Speakers

Founder of Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales is the revolutionary luminary behind the concept of Wikipedia (based on the Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick", "fast", or "to hasten") a project to produce a free content encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. Wikipedia formally began on January 15, 2001.

Wikipedia.org publishes a biography for Jimmy which is reproduced in its entirety here:

"Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born 1966) is a U.S. Internet entrepreneur and a wiki pioneer who is best known as the co-founder and leader of Wikipedia, an international collaborative open-source free encyclopedia on the Internet.

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. His father was a grocery store manager while Wales was growing up (his father has since retired). Wales's mother Doris and grandmother Irma ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where he also went to school. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade. A Time magazine interview incorrectly reported that Wales was home schooled. Strictly speaking Wales was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar" since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. Students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked; the school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by Montessori. Wales spent many hours poring over the World Book Encyclopedia during this time. After eighth grade, Wales went to Randolph School, a college prep school, which was and is an early adopter of student computer labs and other technology for direct student use. This prep school was expensive for the family, since they had few means, but Wales reports that his family believed education was very important: "[education] was always a passion in my household ... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."

He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University and his masters from the University of Alabama. Later, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama and Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but he did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a futures and options trader in Chicago, and within a few years had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives." (March 2005, Wired article)

In 1996, Wales founded a search portal called Bomis which sells original content, and included a "Bomis Babes" blog based on Slashcode. Wales is
no longer president or CEO of Bomis, and now devotes most of his time to his wiki projects.

In March 2000, he founded a peer-reviewed open-content encyclopedia Nupedia.com ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its
editor-in-chief.On January 15, 2001, Wales and Larry Sanger set up Wikipedia, a similar wiki-based site intended for collaboration on early encyclopedic content before submitting it to Nupedia for peer review. Wikipedia's rapid growth soon made it the dominant project and Nupedia
was mothballed. Sanger did most of the early development of Nupedia, while Wales mainly provided the necessary capital. Wales considers
himself the sole founder of Wikipedia, though Sanger initially came up with the idea to make the encylopedia wiki-based and coined the name
'wikipedia'"