2013/5/5 Manuel Schneider <manuel.schneider(a)wikimedia.ch>
We once briefly discussed the idea of having a
real-life Wikimania
workshop. I think this discussion is hard to do - at least to come up
with a final result - on a mailinglist. I think all interested parties -
don't need to be those who volunteer to sit on such a committee only -
should come together, discuss, argue, brainstorm, put together the
pieces and ideas into a complete concept.
I read through most of your thoughts, and the first thing that pops in to
my head is 'overhead', 'bureaucracy' and 'little kingdoms'.
However, this
part I can totally agree with, because I suspect I simply have trouble
seperating the basic ideas from the exact workout, and I'm unsure how much
of this overhead, bureaucracy and the creation of little kingdoms (if at
all) would be caused by the core principles of your thoughts, or by the way
they are worked out.
With a proper real life discussion (be it at Wikimania, or elsewhere) we
could go more to the bottom of it, and figure out an approach which has a
positive impact on the overhead etc (for example, by indeed reducing the
work for the bidding teams - something always stated as a goal, but so far
only the reverse has been the practice) and on the outcome (a more
effective wikimania).
However, there is one thing we could perhaps start discussing first, and
that is defining what we want to achieve exactly with Wikimania. What are
the goals? For example, if maturing the local team organization is one of
the main goals, then a different approach might be required (focused on
training rather than taking over work) than if the only goal is to have a
big wiki-meetup. If we want to have tangible outcomes, the whole structure
might have to be different than if we want to have a big networking event.
Etcetera.
Lets figure out where we want to go with Wikimania, set up this Wikimania
committee, and work from there on a more detailed structure (for example,
during a dedicated session(s) at Wikimania 2013). I'm afraid that if we
jump to what kind of teams we need etc, we're skipping some very important
steps. And taking a step back is often much harder than going a bit slower
in the beginning.
Best,
Lodewijk