Dear Thomas,
I think everyone is disappointed about a lower than hoped for attendance from people with these cultural backgrounds but the tone in your email is uncalled for. I am not sure what you hope to achieve by this tone or the implication.
I have had the good fortune to be able to attend all the wikimania's held. Every single one of them featured a team of volunteers trying to balance all kinds of different interests and activities to make it the greatest conference ever. Every wikimania has had positive surprises and every wikimania has had aspects which did not work as well out as planned. I am sure that the Israeli team is trying as hard as possible to make this Wikimania a success.
A little "assume good faith" would be in place here.
Jan-Bart
PS: just to make sure: I am not speaking as a board member in this case!
On Jul 5, 2011, at 7:25 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 5 July 2011 16:35, Harel Cain harel.cain@gmail.com wrote:
It has to be said that If Palestinians don't want to attend (it doesn't have necessarily to be for political reasons, it can be for a multitude of other cultural, economic and sociological reasons), nobody can force them to do so.
While that is certainly true, it is very disappointing. A lot of people raised concerns about Palestinian attendance when you first started bidding. The Q&A page for your bid says "Wikimania in Haifa should be appealing to Palestinian and Jordanian participants[...]"[1]. It seems that has proven incorrect.
In hindsight, some work should probably have been done during the bidding stage to gauge interest from Palestinians. I wonder if the jury would have looked so favourably upon your bid had it been known then that Arab attendance would be so low.
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