Sorry for the slow reply, I have the biggest email backlog right now, you
could not imagine.
I was very happy that WMF took the time to actually make a feedback form
and send it to all participants. But I was a bit
wondering why it was
actually sent to participants as if it was a Wikimedia Foundation event. I
understand it is sent by the evaluation team and it might make sense to
evaluate the impact of an event largely funded/run by Wikimedia Foundation.
Still it would rather be expected from the Wikimania organizers themselves.
I thought it was a bit odd. Thoughts?
Also, I think it would have been cool if the Wikimania committee somehow
had been involved in making that questionnaire. One of
the reasons is that
each Wikimania comes with its own flavor and I think that beyond the
individual satisfaction of the attendee, we need to "measure" the impact of
the larger picture.
I had some input into the form, but you have to realise that the Wikimania
team is a) a small handful of very overstretched volunteers and b) doesn't
particularly have expertise in evaluation. Also, I won't be directing
another Wikimania next year, whereas the WMF *will* be producing another
Wikimania next year, so from an organisational learning perspective it
makes more sense for them to take the lead here.
One of the big core things pushed forward by the Wikimania 2014 team during
the bid was the fact it wanted to be an outreached
event. Did you know ? It
was a sort of a tagline.
What was called "wikifest" in the bid gave birth to the "Community
Village" (open to the public and free).
Actually, The Community Village was a continuation of an initiative created
last year for Wikimania HK.
The outreach portion was mostly around the Featured Speakers track; it
provided a set of accessible talks that I could curate, and allowed me to
use the invited speakers as a tool for marketing.
We also did a lot of media outreach and display marketing in the run up to
the event, as well as communicating the purpose of the conference by
creating themes (e.g. these pages
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Education), which helped
us to target specific communities (e.g. education community, local dev
community, other parts of the open movement, etc).
We can measure the success of this by the amount of tickets sold to people
who wouldn't self-describe as wikimedia community members.
Third thought... as a current Wikimania committee
member as well as
Wikimania jury member for 2014 bid process, I also would like to reflect on
some of the significant discrepancies I identified between the bid and the
actual event. Not in the spirit of confrontation and blind criticism, but
in the spirit of transparency, goals and "measures of success". Side
benefit: helping jury to better evaluate future bids (I remind you that the
call for volunteers is OPEN).
So bid link:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014_bids/London
The London bid was bold. Big things planned and big budget. The largest we
ever saw. Cuts had to be made to the original bid and we ended up with a
three tier system, depending on the money collected ultimately.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014_bids/
London/Logistics/Financials (see the three tier)
My understanding is that the venue ended up being way more expensive than
it was originally budgeted (I'd love figures on this) and obviously,
fundraising did not go as well as hoped. I guess we wont have details
before several months, but rough budget figures would be lovely.
The financials are entirely in the hands of the Foundation now and will be
published soon.
Some people outlined a few points as not compliant
with the bid (oyster
cards or drinks and snacks throughout the day, same-day released edited
videos of sessions, venue open 24/24) or not in line with what was
announced in Wikimania 2013 (I was not there, this is earsay) such as
closing party at the Tate. Other points worked quite well (indeed the wifi
was good ! and all rooms were video equipped). Some thoughts on this would
be welcome.
There were drinks and snacks available throughout the day, videos of the
featured speakers track were released same day and I'm waiting on a WMF
staffer to finish uploading the rest, and there was 24 hour use of the
hackathon area of the venue. I made the decision not to run the closing
party at the Tate, because of restrictions around using the Tate venue and
logistics of transport. Centralised purchase of Oyster cards wouldn't have
been cost effective.
To be fair, Wikimania London team was the first one to
be so explicit in
what could be expected, so it is easy to criticize afterwards (in
comparison, Mexico bid is much more vague so it won't be possible to list
"what should have been done". But it tickles me a bit... and in retrospect,
I think bidders should provide clear statements on what they will make
every effort to provide. Or we should provide clear statements in what is
expected no matter what.
It's unrealistic to expect a team to plan an event down to the last detail
18 months in advance. There are technical and budgetary outcomes that can't
be known without actually doing all the work of organising the conference.
There are issues of capacity - we had core team members quit early in the
process. Organising an event is not like writing a wiki page - there are
deadlines, and irreversible decisions have to be made, sometimes without
complete information. Despite all these things, the event went off with
barely a hitch, and was by far the largest and most complex Wikimania ever.
I think we should work on providing more structured
submission guidelines
for next Wikimania.
Plans inevitably change. The jury should focus on looking for a strong,
cohesive team that has the free time, experience and expertise to run a
large event, rather than examining the details of the proposed event itself.
I worked on this event full time unpaid for six months, and I've been
organising large events for over ten years. I hired some professionals to
fill key roles. If you expect inexperienced, part-time volunteers to
organise something on this scale, communication will suffer, reporting will
suffer, accessibility will suffer, money will be wasted, delegate
experience will be poor, and the team will burn out. It's not a problem you
can solve with more committees - fundamentally someone has to be there
making the right decisions quickly and doing the work.
*Edward Saperia*
Conference Director Wikimania London <http://www.wikimanialondon.org/>
email <ed(a)wikimanialondon.org> • facebook
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