It was almost certain that a decent bid from Asia would be successful.

No it wasn't and I wish people didn't have this misconception.

All of the bids were considered against a range of criteria, not only location. Amongst many other factors, Taipei offered the venue and accommodation on a single site, and their organizing team had prior experience from running the Chinese Wikimania this year. It's unfair to them to suggest they only won because they're in Asia.

If Asia was a sure winner from the start, we wouldn't have needed a meeting lasting more than 4 hours on Saturday to determine which city would be successful. A few people seem to think that the others were rejected purely for being in Europe, but that was not the case, and we would have said from the start if we were only accepting bids from other continents so as not to waste people's time.

Angela.