[Festival of Media] Founder of Wikipedia opens festival

20 Apr 2010

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales survived his 24-hour bus journey, from London, to give the opening keynote address at the Festival of Media yesterday, 19 April 2010 in Valencia Spain. Wales gave insight into why he created the online encyclopedia and how word-of-mouth has made it one of the most popular websites globally; the charity has not allocated any money to marketing. [video]

[Festival of Media] Founder of Wikipedia opens festival

Wales also provided insight on how complicated media consumption has become over the past couple of decades and how culture has become smarter in turn.

Wales entered into the Google vs. China debate, saying that he was "proud" of the online giant for closing its operations in China. He compared the decision to do business in China as being comparable to the dilemma of those companies that chose whether or not to do business in apartheid South Africa.

Wikipedia currently operates in the communist state on the condition that it will not censor its content. However, the service cannot stop the government from editing content it does not like or from blocking pages which are deemed inappropriate.

On the future of communication, broadband was hailed by Wales as possibly one of the most significant factors in shaping the media landscape: "Broadband will have the biggest impact in the developing world. We don't realise what is going to happen as the next billion people come online. We are going to hear from people that we have not heard from before."