I know that, of course, and that's why we are working on the postmortem thing. But if you want to know how did the multilingual aspect of the conference work out, you still may have to ask actual Wikimania attendees. I'm sorry but "would-be" attendees, no matter the reasons that prevented them from participating, just can't provide feedback on the issue.

I would like to say that saying you wouldn't go somewhere because it has a bilingual program is plainly, blatantly stupid. I don't know if someone did effectively say that, and if someone did so he must have misunderstood something. What I did hear were thankful compliments from both local and foreign attendees praising the simultaneous translation service and the possibility of having people present or attend conferences in their native language. This last group is way bigger that, let's suppose, no more than five people that may have misunderstood the bilingual approach and avoided registering for this year (and I still don't get to know them).

Wikimania 2009's program was extremely packed up, with up to five parallel sessions taking place during the whole three days. We did not cancel any activity in English because of the activities in Spanish. The Program Committee, of which I was a member, did not reject any proposal based on language prescriptions or quotas. Spanish language content was just an addition, an extra possibility we planned to offer right from Buenos Aires' bid submission back in late 2007/early 2008. The jury evidently valued that, because it was one of our key proposals for hosting Wikimania.

Excuse me, but no one can reasonably state that he would not attend a conference because it is not English-only: he may just stay within the English language activities, which were plenty and most of them in Wikimania 2009, and so did many attendees without ever having to hear a word in Spanish! What is more, what would you say to the sizeable amount of people that just had the possibility of attending their first Wikimania because content was being held and translated into the sole language they speak? I must highlight that simultaneous translation worked not only for having English sessions in Spanish: all of the presentations in Spanish were translated into English, and I punctually remember Samuel Klein telling the audience during the Q&A session that he was glad of having had the possibility to attend some particular presentations (originally) in Spanish.

If Wikimedia's policy of multilingualism and the strategic planning process' aim of expanding Wikimedia's reach in the Global South are more than just words --and I indeed believe it--, then Wikimania should also progressively cease to diminish when possible its anglocentric nature. And it's not anglocentric, I think, by choice, as someone may misunderstand, but by force. We can all understand that English is the "first global language", that the Foundation is based in the US and that the biggest Wikimedia projects are those in English. But, on the other side, we all also know that Wikimedia projects are available in hundreds of languages and that the Foundation's policy is to host projects and contents in every possible language.

It is thus clear that Wikimania 2009's multilingual approach can't be understood as an anomaly, as something subject to much opinion, as if the English-speaking population was to have the last world on where or not should the rest of the world have the opportunity of also (i.e. not only) having Wikimania in their language(s). It was not a whim from the organizing team but a rational, expectable, needful step for having future bilingual and let's hope multilingual editions of Wikimania. Nobody is talking of cutting out English language contents here, just of enabling other people, other voices and other POVs to take part of the conference.

I don't know if the Gdansk team has foreseen the possibility of having sessions in Polish for 2010 --I think they didn't, but I may be happily wrong--, but I would love for example to see a bilingual English-French conference in Montréal, and a tri, quatri, polilingual Wikimania some day in the future. I think most of you will agree with me here.

The only possiblity of thinking of bilingualism as something negative may have been this year's experience being a disaster, but thankfully I think that was not the case.

Best regards,

galio
(from the former WM2009 Organizing Team)

P.S.: You may excuse my English, I certainly go better with Spanish.