2009/9/14 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com:
Anyway these rumored individuals who said they "wouldn't come because it was bilingual" probably had mistaken prejudgements about the implementation. Perhaps they thought a Spanish speaking person would be standing on stage with the speaker translating every sentence the speaker said?
Before the conference, I assumed correctly that there would be a track about Latin America with most talks in Spanish, but I didn't know there were gonna be simultaneous translations, let alone that English talks would have Spanish translations. I don't know if this was communicated in advance, maybe I missed that. I didn't particularly like having the closing ceremony partly in Spanish, especially since I wasn't expecting it and didn't grab a headset.
I'm generally supportive of the efforts to make Wikimania multilingual, and I would support similar setups with Polish and French (or whatever the language of the organizing city in 2011), but I think more consideration should be taken for people who don't speak the second language. The schedule should be more explicit about which language(s) are spoken in which sessions, including plenary sessions, so people don't end up attending a session they don't understand.
Also, we could do more outreach among people who speak only the second language; I don't know what the 2009 team did about this, but when Stallman asked (in Spanish) who didn't speak English, I saw less than ten people raise their hands.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)