Veroniki (user Veron)Looking forward to your arrival!!A very convenient choice for this area would be 4* BW Ilisia, 4* BW Plus Embassy, 4* Golden Age and 4* Airotel Alexandros with very reasonable prices (checked 40-60euros per night for a single room with breakfast).Also Hilton Hotel/American Embassy area is considered very well located, with easy access to transport services.Hello Asaf!!Athens center is considered to be the districts between Omonoia Square and Syntagma, pretty close to Plaka/Monastiraki/Acropolis.
I am the "wikipedian to help you about your travel arrangements". :)
In the same price range: 4* Ilissos Hotel also near Acropolis/Plaka, 4* President Hotel (near two metro stations).I would say to avoid the hotels near Omonoia; they are good, but area is avoided during night hours, I am sorry to admit. :/
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 11:25 PM, Á÷ñÞóôçò <wikieugenia@gmail.com> wrote:Thank you for your quick response! :)I have informed the wikipedians here (sorry only in greek for the moment) and will create a dedicated page if we get a positive answer from someone from the ministry.This week the troika is coming to the ministry, so we are expecting it to be pretty nuts around here, but I think that we could hope for an answer by sometime next week by the General Secretary 's office. We will keep you posted and see if we can come up with some recommendations for your hotel soon enough! :)
2013/3/5 Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
Hi, Evgenia.Yes, I would be happy to meet with the General Secretary if it would help the community bring some issues we care about to the ministry! By all means, let's start that page to plan what we want to say, and gather good examples from other countries etc. And yes, it would be appropriate to inform the community this is planned.Our travel assistant is looking into my travel arrangements right now (I'll probably be landing on Apr 11th, leaving on the 16th), but if you have hotel recommendations I'd be happy to hear. The two main factors are: it needs to be reasonably frugal -- no five star hotels, no need for any special facilities (spa etc.) -- and reasonably practical, i.e. close to where most meetings would be likely held, especially considering Athens's famous traffic congestion. :)A.On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 7:54 AM, Á÷ñÞóôçò <wikieugenia@gmail.com> wrote:
And (if no-one else volunteers for the task) I am eager to help you prepare the meeting by opening a page in greek wikipedia with potential proposals concerning the ministry and making a brief report in english for you. In case you feel that the community should be informed before commiting in seeing him, we will address the issue as soon as possible.I am currently working for the Greek Ministry of education and I can make a first contact with his office next week to see whether he would be interested as well. I have to know in advance if you/we are interested because i will have to be sure before making any contact with his office.Hi Asaf,Sorry for bothering you by e-mail but I am not sure if this is a question up to you (& the foundation) or up to the greek wikimedian community as well:
-Would you be interested in having a meeting with the General Secretary of the Greek Ministry of Education (Athanassios Kyriazis) in the scope of public relations, cooperation, or lobbying (concerning freedom of panorama, public domain issues etc)?
+If you need any arrangements about your staying in Athens, there is a wikipedian that we can contact in order to help you. :)sincerelyEvgenia (user: Á÷ñÞóôçò)
2013/3/1 Glavkos Xaon <glavkos@gmail.com>
Hi Asaf,
we are excited that we are going finally to meet you in Athens in the mid of April.
I just created a page on ELWP which we can use to coordinate our meeting. Here it is:
http://bit.ly/XI9GPa
All the best,
Nikos Papadimoulis , aka Glavkos--2013/3/1 Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
Thanks, everyone!It's settled, then! :) I'll be booking my flights in the next couple of days and will let you know as soon as I've made them. The plan is to arrive on the 11th and leave on the 15th or 16th. Let's start a page to plan this together. Would a page on Meta be okay? If you prefer, I'm happy to do this on ELWP as well -- just send me a link.I look forward to seeing you! :)A.
On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 10:11 PM, Focal Point <focalpointx@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Asaf,
After discussion in the Agora from 23 until 27 Feb, there are 5 positive answers from registered members of the wikipedia commnity (FocalPoint, Ttzavaras, Pyraechmes, Glavkos, geraki), of which one (Pyraehmes) finds it difficult to attend because of distance and other obligations.
Á÷ñÞóôçò initiated the discussion, and I suppose that she will also answer positively.
Discussion up to now concerning organization of events is for:
*a wikipedians informal meeting
*a one-day conference (space is secured)
*or both
Regards,
FocalPointOn Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 2:03 AM, Glavkos Xaon <glavkos@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I surely can arrange a leave to visit Athens for this meeting. I can be there for the weekend and probably earlier (on 11th/12th of April). Certainly I am also willing to do what it takes to support the meeting and help in organizing the needed details before and throughout the event(s).
All the best,
Nikos Papadimoulis--2013/2/28 Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
That works for me. I could arrive on the 10th/11th, and we can set up meeting before, during and just after the weekend, as appropriate. Then I can leave for Milan on the 16th.I'd like a couple more people to confirm that this would work for the community, and then I can go ahead with the arrangements and we can take our time planning how to make the best of my visit.Thanks,A.On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Tassos Tzavaras <tzavarastassos@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello everybody. I would suggest the date of 13-14th April, since the 27 - 28 is the beginning of Easter period in Greece and possibly many of us will be absent on Easter vacations (including myself). We look forward to see you in Greece and have a face to face conversation for our Community here. Thanks in advance,
Tassos Tzavaras
Hi, folks.
The answer is _yes_, I can make those dates, but I need to know by Friday if possible, as we're making arrangements for Milan, and I need to know how to book my flights there.
I'm happy to answer any questions, of course, and to plan the particulars of my visit with you.
Thanks,
Asaf
On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 12:14 AM, Konstantinos Stampoulis <geraki@geraki.gr> wrote:
Hello Asaf.
To keep you informed, there is a conversation about your visit in Greece, in Wikipedia's Agora (Village Pump): http://goo.gl/k9xRoSo, it is not that we are not interested for your visit, but we still talk if a conference for the general audience should be organised on the occasion or just do some community meetings.
A question I have: Since you will be in Italy at 18-21 April, you must extend your trip for some days to be in Greece for at least a weekend. Can you extend it for enough days to be here at 13-14th or 27-28th of April? Any community meeting should be on a weekend.
I'm posting this mail to WikiEL mailing list (I think you are already a member) so that it will be more open, and we can link to your mails.I suggest that all cc'd users subscribe to it.2013/2/20 Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
Hi, folks.
I haven't heard back from you in a while. What are your current thoughts about my proposed visit to Greece?
As a reminder, I was thinking of visiting for the following goals and activities:
1. to meet with as many of you as possible and learn from you about the state of the community, your personal projects and plans, the obstacles you face.
2. to do one or more development workshops for the community in Greece -- i.e. discussion and (two-way!) experience sharing toward growing the Wikimedia community and its reach in Greece. We could discuss whatever problems or challenges you feel would be most valuable to work on. Some examples might be: representation (who gets to speak for Wikipedia in Greece? How?); creating partnerships (how? when? with whom?); how to live with (and without?) community conflict, etc.
(I have extensive program experience in the movement, including as a former board member of a local chapter, as well as experience with volunteer recruitment and management outside the movement, from other projects I've been involved with as a volunteer over the years.)
3. to help your group secure meetings with potential partners, in case an official representative of the Foundation, or just "a visitor from the US", would help get a first meeting with people like university rectors, mayors, etc.
4. if helpful, do public speaking (in English, unfortunately) about Wikipedia in general public occasions or at universities. In general, I think it's better for local volunteers to do public speaking, but again, if an international guest would bring a larger audience or something, I'm happy to help. We can also think about a joint presentation -- one of you speaking in Greek about the Greek community and about Wikipedia particulars, and I giving a broader view of the movement, international activities, and maybe one or two of the sister projects.
All of this is just an outline of what a visit _can_ be. What it _would_ be really depends on planning work we'd need to put into this (i.e. actually securing meetings, lectures, picking dates, etc.), and most of that work would best be done by Greek-speaking locals... So it's really up to you.
Concretely, I am traveling to Milan, Italy for the Wikimedia Conference 2013 in mid-April, and would be able to come to Greece before/after it, _but if so_, we need to start making arrangements for this very soon. If you'd like me to visit but can't spare the time to prepare, or just want it to be later, that's fine, and I can make a separate trip to Greece later in the year.
If, in the meantime, you have come to the conclusion a visit would not be very useful or appropriate now, that's fine too, and please don't hesitate to say so if that's the case.
Cheers,
Asaf
--
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
--Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia FoundationImagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimedia.gr/wiki/
--Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia FoundationImagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimedia.gr/wiki/
--Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia FoundationImagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!