Hi Gnangarra,
On 28.06.2016 13:16, Gnangarra wrote:
Thanks for the information Manuel, but where was this session
who is working on identifying a host, where is this process taking place.
the session was this one:
https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discussions/The_future_of_Wikimania
Afterwards the Wikimania Committee had a meeting, minutes will be posted soon as soon as they are ready and approved.
The Wikimania Committee is looking for hosts right now according to the process decided and published last year, everything (incl. the above mentioned minutes) can be found on this page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee
According to the selection process Asia, or as a fallback Sub-Saharan Africa are the areas we are looking at. Ellie Young has already been in touch with candidates in Asia and has reported briefly to the Wikimania Committee. In the meeting we just had we clarified that the rotation principle, as laid out in the Selection Process posted on Meta, is a guideline. If there are no candidates we will look for a different region, just as we defined Sub-Saharan Africa as the backup for 2018. Please keep in mind that the due diligence on the candidate teams and venues is done by the Wikimedia Foundation, as they are actually paying for Wikimania. The Committee advices and tries to identify candidates according to the Selection Process which the WMF then assesses. We will provide recommendations but we cannot make the final decision.
Maybe an additional word on the Selection Process. We saw issues with the bidding process. A lot of volunteer time is wasted on bids that will never make it, mainly due to the rotation principle that was not documented by intented by many juries. In order to streamline this and make the rotation principle an actual part of the process, we created the Selection Process. It does incorporate he fact that 80% of our current community is in the Americas and Europe, that flying between developing countries is much more expensive then to major hubs etc. The Selection Process still includes developing countries and all major continents but on a basis of "every other year", to balance the different criteria and the intention for cheap and efficient on the one hand and a global conference with outreach in areas we've never been to on the other.
/Manuel