Brion Vibber said he wants to make Wikimania accessible to everyone throughout the world.
Wikimania is a worldwide conference on Wikimedia, the foundation that runs the popular Web site Wikipedia.
Vibber, the chief technology officer of Wikimedia, spoke to members of the Gainesville community Wednesday about the technology of the Web site and its future plans. The speech, sponsored by Gainesville Gator Java Users Group, or Gator Jug, was at SFCC.
The Wikimania conference has been held in Germany, Boston and Taiwan, Vibber said.
"We have contributors from all around the world, so we try to make the Wikimania accessible to all of them," Vibber said.
"Wikipedia currently has its main office in Tampa and data centers hosted in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Seoul, South Korea," he said. Vibber said Wikipedia receives somewhere around 100 changes per second.
"It is very easy for anyone to get into the site and edit because there we have a big button on the bottom that says edit," Vibber said.
He said the primary method the site operates on is someone submits changes and other people then have the chance to review them.
In his speech, Vibber described the way Wikipedia was constructed with Internet programs such as Apache HTTP Sever and MySQL.
Along with technological jargon, Vibber added humor to his presentation.
As he spoke about free software, he put up a smiley face on the screen behind him.
Gator Jug meets once a month and consists of students and professionals interested in program technology.
"The Java Users Group asked him to come because he is a technology architect. He can tell us about the technology used to build it and the database on the back end," said Dan Lackey, a co-chairman of group.
Vibber, 28, is the lead developer and head of the technology department of the Web site.
With 7 billion page views per month, Wikipedia supports around 200 languages and has viewers from all over the world.
Vibber got involved in the Wikipedia software in 2002 when he voluntarily contributed to the site's foreign language articles as a hobby.
He gradually got more involved over the years and said Wikipedia decided that he was indispensable and hired him as a full-time employee.
