“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” That is the humble goal of Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation. Since its inception in 2001, Wikimedia’s most famous initiative – Wikipedia – has transformed the way the world obtains information. Free, multilingual, and edited by thousands of volunteers, it offers anyone with an Internet connection access to the largest and most up-to-date encyclopedia available today.  Wikipedia is built on the belief that information is not a for-profit commodity. It has created an open platform where people around the world can collectively share their knowledge: whereas the encyclopedias of the past were written by a minority of professionals, Wikipedia is available to be edited and reviewed by volunteers ranging in expertise and spanning geographical regions. The result is a database of peer-reviewed and accurate entries – some updated thousands of times.  Wikipedia is not innovating a new technology nor is it staffing a mass of researchers to extract data from all corners of the earth. It is rather changing the world with an idea: to create a public space where all people can freely join to collaborate, share and communicate all of our collective knowledge. In its 12 years of existence, Wikipedia has become the largest collection of shared knowledge in human history. The brainchild of one man, it would never be possible without the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who offer their time and expertise to create its content.