I think I just put some helpful comment (which i think) to the future
And for the Hong Kong planning I think the strategy is pretty settled Only things I need to think about Is the reaction to sudden changes to situations Which I don't think I can actually think about it, as I don't know what to expect as no one can lol
Sent from my iPhone
On 5 May, 2013, at 17:32, Manuel Schneider manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch wrote:
Am 05.05.2013 11:17, schrieb Jeromy Chan:
I do have some conversation on this With Ellie Young, the conference coordinator in WMF
Especially some repetitive labour on sponsor every year And sort of pool of general sponsor and brand of Wikimania stuff
I had a long discussion with Ellie on Saturday. I think she will be a great help and value for further Wikimania organisation.
The organisation though should be as much as possible done by volunteers, with staff *support*. This is what Wikimania is and how our movement works. That's why I ended up with so many teams / committees, because we need to split up the work in different expertise groups.
I suggested that sponsoring should be locally with WMF staff support (so no committee) before I had the discussion with her but she basically confirmed me in the idea: The staff has the best abilities to maintain connections to the high-profile global sponsors. I can't imagine a committe of volunteers doing that.
Actually I am not sure if everybody happy with these ideas, however if
we need to continue without too much worries and repetitive labour
I think you are touching a general problem here which I also mentioned in our discussion: The support should be in a "non-intrusive" way (I hope I picked the right wording here), the local team should feel supported, reliefed, helped, not dominated or patronized. This is the major risk I see with the new setup and I want to avoid that
- been there, done that.
I have worked on many projects and event teams, with volunteers, staff and without, with support from big Wikimedia entities and without and I know how things can turn out sometimes.
I don't expect everyone to love my ideas. They are a first draft fromthe back of my head. They should be discussed, adjusted or maybe completely thrown out and replaced by something better.
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. That done we could start cleanly into the next Wikimania bidding (or whatever decided then) process, making it aso clear for the next teams what they can expect, what we will expect and how the processes will be going.
For Wikimania Hong Kong it will be an exceptional sitation because you are way into planning and you are getting additional support. You shouldn't be influenced by this whole planning for new concepts at all. You are definitely invited to participate in the discussions and be involved in the new processes, though.
/Manuel
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