Hi Siko,

Thanks for the constructive thoughts.

I agree it is good to focus on the future, and have a good discussion about this. I hope that chapters and organised groups (who could have higher odds for bidding/hosting) also discuss this topic, and use that as input. That way, more people can be included indirectly.

While I do think we should really discuss this, I do also think Esino Lario is a very brave experiment, and I would like to separate the discussion between general goals, and how we accomplish them. I expect we will learn many lessons from Esino Lario based on the very creative approach to the conference. Some things will work out great, and should be repeated, others probably give a less enthusiast feeling for repetition. That is nothing to be ashamed of, because if we never try, we never find out.

So I would like to propose that this consultation does /not/ result in a very rigid set of criteria and process, but that it focuses on the main goals, the main ideas what we want with Wikimania - and that we revisit that shortly after Esino Lario to incorporate those lessons. That also gives some space to have a real life discussion at Wikimania about this plan :) It would be nice to have a good set of input for that real life discussion though!

Best,

Lodewijk

On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 12:11 AM, Siko Bouterse <sbouterse@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi folks,

Just letting you know that I’m reading the recent Wikimania-focused mailing list threads with interest, as the Community Resources team is now on-point for funding and coordinating WMF’s involvement in Wikimania.

A couple of first thoughts to share:

1. WMF has learned from past Wikimanias that we need to do our due-diligence on venue etc before the host team and location is announced. One reason for this is that we have a limited budget for Wikimania, and doing a site visit before the host is finalized helps us ensure that we’re able to support the costs of the event in a given location. Ellie Young is headed to Montreal in 2 weeks and based on what she learns from that visit, we’re aiming to give the steering committee what they need to confirm selection before the end of 2015. That said, we recognize that communications around this haven’t gone as planned, and we are looking into improvements…(see thought 2)

2. We, too, would like to see the movement building towards a shared vision of Wikimania! It is great to see so many people, in true Wikimedian-style, thinking about big-picture questions of participation, representation, and content at Wikimania. Knowing that mailing list discussions have their limits, here’s how my team is thinking about collecting feedback more systematically for this going forward:

We’ll be launching a community consultation in November to help build towards more shared vision and process improvements for Wikimania 2018 - 2021. Two key inputs we’ve been thinking about using to launch that conversation are 1) responses from the survey of last Wikimania’s attendees and 2) the steering committee’s recommendation for host selection going forward.

We’re still regrouping from the latest Resources Consultation, and will begin planning for a Wikimania Consultation next week, so after that we’ll be able to share more information about what this consultation will look like and the exact timeline. Meanwhile, suggestions and open questions that you’d like to see resolved via this consultation are most welcome in this thread. My hope is that a consultation will help broaden participation in these conversations and get us from input to action.

Warm regards,
Siko

--
Siko Bouterse
Director of Community Resources
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

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