Dear organizers (hopefully someone can forward it to those not on this list)
thank you so much for putting the time and dedication into this years
wikimania. Organizing a conference of this size with attendees who have such
high demands and expectations is as always hard, and I think it deserves an
applause no matter whether some things did not go as planned.
It was a very difficult organizing this year, the bumps in the road were
numerous and I would like to explicitely thank all those volunteers who were
not a part of the bidding team but stepped in when their help was most
needed. Several people who live outside Poland suddenly lived for a few
weeks in an appartment in Gdansk together - leaving their lives for what
they were - and had to make horrible long hours to make the conference to
what it has become. I have deep appreciation for those people and I think it
is quite unique and wonderful to have such a volunteer base to fall back
onto.
But also "the people we did not see" did a tremendous amount of work in the
past weeks. I remember that I slipped a few days before the conference that
it would be nice to have X in the attendee packages, and the next day they
were suddenly arranged!
I dont dare to call out the specific people, being afraid of missing several
- I have only seen so much of it. I do hope to have the opportunity of
seeing many of you irl again soon!
many hugs,
Lodewijk