The Barbican Centre.

In under six months, the tenth annual Wikimania will be held in London, in the nigh post-apocalyptic,^[1] brutalist Barbican estate.  In preparation, Wikivoyage have been building a special Wikimania 2014 guide, now in a somewhat useable form (with similar pages being constructed in Mandarin and Spanish).

This is the first mainspace page to which I made a significant contribution and I think it’s turning out quite well.  I’ve actually learned a lot about the city (and, for that matter, The City) from helping here. The guide should cover everything else to see and do around the conference, which run the gamut from Roman relics and medieval churches to the world’s first website—coincidentally, on display in the same building as Wikimania, along with a Digital Revolution exhibition.  You could have a burger and milkshake at a halal diner or a beer in one of the (tenuous) claimants to the title of “oldest pub in London”.  Those staying on could even visit the World Science Fiction Convention and the Great British Beer Festival, both taking place in the following week.

On the highwalks around the Barbican Estate.

The guide isn’t finished yet and it’s already looking like a great August.

With reference to my earlier post about enlightened self-interest, this is the sort of thing that got me interested in the ‘voyage project.  Working on a guide like this, I’m not only helping to make other people’s lives richer but I’ve also found new things to enrich my own.

[1] Well, I think so anyway.  It has the look of a set from a 70s sci-fi movie about a totalitarian dystopia. The fact that this area has actually been abandoned once and completely destroyed twice in its history helps too.

The brutalist towers of the Barbican dominating the local skyline.