Right, let me be quite blunt. This thread is not "undiplomatic", it's an attempt to meddle in the affairs of other chapters, which do not concern you. how would you have liked it if I was trashing the Haifa or DC bids before they were even anything as formal as bids?
As to "my opinion of WMUK has been tainted", let me again be very blunt. You have clearly not read the documents linked, or not understood what you were looking at. You are looking at suggestions. We are exploring a variety of options, none of which have been discussed or
approved. Now, as WSC says, last year's bid failed partly because of insufficient support from the chapter, so this year, there is a *suggestion* in a *draft* budget to *earmark* *up to* £40k for the bid. That doesn't mean that £40k *will* be allocated, nor that, if it is allocated, the whole £40k will be spent. In fact, I think it's very unlikely we will find anything to spend that kind of money on in just the bidding stage, but that's why it's called a *draft*. You can't criticise the chapter for offering financial support when it was criticised last year for not providing financial support.
Now kindly keep your noses out of other people's business.
(I should probably point out that I'm not speaking on behalf of WMUK)
Thank you,
Harry Mitchell
Phone: 024 7698 0977
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
I agree that it would be wrong for chapter money to go into Wikimania bids, especially as some bid teams have access to resources that others don't. However London lost the last bid against Hong Kong partly because it was deemed not to have "solid support from the chapter". Considering how much support there was from the chapter it would be difficult to see how the UK chapter could give more solid support without supplying paid staff time. So the logical response to the jury's decision
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2012-May/003491.html is to budget for more solid support from the
chapter.
If the Jury had said that both bids were very good , but for 2013 it was really time for another Wikimania in the Far East then we'd be in a different situation.
WSC
On 25 August 2012 20:32, James Hare
<messedrocker@gmail.com> wrote:
Staffing is a very good thing to spend money on—while executing the conference. Spending $62,000 on staff for a bid would be worth the investment if bidding for Wikimania were anything like bidding for the Olympics, but it is not. The spirit of Wikimania is ultimately from its volunteer leadership, and if the Wikimedia UK volunteers cannot muster that spirit to run their own bid, they have no hope and no soul.
James
On Aug 25, 2012, at 3:28 PM, Itzik Edri wrote:
Sorry, it's undiplomatic to interfere with others budget plans - but I just can't ignore how the future of Wikimania will look like if others will follow UK plans to invest £40,000 only for the bid process (about 62,000$).
I wrote my last response on that few minutes ago:
"Hire a production company for half of this cost. It's really waste of donors money, for what we expect to be done by volunteers, or for a minimum costs. If every one who going to bid for Wikimania will spent this amount of money (and why them not? if UK can, why others not?), it's mean that for 4 places every year we are "spending" more than 260,000$ only for the bid!!!. --217.132.1.140 19:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)"
I really think the "Wikimania" groups need to speak about that. It's the first time a group/chapter spending such amount of money for bid, and it's open a door for next cities to do the same - with money which can uses to invest in Wikimania itself.
Itzik
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