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(a)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.
1.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids/Haifa/Q%26A#Participants
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