Hi Andrew and Leila,

There are quite a few ways of looking at the numbers (which is one reason that I'm hoping for a thorough analysis.) Please note that I think that conferences should happen; I am asking if this is the status quo is the optimal way of spending these funds. There are other ways of using funds for conferences that could be explored.

For example, if a Wikimania costs $600,000 and there are 1,000 attendees, that works out to a cost of $600 per attendee for 1000 people. Is that a wiser investment than spreading out the same funds among (hypothetically) 3,000 attendees at multiple national/regional conferences for an average expense of $200 per attendee? At this point I don't think any of us can answer that question.

The Wikimania-going population, especially the people who go to many WIkimanias, are a vanishingly small percentage of the overall WIkimedia population. They tend to be active, but there are plenty of active Wikimedians such as myself who have never been to Wikimania, although I'd like to go next year. Does it make sense to spend so much money on such a small percentage of our community? There are reasons to think that the answer could be yes; for example, if Wikimania motivates highly active contributors and leaders to keep up the good work. However, it's not clear that similarly good effects couldn't be achieved on a broader scale by spreading the funds among more numerous smaller conferences.

There is a good argument to be made that having lots of highly active contributors and project leaders from all over the world in the same place, and having WMF staff mix with them, is a good idea for purposes of improving communications and relationships. Generation of good PR press, and cross-pollination of ideas, are also important and I think that we should support those. However, similarly good outcomes might be achieved through multiple smaller conferences.

I'm in favor of continuing to spend funds on conferences; what I think that none of us know is whether our current model of a single large conference is "better" than multiple national/regional conferences.

Along the lines of Leila's suggestion, the idea of temporarily scaling up WMF's support for national/regional (or thematic) conferences while keeping Wikimania in place makes sense to me. That requires some willingness to spend the funds for both types of events for a few years. It's a bit of an expensive proposition though, and I'm wary of asking the WMF staff to spend more time traveling to more conferences. I guess I'm cautiously in favor of looking at this option if it's financially practical to scale up the support for focused conferences while maintaining support for Wikimania. Keep in mind that WMF Fundraising is worried about plateauing revenues, so we're working in a world of resource constraints and trying to do the best we can with what we've got.

I'm looking forward to hearing what Katherine and Christophe think. And with that, I'm afraid that I must depart this thread to attend to other matters. (: Thanks for the good conversation, everyone.

Pine

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Leila Zia <leila@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi Pine,

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

 

I'd also be interested in projections of total attendance and costs (including travel costs and staff time) for Wikimania vs. having more or expanded national and regional conferences.

But then there is the benefit (which is not fully captured by attendance that) we need to take into account, too, and that's where the main problem starts. It's relatively easy to measure the costs of conferences, it's very hard to measure their benefit for a variety of reasons, one of which, in our context, is that it's hard to assign price-tag to many of the projects the community and beyond drive, even if you can clearly link them to Wikimania (which is a problem on its own). And that's already the easier part of the benefit analysis. It can get way more complicated if we want to assign a price-tag to how much it's worth for each of us to learn more about others.

And now add to all the above, that you are suggesting that we do cost-benefit analysis for multiple conference models and compare them. Think about designing control experiments, considering the interactions between conferences (people who attend both vs. those who attend only one kind), etc.

I would not go down the path of cost-benefit analysis for a conference such as Wikimania. We will loose too much time and money and still the analysis will have so many questionable components.

​What industry and academic conferences usually do when they're in doubt is that they become bold and start a new conference but keep the original one in place. If the new conference attracts more audience, to the extent that at some point organizing the original conference doesn't make sense (too few attendees, lower quality abstract submissions, major people in the field moving to the new conference), then they gradually stop the original conference. It seems that following that approach would be more beneficial than questioning the usefulness of Wikimania without more extensively trying the other conference/meet-up types first and in parallel to Wikimania.
​

If WMF and the community are going to spend that much money every year on an annual conference, with the majority of that money coming from donors who give small-dollar amounts, I think that we need to think carefully and thoroughly about how we plan the conference (or conferences) to align with the goals of our donors and what we tell our donors.

​Two points to take into account here:

* Wikimania is a major and mature conference and it's fair to compare it to major academic conferences that I'm more familiar with. The cost of such conferences is usually quite higher than Wikimania, if you consider roughly the same attendance numbers. I would start worrying about the cost of Wikimania only if the cost goes much higher than the industry standard.

* I wouldn't recommend reconsidering how we plan for our major conferences based on what we tell our donors. We should define our needs and find a way to fund them.
 

Leila
​
--
Leila Zia
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation

Pine

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 12:50 PM, Deryck Chan <deryckchan@gmail.com> wrote:

I find it a bit over the top too to have such a letter, so strongly worded, and signed by so many board chairs.

It reveals a divide between those who participated in the IdeaLab survey[1] and those who were at the Future of Wikimania session in Esino.

It would perhaps be interesting to see if correlations can be revealed as to what demographic of Wikimedian prefer 1 year per Wikimania and what demographic prefer 2 year per Wikimania - like geographical distribution, involvement in local Wikimedia groups (staff / board / other volunteer / not a participant), and past attendance at regional Wikimedia conferences and Wikimania.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania/Outcomes

Thank you. I find it confusing that the letter starts with "The chairpersons of the Wikimedia chapters state that Wikimania needs to be arranged every year," which implies that all of the chapter chairs are united in agreement, but it appears several chapters didn't sign the letter. Looking further at the content of the letter, I would have some questions about some of the statements that were made there. In the future, I would encourage chapter chairs to have discussions about matters such as this on the Affiliates mailing list so that we can have more inclusive discussions among more affiliates before sending letters like that. The Wikimania situation is already convoluted, and I believe that letters such as this should get fuller discussion among affiliates before they are sent to WMF.

Thanks,

Pine

On Jul 8, 2016 20:04, "Christophe Henner" <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

My bad I forgot it already is on meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Statements/Chapter_chairs_statement:_Wikimania_needs_to_be_arranged_every_year

Le 9 juil. 2016 4:50 AM, "Pine W" <wiki.pine@gmail.com> a écrit :

Thanks Christophe. I, for one, have had difficulty figuring out what is going on with Wikimania in regards to varying decisions in different parts of WMF and the community, so I look forward to the clarifications.

Personally I am currently neutral on the decision of whether to have annual Wikimanias, or alternate Wikimanias with years in which there is emphasis on national or regional conferences. My hunch is that some research about costs and benefits is needed so that we have reliable data about a variety of scenarios before making a decision.

Thanks again for working on this.

To the board chairs: I would be interested in seeing that letter. In the spirit of transparency, would you please publish it on Meta? As you know I am an advocate for much more transparency from WMF, and I would like for the affiliates to also to be transparent about governance matters such as this one.

Thanks,

Pine

On Jul 8, 2016 19:18, "Christophe Henner" <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi everyone,

The same question was raised to the board a few days ago by chairs of Wikimedia organizations asking Foundation's board to make sure there's a comprehensive decision on this very topic. 

The chairs letter wasn't public, I let them share it on meta or here if they want to :)

First step, in my opinion, is to set expectations and define the scope (in the role of the event but also in the ressources (both human and financial) we commit to the event. 

Katherine is working with the staff to provide groundings.

Here is the answer I provided them with. 

----

Hi chairs!

First of all, thank you with the email, the feedback is clearly useful and raises interesting point. 

Now, the Wikimania discussion definitly is on the table. Living by what we said during Wikimania, we, as WMF, will make sure we end up with a clear answer to your questions but also to the different points you raise. 

Wikimania is an important time in our movement, but as you said it also comes with costs and challenges that we have to adress. Katherine is going to meet in the coming days with the staff in charge of that topic to start that discussion within WMF and provide groundings for a comprehensive decision. 

We will try to be as diligent as possible on that topic, but I would ask you to keep in mind that as we're in a transition phase and that might take a little more time than you could expect. 

Again thank you for your email, I love the fact that he raises issues but also includes the challenges we have to take care of :)

We'll get back to you as soon as possible to continue that discussion.

Have all a really great day / night :)

Christophe

While I concur with Coren’s conclusion, I’ll try to neutrally report on the events at Wikimania which led to this result. :)

Full disclosure: I’m a fan of Wikimania being yearly, and was asked to serve on the Wikimania Committee after Esino Lario. I was also the main moderator of the Wikimania 2016 session on the “Future of Wikimania.” These views are my own, and not anything official from the committee.

Background: Many folks (I’d say a majority) who I talked to in Esino Lario early in the conference thought that the decision to do Wikimania every other year was a done deal, as a result of the IdeaLab consultation. I told them that might not necessarily be so. The vote was close, not particularly widely known, and we could still be heard. Chris Schilling from the WMF, who oversaw the Idealab consultation, sought me out specifically at the start of the conference and to my delight, said that the consultation was “just another data point,” and that it was by no means the final word on things. Obviously, this was good news to people who were interested in keeping a yearly Wikimania.

I was scheduled to moderate the “Future of Wikimania” discussion session [1] at the very end of the conference, and encouraged people to let their views be heard. It was under these conditions that we entered into the final discussion room and I asked Chris Schilling to give an opening statement to the room. Most people were happy to hear him say that it was “just another data point.” During the discussion, there was overwhelming support to keep Wikimania going every year, which is not a surprise considering this was *at* Wikimania. I encourage folks to peruse the Etherpad notes, which are quite extensive and expertly done by several folks there.

Some views I’d highlight:

- Having yearly Wikimania is important to keep the momentum of the movement going, according to many

- A case for cancelling yearly Wikimania was to encourage/fund regional meetups. However, there is no guarantee that those regional meetups would actually take place, or that WMF would necessarily take the money saved from Wikimania to fund them. Some folks from Asia specifically said that there is weaker linguistic, cultural and geographic synergy for an “Asian” conference like there is in Europe and Africa, which is why it has been hard to do one.

- One person noted that one trip to Wikimania served the same role as several international trips to get the same benefit from meeting other Wikimedians/developers, so there are indeed cost efficiencies in having a central conference.

Thanks.

[1] https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discussions/The_future_of_Wikimania

[2] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikimania2016-discussion7b

-Andrew Lih
Associate professor of journalism, American University
Email: andrew@andrewlih.com
WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com
BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com
PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Marc-Andre <marc@uberbox.org> wrote:

On 2016-07-08 10:01 AM, Chris Keating wrote:

Interestingly, I couldn't see any sign of the Committee's decision being informed by the WMF's consultation on the future of Wikimania, or anyone from the WMF's community engagement department being present.

Wikimania is, and always was, a community led and organized event. The WMF, as its traditional biggest sponsor[1], has a great deal of influence in the matter - but ultimately no decision power beyond "fund and resource or not".

The committee's decision has indeed taken into account the consultation you refer to - as well as the roundtable discussion on the "Future of Wikimania" that took place earlier[2].  Our evaluation, which is reflected in that resolution, is that the consultation was clearly flawed and that its conclusion does not reflect consensus - neither of the community members who organize nor of those who attend Wikimania.

-- Coren / Marc

[1] Although "underwrite" might be a better term - the WMF has pretty much shouldered the vast majority of the costs and given the most logistical support year in and year out.

[2] Where the consensus was to overwhelmingly reject that consultation's conclusion in favor or continuing with Wikimania as a yearly even given its irreplaceable role in our movement.

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