There is merit in everything that has been said. However, there are some assumptions I disagree with:

1) Every Wikimania has to be more professional than the one before - I think it is perfectly fine to have a wikimania that is less professional, as long as we're honest about it in advance. So there are no worse bids, there are only overrated bids.

2) There have to be all kinds of conferences and events attached to it - like with 1), this is a nice-to-have, but maybe we should lower the bar here too. I am totally fine with a Wikimania with no planned chapter meeting or scientific conference. Some people do prefer that, others dont - we cant suit everybody.

3) Longer preperation makes better preperation - We have seen in the past that great conferences can be pulled off in short time, and sometimes basically the whole planning takes place in two months even though they had over a year. Giving people two years to prepare wont be much better than giving them a year imho.

Also, I think that there is a big advantage to having it every year - you dont have to wait for it so long! I would like new people to pour into our community, and be able to attend wikimania if they want, not to have them wait long. If people can't allow themselves to attend every year, that is just how life works - we should not want to have *everybody* attend every single version of Wikimania. Every year there will be a sub group of the community attending. You do not need "not having wikimania" as an excuse to spend time with your family!

Rotation is of course a Good Thing, but I am not sure if we should fixate it like that. It also excludes a lot of people. Do we really need that much competition that we want to sacrifice our flexibility for it? All we need, imho, in the end is a very capable city to organize it. It doesnt have to be the very best we can squeeze out, but it has to have enough volunteers, a good organization, location and accommodation (and airport...). Having three or four candidates should be more than sufficient to find such a city.

I also totally agree with Finne on the importance of being Wikimania. Especially the every year returning characteristic is what makes Wikimania special. I believe that by making it biannual or making it just local every other year would reduce the value of the brand and decrease the enthusiasm that people feel when visiting.

I do think by the way we should have more international continental events, but I would even like to /increase/ the number of events (ie, besides the wikimania, I would like to see continental events if Wikimania is elsewhere) because I see that as serving our mission by doing outreach and involving the audience.

best, Lodewijk

2011/1/19 theo10011 <de10011@gmail.com>

I agree to some extent, a biannual event is an eventuality we have to consider. But would making it biannual have any effect on the quality of the bids, the benefit of having such a diverse community implies that the two teams hosting consecutive events might not be affected by each other at all. The bids might not improve even if the event became biannual. The bidding process lasts for months, the planning stage probably even longer, awarding more time to a bidding team might not improve the quality of the bids. The biggest benefit I would assume, would be providing a team that has already won the bid, more time to prepare for the event.

Again, I would take this opportunity to bring up an earlier suggestion of a Wikimania committee, an oversight committee or an advisory group could improve the bidding process and transfer some of the burden of planning to a specialized body. The experience gained from every year could be retained within the committee, this I believe might have the largest impact on the quality and the frequency of the bids. This might standardized the process and offload a lot of burden from the host team.

Regards

Theo

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Finne Boonen <hennar@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 12:44, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:
>> To me, the lack of strong bids is an indicator that holding a big,
>> expensive and complex international conference in a changing location year
>> after year is not very realistic in the long term - and Wikimania is just
>> becoming ever more big, expensive and complex (for example, WM2011 will see
>> at least three side events preceding/co-locating with it).

Maybe the problem is that every conference tries to do better/bigger
then the previous ones? Which can quickly lead to 'too
big/complicated'

>> Few international organizations do that. In fact, many international
>> conferences such as the International Congress of Mathematicians are held
>> every 4 years! I don't think it will be a bad sign for the Wikimedia
>> movement / foundation to decide to hold Wikimania every two years, just a
>> realistic understanding on its part that the tradition of annual Wikimanias

However, most other fields have several conferences a year where
people meet each other. I'm not sure we have enough events that allow
real international 'mingling' to take place. In my experience most
conferences we have are very local events, and there is real benefit
from interacting in person with a wider community then the local one.

Finne

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