Although some bbids are better then others, there are good suggestions already on the 2012 bid list (the Istanbul bid for example - considering the early stage) and other groups are considering bidding.
I believe that wikimania should remain an annual event, and although it is complicated in time investing it is doable annually.
We should consider a mechanism which will provide each winning time with the experience and knowledge of previous years to make things easier and to enable annual improvement, but there are many chapters and groups who want to host wikimania, and I am sure, that as the number of chapters annually increase, and the number of volunteers annually grow – there will be more and more competitors wishing to host wikimania.
Wikimania-l is a public mailing list with hundreds of members whose relation to wikimania organizing and bidding can be quite remote. I don't mind moving it there, but my feeling is that most Wikimania "experts" and stakeholders are on one of the two lists I wrote to in my first mail.
Harel--
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:
I think that this is not the right list to bring up this discussion. Perhaps you could re-send your email to wikimania-l ? For now, although I have strong opinions, I will keep them to myself to avoid confusion :)
Best,
Lodewijk
2011/1/19 Harel Cain <harel.cain@gmail.com>
_______________________________________________Hi all,
I'm not a member of this list (so include me in your replies, should you reply), and my comments below express my personal opinion only, which is not necessarily representative of the opinion of WM Israel or of the WM Haifa local team.
I'm also copying the wikimania-planning-l list in case they're interested.
As someone who attended Wikimania 2007, 2010 and is now spending countless hours together with other team members on preparing WM 2011, I wanted to raise a somewhat controversial idea, namely that in future years, Wikimania will be held once every two years (biannually) and not annually.
The reason I'm saying this is not only the huge effort that has to be invested by the local team year after year, but what is potentially a lack of strong bids to host Wikimania 2012, as witnessed by this year's jury. Even if strong bids emerge for 2012 eventually, I'm sure that in years to come the problem will repeat and again we might face a situation where there are no strong bids at all.
To me, the lack of strong bids is an indicator that holding a big, expensive and complex international conference in a changing location year after year is not very realistic in the long term - and Wikimania is just becoming ever more big, expensive and complex (for example, WM2011 will see at least three side events preceding/co-locating with it).
Few international organizations do that. In fact, many international conferences such as the International Congress of Mathematicians are held every 4 years! I don't think it will be a bad sign for the Wikimedia movement / foundation to decide to hold Wikimania every two years, just a realistic understanding on its part that the tradition of annual Wikimanias is not very practical. I hope that eventually, someone will have the decision power and the courage to take this decision - if not for 2012 (I'm not advocating to skip WM2012 specifically, that's not my agenda), then in the future.
Your thoughts?
Yours,
Harel Cain
Wikimania 2011 local team (but speaking personally)
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
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