my two cents (please, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, or if I'm repeating things that were said elsewhere or already addressed): 

First, I don't think that an event every four years will have the mobilizing and motivating role that an annual one does. Four years is longer than a typical tenure of an editor (more or less, I'm just recollecting). I understand that Christophe is referring to a 4-year event  rhetorically, but just saying.

I see tremendous value in a global Wikimania every year.

In the same time, I've seen the following problems over the years, not directly linked to the financial cost (which in the face of our relative financial stability can be justified by the benefits, depending on how we define them):

- huge WMF staff involvement (most Wikimanias run smoothly also thanks to countless hours put in by the staff),

- huge volunteer local organizers involvement (in fact, my observation is that many chapters organizing WIkimanias suffer from a motivation crisis afterward). 

Surely, we can have different surveys and other questionnaires. I doubt if they will show anything else than that Wikimania is an incredibly valuable event that comes at huge financial and human cost, though. 

While we can get the money (at least for now), the human involvement cost is something I would not dare to dismiss just by emphasizing the benefits of Wikimania for the movement. 

I'd be probably more interested in thinking out loud about how we can change the format so that we reduce the human and money costs while keeping the benefits. My understanding is that the proposal to have a global WIkimania every two years and local events in between is actually one attempt to address that. There can be others (and some have been discussed in this thread, we also have some sensible benchmarks from other organizations).

My concern is that we may end up with losing a lot of Wikimania benefits, while not necessarily decreasing human or financial costs, but this is something that we definitely need to discuss and consider carefully. 

Instead of discussing whether we should have a Wikimania every year or not, perhaps we should try to list and discuss the reasons why it is such a big strain? If it is clear  that we can't afford it every year (because of the human cost, probably more importantly than the finances), the decision to break with the annual format will be a natural consequence of such an analysis. 

It could be useful to first have a really sensible and systematic list of alternative paths.

best,

Dariusz Jemielniak ("pundit", a current Trustee).

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 7:37 AM, Christophe Henner <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

One goal :) you always side effects.

If the goal is to be a community event why don't we don't we do a huge event every 4 years where we fly in every single editors? Instead of doing 4 Wikimanias.

That is why setting expections and goal is key, so then we can make decisions.

We're talking about financial ressources what about the time spent by volunteers?

My point being, Wikimania is a great event and has costs and setting expectations will allow us to make better decisions. Perhaps, as Andrew says, will end up saying we should spend twice what we're spending because it is key or perhaps half of what we're spending.

​

Is it a community event?

Is it a knowledge sharing event?
Is it an outreaching event?

Is it a way to reward people?

​The answer to these four are yes

• ​Yes its a community event, one that brings people together and empowers them
• Yes it where we share  the lessons of our successes and failures​
  
  
• Yes reaches out to local region, especially GLAM for them to see what can be achieved, it also attracts a media profile and put the ED, Borad and others within reach of potential sponsors
• Yes the scholarship process has an element of reward for participation in that it requires people to be sufficiently active to be considered

​

 

​

On 10 July 2016 at 14:05, Christophe Henner <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hey,

So, as with everything, Wikimania is going through a process where we (as à group) will define if it pushes our mission forward or not.

First, WMF staff working so we can have the discussion with all the cards in our hands. Which is not the case now.

Second, what is Wikimania purposes? Right now I fear there is none clearly define.

Is it a community event?
Is it a knowledge sharing event?
Is it an outreaching event?
Is it a way to reward people?
...

One has to be define, a main one.

Then we will be able to talk about how it happens.

I have opinions but I rather keep them to myself until I have everything in hand. But I love Wikimania, and I want to know if it's the best format, and if it's not to fix it :)

Le 10 juil. 2016 4:37 AM, "Gnangarra" <gnangarra@gmail.com> a écrit :

Agree with the comments thats hard to measure the value of a Wikimania, and what an attendee will do with the experience. so here is my experience

My first Wikimania was 2012 in Washington DC, I was a little introspective and embroiled in an ARBCOM case I shared a room with Richard Farmbrough with whom I had a deep discussion about the case he gave me some amazing advice about that process it literally reenergises my efforts...  While doing so he recommended a session about QRpedia, a really interesting project.  Two months later I'm back home and still editing when an opportunity presents itself to propose a QRpedia project in Fremantle, that produced the first Wikitown in Australia.  The Freopedia project as it became known opened the door to another WikiTown project in Toodyay called Toodyaypedia,  Next minute I'm nominated for a State Heritage award for the work I've been doing through Wikipedia and the out reach projects that have improved coverage of Western Australian History more doors start to open.  I'm on a roll really energised and its rubbing off on the local community they willingly helping with every silly idea I try, so much so that I get nominated to be a committee member(Vice President no less) of the local chapter. London 2014 Wikimedia Australia pays for me to attend London where I give back to the community my experiences and share my experiences about WikiTowns/QRpedia(along with a few Tim Tams and Caramellow Koalas) in the community village. Also while in London I got to attended a pre-wikimania training session by WMUK that they offer to people doing outreach that was a wonderful experience and helped me improve the way I do outreach here,[side thought:that should be taken on the road to every chapter who does or wants to do outreach].   

I return even more enrgise and what to bring the Wikimania experience here where more even more people can benefit directly rather than just through my efforts. 2015 I'm presented with another opportunity to expand the projects happening here this time writing in an Indigenous Australian language and improving content about a subject area thats has been inadeqautely covered for the first 10years of wikipedia.  Along come an offer from WMF to attend Mexico I'm torn between my commitment to the Noongar Language work which included a workshop that coincided with Wikimania and the opportunity to attend my 3rd event, of course my commitment to the local project took precidence. The cost of that was not finding out about the changes to the Wikimania processes and spending a lot of time putting together a bid for Wikimania in Perth.  The benefit of the Noongarpedia project is that we now have the first Indigenous Australian language in the incubator, with a number of other communities watching and learning from our experiences, I just spent a week in Darwin which included talking with people there and walking them through that project. Somewhere in all of this I also became President of WMAu  and with it WMAu has had its most successful period, I like to think some that is because of the energy I have brought to the table from my experience at Wikimania.

One Australian once theorised about how WMF measures success and highlighted that the value is not in the physical numbers but in the intangible connections that are made, he even put forward a PEG proposal to demostrate that its the personal relationships that matter and how you build them that have the true impact.  Being isolated in Western Australia made for the perfect ground to develop such a project ironically it was declined because of the fact that the project lacked the generation of numbers which would make success measurable. 

We place too much emphasis on physical numbers to measure out comes yet we all know that education is more than just numbers and community development is about connections, energy and empowering others Wikimania does, that we just need to find the right boxes to tick.

[conflict with Riskers response, apologies if I over lap]

On 10 July 2016 at 09:50, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Andrew and Leila,

There are quite a few ways of looking at the numbers (which is one reason that I'm hoping for a thorough analysis.) Please note that I think that conferences should happen; I am asking if this is the status quo is the optimal way of spending these funds. There are other ways of using funds for conferences that could be explored.

For example, if a Wikimania costs $600,000 and there are 1,000 attendees, that works out to a cost of $600 per attendee for 1000 people. Is that a wiser investment than spreading out the same funds among (hypothetically) 3,000 attendees at multiple national/regional conferences for an average expense of $200 per attendee? At this point I don't think any of us can answer that question.

The Wikimania-going population, especially the people who go to many WIkimanias, are a vanishingly small percentage of the overall WIkimedia population. They tend to be active, but there are plenty of active Wikimedians such as myself who have never been to Wikimania, although I'd like to go next year. Does it make sense to spend so much money on such a small percentage of our community? There are reasons to think that the answer could be yes; for example, if Wikimania motivates highly active contributors and leaders to keep up the good work. However, it's not clear that similarly good effects couldn't be achieved on a broader scale by spreading the funds among more numerous smaller conferences.

There is a good argument to be made that having lots of highly active contributors and project leaders from all over the world in the same place, and having WMF staff mix with them, is a good idea for purposes of improving communications and relationships. Generation of good PR press, and cross-pollination of ideas, are also important and I think that we should support those. However, similarly good outcomes might be achieved through multiple smaller conferences.

I'm in favor of continuing to spend funds on conferences; what I think that none of us know is whether our current model of a single large conference is "better" than multiple national/regional conferences.

Along the lines of Leila's suggestion, the idea of temporarily scaling up WMF's support for national/regional (or thematic) conferences while keeping Wikimania in place makes sense to me. That requires some willingness to spend the funds for both types of events for a few years. It's a bit of an expensive proposition though, and I'm wary of asking the WMF staff to spend more time traveling to more conferences. I guess I'm cautiously in favor of looking at this option if it's financially practical to scale up the support for focused conferences while maintaining support for Wikimania. Keep in mind that WMF Fundraising is worried about plateauing revenues, so we're working in a world of resource constraints and trying to do the best we can with what we've got.

I'm looking forward to hearing what Katherine and Christophe think. And with that, I'm afraid that I must depart this thread to attend to other matters. (: Thanks for the good conversation, everyone.

Pine

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Leila Zia <leila@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi Pine,

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

 

I'd also be interested in projections of total attendance and costs (including travel costs and staff time) for Wikimania vs. having more or expanded national and regional conferences.

But then there is the benefit (which is not fully captured by attendance that) we need to take into account, too, and that's where the main problem starts. It's relatively easy to measure the costs of conferences, it's very hard to measure their benefit for a variety of reasons, one of which, in our context, is that it's hard to assign price-tag to many of the projects the community and beyond drive, even if you can clearly link them to Wikimania (which is a problem on its own). And that's already the easier part of the benefit analysis. It can get way more complicated if we want to assign a price-tag to how much it's worth for each of us to learn more about others.

And now add to all the above, that you are suggesting that we do cost-benefit analysis for multiple conference models and compare them. Think about designing control experiments, considering the interactions between conferences (people who attend both vs. those who attend only one kind), etc.

I would not go down the path of cost-benefit analysis for a conference such as Wikimania. We will loose too much time and money and still the analysis will have so many questionable components.

​What industry and academic conferences usually do when they're in doubt is that they become bold and start a new conference but keep the original one in place. If the new conference attracts more audience, to the extent that at some point organizing the original conference doesn't make sense (too few attendees, lower quality abstract submissions, major people in the field moving to the new conference), then they gradually stop the original conference. It seems that following that approach would be more beneficial than questioning the usefulness of Wikimania without more extensively trying the other conference/meet-up types first and in parallel to Wikimania.
​

If WMF and the community are going to spend that much money every year on an annual conference, with the majority of that money coming from donors who give small-dollar amounts, I think that we need to think carefully and thoroughly about how we plan the conference (or conferences) to align with the goals of our donors and what we tell our donors.

​Two points to take into account here:

* Wikimania is a major and mature conference and it's fair to compare it to major academic conferences that I'm more familiar with. The cost of such conferences is usually quite higher than Wikimania, if you consider roughly the same attendance numbers. I would start worrying about the cost of Wikimania only if the cost goes much higher than the industry standard.

* I wouldn't recommend reconsidering how we plan for our major conferences based on what we tell our donors. We should define our needs and find a way to fund them.
 

Leila
​
--
Leila Zia
Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation

Pine

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 12:50 PM, Deryck Chan <deryckchan@gmail.com> wrote:

I find it a bit over the top too to have such a letter, so strongly worded, and signed by so many board chairs.

It reveals a divide between those who participated in the IdeaLab survey[1] and those who were at the Future of Wikimania session in Esino.

It would perhaps be interesting to see if correlations can be revealed as to what demographic of Wikimedian prefer 1 year per Wikimania and what demographic prefer 2 year per Wikimania - like geographical distribution, involvement in local Wikimedia groups (staff / board / other volunteer / not a participant), and past attendance at regional Wikimedia conferences and Wikimania.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania/Outcomes

Thank you. I find it confusing that the letter starts with "The chairpersons of the Wikimedia chapters state that Wikimania needs to be arranged every year," which implies that all of the chapter chairs are united in agreement, but it appears several chapters didn't sign the letter. Looking further at the content of the letter, I would have some questions about some of the statements that were made there. In the future, I would encourage chapter chairs to have discussions about matters such as this on the Affiliates mailing list so that we can have more inclusive discussions among more affiliates before sending letters like that. The Wikimania situation is already convoluted, and I believe that letters such as this should get fuller discussion among affiliates before they are sent to WMF.

Thanks,

Pine

On Jul 8, 2016 20:04, "Christophe Henner" <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

My bad I forgot it already is on meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Statements/Chapter_chairs_statement:_Wikimania_needs_to_be_arranged_every_year

Le 9 juil. 2016 4:50 AM, "Pine W" <wiki.pine@gmail.com> a écrit :

Thanks Christophe. I, for one, have had difficulty figuring out what is going on with Wikimania in regards to varying decisions in different parts of WMF and the community, so I look forward to the clarifications.

Personally I am currently neutral on the decision of whether to have annual Wikimanias, or alternate Wikimanias with years in which there is emphasis on national or regional conferences. My hunch is that some research about costs and benefits is needed so that we have reliable data about a variety of scenarios before making a decision.

Thanks again for working on this.

To the board chairs: I would be interested in seeing that letter. In the spirit of transparency, would you please publish it on Meta? As you know I am an advocate for much more transparency from WMF, and I would like for the affiliates to also to be transparent about governance matters such as this one.

Thanks,

Pine

On Jul 8, 2016 19:18, "Christophe Henner" <chenner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hi everyone,

The same question was raised to the board a few days ago by chairs of Wikimedia organizations asking Foundation's board to make sure there's a comprehensive decision on this very topic. 

The chairs letter wasn't public, I let them share it on meta or here if they want to :)

First step, in my opinion, is to set expectations and define the scope (in the role of the event but also in the ressources (both human and financial) we commit to the event. 

Katherine is working with the staff to provide groundings.

Here is the answer I provided them with. 

----

Hi chairs!

First of all, thank you with the email, the feedback is clearly useful and raises interesting point. 

Now, the Wikimania discussion definitly is on the table. Living by what we said during Wikimania, we, as WMF, will make sure we end up with a clear answer to your questions but also to the different points you raise. 

Wikimania is an important time in our movement, but as you said it also comes with costs and challenges that we have to adress. Katherine is going to meet in the coming days with the staff in charge of that topic to start that discussion within WMF and provide groundings for a comprehensive decision. 

We will try to be as diligent as possible on that topic, but I would ask you to keep in mind that as we're in a transition phase and that might take a little more time than you could expect. 

Again thank you for your email, I love the fact that he raises issues but also includes the challenges we have to take care of :)

We'll get back to you as soon as possible to continue that discussion.

Have all a really great day / night :)

Christophe

While I concur with Coren’s conclusion, I’ll try to neutrally report on the events at Wikimania which led to this result. :)

Full disclosure: I’m a fan of Wikimania being yearly, and was asked to serve on the Wikimania Committee after Esino Lario. I was also the main moderator of the Wikimania 2016 session on the “Future of Wikimania.” These views are my own, and not anything official from the committee.

Background: Many folks (I’d say a majority) who I talked to in Esino Lario early in the conference thought that the decision to do Wikimania every other year was a done deal, as a result of the IdeaLab consultation. I told them that might not necessarily be so. The vote was close, not particularly widely known, and we could still be heard. Chris Schilling from the WMF, who oversaw the Idealab consultation, sought me out specifically at the start of the conference and to my delight, said that the consultation was “just another data point,” and that it was by no means the final word on things. Obviously, this was good news to people who were interested in keeping a yearly Wikimania.

I was scheduled to moderate the “Future of Wikimania” discussion session [1] at the very end of the conference, and encouraged people to let their views be heard. It was under these conditions that we entered into the final discussion room and I asked Chris Schilling to give an opening statement to the room. Most people were happy to hear him say that it was “just another data point.” During the discussion, there was overwhelming support to keep Wikimania going every year, which is not a surprise considering this was *at* Wikimania. I encourage folks to peruse the Etherpad notes, which are quite extensive and expertly done by several folks there.

Some views I’d highlight:

- Having yearly Wikimania is important to keep the momentum of the movement going, according to many

- A case for cancelling yearly Wikimania was to encourage/fund regional meetups. However, there is no guarantee that those regional meetups would actually take place, or that WMF would necessarily take the money saved from Wikimania to fund them. Some folks from Asia specifically said that there is weaker linguistic, cultural and geographic synergy for an “Asian” conference like there is in Europe and Africa, which is why it has been hard to do one.

- One person noted that one trip to Wikimania served the same role as several international trips to get the same benefit from meeting other Wikimedians/developers, so there are indeed cost efficiencies in having a central conference.

Thanks.

[1] https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discussions/The_future_of_Wikimania

[2] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Wikimania2016-discussion7b

-Andrew Lih
Associate professor of journalism, American University
Email: andrew@andrewlih.com
WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com
BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com
PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Marc-Andre <marc@uberbox.org> wrote:

On 2016-07-08 10:01 AM, Chris Keating wrote:

Interestingly, I couldn't see any sign of the Committee's decision being informed by the WMF's consultation on the future of Wikimania, or anyone from the WMF's community engagement department being present.

Wikimania is, and always was, a community led and organized event. The WMF, as its traditional biggest sponsor[1], has a great deal of influence in the matter - but ultimately no decision power beyond "fund and resource or not".

The committee's decision has indeed taken into account the consultation you refer to - as well as the roundtable discussion on the "Future of Wikimania" that took place earlier[2].  Our evaluation, which is reflected in that resolution, is that the consultation was clearly flawed and that its conclusion does not reflect consensus - neither of the community members who organize nor of those who attend Wikimania.

-- Coren / Marc

[1] Although "underwrite" might be a better term - the WMF has pretty much shouldered the vast majority of the costs and given the most logistical support year in and year out.

[2] Where the consensus was to overwhelmingly reject that consultation's conclusion in favor or continuing with Wikimania as a yearly even given its irreplaceable role in our movement.

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GN.
President Wikimedia Australia
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

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Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

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__________________________
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i grupy badawczej NeRDS
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://nwrds.kozminski.edu.pl 

członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010

Recenzje

Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/

Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia

The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge

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