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Last updated on Thursday, January 30, 2014
(BLOOMINGTON) - The founder of Wikipedia will be coming to Bloomington in April as the keynote speaker for The Combine technology conference.
Jimmy Wales, who was one of two people who launched the free collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia in January 2001, is scheduled to speak at 3:45 p.m. on April 12. That's the middle day of The Combine, which is slated for April 11-13.
"I think this is the highest-profile speaker that we've ever had," said Mike Trotzke, Combine chairman and co-founder of the Bloomington startup incubator SproutBox. "Wikipedia is the fifth-most visited website in the world. It's an absolute win for us."
Wales already has a Bloomington connection. He taught at Indiana University and was in its Ph.D. finance program, although he did not write a dissertation required for a doctoral degree.
Trotzke thinks Wales' history in Bloomington helped The Combine land him as a speaker. It's one of the reasons the tech conference tried to book him.
"He's been on our list for quite some time," Trotzke said.
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