I agree with lodewijk's assumptions to a certain extent. But we shouldn't keep expectations low by design, there should be no bar set to judge the event, whatever happens, happens, but we should always strive to make it as professional as we can. There are many organizations who hold annual international events, who don't have nearly the same resources and reach as we do. 

As for what Delphine suggested, about having more local and regional events, its an great idea but the sad reality is most chapters can't organize regular meetups, let alone a national conference every year. A lot of the chapters aren't organized to pull even a national event of every year, plus the preparations and the planning would be very similar to the Wikimania in its current incarnation. So it probably might make more sense to just go through a large event once rather than multiple events every year. I have a feeling that most chapters would not be supportive of more events instead of the one large event where we all get together.


Regards


Theo


On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Deror Avi <deror_avi@yahoo.com> wrote:
I completely and adamantly disagree with Harel.

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.

Deror
From: Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>
To: Coordination list for Wikimania. <wikimania-planning-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Wikimania jury list <wikimania-jury@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wed, January 19, 2011 1:53:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimania-jury] [Wikimania-planning-l] What to do about 2012, and the future

Yes, that is all very true. But whether or not we should have a Wikimania every year, is something that has impact on all those visitors, so they should have at least a say in that :) Also, they are your potential bidders for the future years, and all the experts are there /too/. You have the best of both worlds there imho.

Lodewijk

2011/1/19 Harel Cain <harel.cain@gmail.com>
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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