On 22 April 2013 22:17, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
A small group of long-time Wikimaniacs have been working on the perrenial plan to produce a "Wikimania Committee" - a community group who would help steer Wikimania from year to year, advising each local hosting team and ensuring that the processes are open, transparent and community-led.
Some comments based on private questions that I think should be answered publicly:
[Conflicts of Interest] There would be a relatively strong Conflict of Interest policy that would mean that people running a current conference (or bidding for one) would not be able to sit on the committee, and would have to resign if they were going to start doing so.
[Timing] The July timing is if anything too slow - from my point of view, we really should be commissioning Wikimania 2015 by 1 August 2013 to give the host team two clear years to organise (so the call for bids should go out as soon as possible). However, life isn't perfect, and I doubt we'll manage to get the committee up and running (and redrafting its charter and procedures for the Board to approve) before then. We can, of course, always change things later when they're not working. :-)
I'm sure we could discuss the initial protocols in-person with high effectiveness, at a cost to the movement of US$15k or similar, but we could work from some drafts and discuss in meetings and on-wiki for 'free', and also involve the community much more rather than some ivory-tower pronouncement of what we think works.
The hope is that the committee will be in a place to start advising HK right away, though we'll see if that's achievable.
[Things the committee could do] * Provide a template for bids that focusses them onto the issues that criteria related, rather than too much opportunity for tourist-like generic information that takes a great deal of effort from the bidding team and provide less valuable information for the selection judgement. * Meet with bidding teams via video-conference rather than IRC to open things up more. (Though this makes things harder for people with non-native English skills - not the entire bidding team will necessarily be fluent.) * Run a "stakeholder" meeting for interested parties at Wikimania 2013 - https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Growth_and_Future_o... * Possibly also run focussed in-person workshops at Wikimania (or beforehand?) as well.
[Appetite to be part of a committee] Recently we have had issues providing enough volunteers for the jury process. However, just because only a few people offered to be part of a secretive and unclear process doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to open up this into the community properly, and be transparent and open as much as we can.
[Elections to the committee?] I am (extremely) strongly against making this yet another elected position - it's hugely expensive in terms of volunteer time and resources (not just those running the election, and the candidates, but also in the minds of all 200,000 people that dismiss the "you can vote!" banners), and the important thing is having expertise on the committee and being as open as possible, not electioneering.
Yours, -- James D. Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal capacity)