a subject I know that Wikipedia will give me the answer. The first interesting tid-bit that he shared with us was that “wiki” was actually the name of a bus in Hawaii that the founders of wikipedia used. Liam then went on to tell us about the features of Wikipedia and how knowledge curation by ordinary people is contributing to this very large and popular website.
Professionally, I saw this talk as enlightening and surprising. I attended essentially on a whim and came out of the event with a new respect for Wikipedia and the people who strive to make it as true and informative as possible. This made me realise that personal development events are worth going to because you never know what you are going to learn. After watching Liam I think I have become an advocate for Wikipedia and although I haven’t gone as far as editing to the website, I have a deeper appreciate for it than I did before the talk. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person and the fact I was so resistant to coming to this event in the first place only to have my views changed was a really interesting experience for me.
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