This week, the Signpost takes a look at the Wikimania 2006 Hacking Days. Wikimania is the annual international Wikimedia conference; early registration is open through July 7, including separate registration for Hacking Days.

Travel scholarships are now available for attendees; applications are due by June 28.

Hacking Days is a technically-oriented preconference to Wikimania 2006. It will occur from August 1-3 at the MIT Media Lab. The conference is aimed towards developers of MediaWiki and others with technical interests. It is intended to be very hands-on and less focussed on presentations than the main portion of the conference.

Hacking Days will cover the following themes : Wikimedia cluster setup, network topology, and working with multiple data centers; MediaWiki roadmaps and major projects; and tool and Mediawiki extension development.

There will be a tutorial on how to become a [better] MediaWiki hacker (for those familiar with the software), and discussions of how to attract more programmers into the community, and of wiki standards in general.

The MIT campus is near the Harvard Law School campus, where Wikimania will be taking place. Registration for Hacking Days is also separate from the main conference, and is now open here. Please visit the website for more information as it becomes available. Some events during Hacking Days will take place at the headquarters of the One Laptop Per Child project, also a sponsor of the event.

Next week : More speaker and presentation updates. The conference proceedings are in development; comments there, and questions for presenters, are welcome.