Re: Al he was just within 24 hours, though I confess I had already changed
the UK bid page to a redirect to Oxford.
But seriously:
1) I haven't seen any progress on cities other than Oxford in the last
few weeks. We established Oxford was (bizarrely) even going to be cheaper
than Manchester and we have a pretty high chance of getting the OII on board
which would make for a superb bid. And in any case for national sponsors I
don't imagine it matters a great deal what city it's in.
2) We have a strongly preferred venue (the town hall) and a second
alternative and it certainly makes no difference whatsoever to sponsors
precisely what our venue is.
3) I'm not sure what you mean by this.
There's really quite a lot of official information around already what with
previous bid pages, our bid page, this mailing list etc etc. I can e-mail
anyone off list the standard spiel I've been sending to people so far, and
for clarifications of things I'll do my best to be on IRC during my waking
hours (despite our infinitely annoying firewall) as I imagine so will Al and
anyone else who's interested.
Anyway starting to produce an information pack sounds like a reasonable
idea. I suggest you do it in a subpage of our bid for now. So your help is
most certainly appreciated. You do have to be careful to ensure initial
approaches are pretty concise though as no one wants to wade through a 20
page PDF.
Thanks,
Tom
From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ian A.
Holton
Sent: 01 August 2008 16:13
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Volunteer(s) needed
Tom,
it might be a good idea to wait until the preparations have progressed a
little more. Currently I see a few minor problems in approaching major
sponsors:
* The official UK bid city has not been decided upon yet
* Location in Oxford (venue) and dates have not been set
* Official bid on wiki is underpopulated currently
and a few more I can't remember of the top of my head. The reason I see this
as problematic is that when questions are raised, there is little "official"
information to rely on. This is why for one we should decide which UK city
is going to be the official bid city and then of course also the venue.
Once some of this has been worked on, not only by you but all involved in
the discussion and process, I think it would be the right time to approach
major sponsors, such as telco companies (BT, Virgin...), UK branches of
large Internet multinations (Google, Yahoo! etc) as well as local companies
and start-ups (Zopa, web hosters, ...) and obviously any other companies
that might potentially be interested in sponsoring such an event.
Now to the most important part: As this is a task that can be done
non-locally I would be willing to help along with it, for example creating
an "information pack" (introduction, key facts, links and contacts) that can
be e-mailed with a cover letter to potential companies and then if requested
also mailed. I believe that this task is too large to be just manned by one
person and would like to do this, if I am asked to get involved, in a small
team and open to suggestions, contacts and so on.
Ian
[[User:Poeloq]]
2008/8/1 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>
At least for the moment it makes sense if Kaihsu and I focus on the Oxford
centric jobs (e.g. dealing with the OII/venues/accommodation/local
sponsorship) but I really need someone to take the lead on looking for big
national corporate sponsors.
I already seem to be spending about half my day on the bid, so it would be
good if someone could take this task off my hands. (It's pretty damn crucial
that someone does it.) It basically just entails firing off lots of emails
explaining what Wikimania is, why we need money, how they might benefit,
what we'd like to get them from.
It would also be good if someone could start work on improving our
presentation. E.g. knocking up a banner, perhaps making a dedicated sub-page
of our bid to show sponsors explaining who we are, what Wikimania is etc.,
tidying up the main bid page.
A final task for someone else (I'll do this eventually if no one else
volunteers) is to start knocking up a Gantt chart working backwards from the
bid date. Copying Buenos Aires's chart would be a good start.
Tom
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