Andrew Gray wrote:
On 11/10/2007, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>
wrote:
True, but some places are less expensive for a
greater number of people
than others are. If we were to order cities by some vague criterion of
"number of people who can get there for under US$500, plus number of
people who can get there for under US$1000, weighted by some unspecified
amount", my guess based on consolidator spot-checking is that, from
least to most expensive, the four Wikimania cities would be ordered:
Frankfurt, Boston, Taipei, Alexandria. I.e., we're picking somewhere
less accessible every year!
I'm surprised at the latter two - my gut instinct is that the
accessibility from Europe for Alexandria should outweigh the
accessibility bonus for the Far Eastern users going to Taiwan. Was it
close?
(This is probably me systematically underestimating our usership
figures, again...)
I guess it's probably close, and it might be fair to say Alexandria and
Taipei are about equally accessible/inaccessible depending on what you
care about. Both are clearly much less accessible than the two previous
locations, though. It also partly depends on whether you weight by
typical attendees, or by the possibility of attracting new attendees
(e.g. the Japanese Wikipedia is a top-5 by size, but underrepresented at
our events).
For cheap (under US$500):
-- Frankfurt: Nearly all of Europe, much of North Africa, some of the
Middle East
-- Boston: Nearly all of the U.S., much of Canada, most of the
Carribbean, much of Central America
-- Taipei: Hong Kong, maybe some other nearby places if you're lucky
(Malaysia, Japan, etc.)
-- Alexandria: North Africa and the Middle East
For semi-cheap (US$500-1000):
-- Frankfurt: Much of the rest of Africa and the Middle East, parts of
the U.S. east coast if you're lucky
-- Boston: Most of the rest of North, Central, and South America, and a
few European cities if you're lucky
-- Taipei: Most of the rest of eastern Asia, a few U.S. west coast
cities if you're lucky (e.g. Los Angeles)
-- Alexandria: Most of Europe, a handful of African cities if you're
lucky (e.g. Nairobi)
A major problem with Alexandria's accessibility seems to be that, due to
the way airline markets are structured, it's actually *less* accessible
from most of Africa than Europe is, despite being on the African continent.
But of course Phoebe has a point that this isn't really the selection
committee's fault. Europe seems to have the best overall accessibility,
but we can't pick a European city if no European cities submit bids. =]
-Mark