On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Sylvain Boissel <sylvain.boissel@wikimedia.fr> wrote:

2011/8/23 Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>

although it sounds exciting, I'm afraid we have to be realistic.
1) it is rather impossible to fly in all winners - even if we have the budget for that (which we don't) - because of the tight time frame. If we fly nobody in, it would basically be a press conference, and no press will be really interested in that I assume.

If by "all winners", you mean the 180 winners (10 selected pics * 18 participating countries), I agree, of course. But flying in the final winners of the European contest (how many are they supposed to be, by the way ? There is no indication about that in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/Concept ) can be realistic.

There are going to be 12 winning pictures (and therefore most likely 12 winning photographers). For further information, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/May_Meeting

It's really difficult to fly in 12 people from all over Europe. First of all, they have to be willing to travel to Brussels. Secondly, the winners need to have time on short notice (maximum three to four weeks prior to the event, not everybody can take two or three days off). And thirdly, it can be really expensive to fly them in (ideally, the winners come from pretty much everywhere, so you have to get people from Russia and Estonia to Brussels as well as from Portugal and Norway) and it's hard to organize.

Basically, what we want to do is a combination of the following :
- Held a small award ceremony, giving their prize to the winners. No need to have hundreds of people to come...
- An exhibition of the winning photographs

- A conference about some topic on which we want the eurodeputies to work and which is relevant to the contest (the first thing that comes to mind is Freedom of Panorama.)
- At the same time, a "Wikimedia Takes Brussels" :)

IMO, none of these would necesit more time or money than we can afford.

I estimate that if one person was to organize this, it would take at least two weeks with nothing else to do.

2) currently, we have no budget for a ceremony - so you would have to find that (there was money budgetted, but since we were not able to fill in all budget with money from chapters, we have to limit ourselves)

I think Wikimédia France can pay for what is related to the event itself, and maybe the other European chapters can help with the transportation and accomodation of the winners ?

I believe that most chapters that helped to fund the european budget won't be able to pay another 1000-2000€ for such an event. And it would be weird if the ceremony was as or even more expensive as the whole contest.

Kilian