Given the fact that we're less than a month away, and we're late enough if not too late, wouldn't a phone call be faster than a letter?

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Harel Cain <harel.cain@gmail.com> wrote:
Following up on my latest mail, I'm glad to let you know that we drafted a letter to Sari Nusseibeh and after final proofreading we hope to send it out, hopefully today. I'll let you know if something comes out of this.


Harel Cain
Wikimania 2011 local team



On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 08:41, Harel Cain <harel.cain@gmail.com> wrote:
Again, I'm not sure everyone out there in the world is aware of and familiar with all the political intricacies of the local situation between Israelis and Palestinians and can judge what could easily workout and what would not.

Specifically, as I wrote, Sari Nusseibeh was both a kind of embarrassing oversight on our part (his name came up in some single thread of discussion a year ago, and was forgotten about), but also, in our view, not a very good suggestion either, for the reasons I explained (in short: he's a politician). I hope Dror Kamir, who speaks fluent Arabic, will try to engage him in the few weeks we have left, though I don't have very high expectations from this - his name was merely a suggestion, not based on any real promise. Let's see.

I'm happy to say we have a couple of young Arab Israeli attendees/volunteers, I hope this small number will expand. We also made our utmost to try to accommodate the very few seemingly-authentic requests for participation we got from the Middle East - from Saudi Arabia and from the Gaza Strip, but these people simply never got back to us after a certain point in time, despite repeated attempts to contact them.

I must say, again, that there's just so much we can do to increase participation from among a group of people whose size is totally unknown (apparently, there just aren't many active Wikimedians in the Middle East who would consider going to Wikimania - *any* Wikimania, and very few of them are Palestinian) and their willingness to participate is a mystery.

We also have a great confernece to prepare for those ~500 people out there who are going to attend, and we've been working very hard this past year to make sure that's exactly what we'll have. I hope we made a good job at that. Actually, I'm sure we did.




Harel Cain
Wikimania 2011 local team

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 02:48, Muhammad Yahia <shipmaster@gmail.com> wrote:

Harel, this Wikimania is anyway highly influenced by politics, no
matter what we want; which includes this thread. If Sari Nusseibeh is
willing to help, you should take that help. I am sure that he is a
reasonable person, who would try to avoid making possible problems to
us.


Small Disclaimer here: I don't know the guy personally, I got his name from contacts of contacts. Thus I can't vouch for his willingness to help. I think there is a big chance he will be though.
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Best Regards,
Muhammad Yahia

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.



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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

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Best Regards,
Muhammad Yahia