2017-06-22 13:57 GMT+03:00 Lodewijk <
lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>:
>
> I wonder, do we keep track of the number of visa rejections year over year, so that we know in comparison?
>
> There are of course many factors that go into venue selection - one of them is visa (another is security, political stability etc). The countries that I remember going relatively smoothly were the ones where the organizers sought a collaboration with the foreign affairs of their country, to get some help. I don't know if Wikimedia Canada was able to accomplish that. But it does mean that a general bad reputation is not necessarily a bad rejection rate for this particular conference. (if memory serves me well, WMIL did a great job in this respect in 2011, for example)
>
Heh, I'm not sure whether it was positive or negative :)
Jokes aside, this involved A LOT of work from the Haifa organizing team. Many months before the event Wikimedia Israel people (not me) contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained to them what kind of event this is, and what kind of people come to it. The Ministry contacts were friendly and cooperative and suggested a process and an invitation letter.
Then, when the actual event was coming closer (May–June or so), yours truly spent about two weeks doing nothing but sleeping, eating, and helping hundreds of people get visas. Luckily, I was employed very part-time back then and I could easily afford to volunteer for this. I mostly followed the process that the ministry suggested, but I also remember very-late-night Skype calls with participants from faraway timezones who had trouble filling forms (different forms in each consulate!) and writing special invitation letters for participants that represents highly respected international organizations. Days before the event I remember more surprising international phone calls from my country's representatives in consulates, airports, and border-crossings around the world—sometimes asking about Wikipedians I knew in person, and sometimes about people whom I had to look up in lists of participants and verify that they're legit (in case you're wondering, they all were).
As far as _I_ know, there were two rejections in 2011, but there may have been others I don't know about.
I've been telling this story every time I had a chance to talk to Wikimania organizers after 2011. Visa rejections come up every year at least since 2010, the year I started following Wikimania. The current version of the Wikimania Handbook [1] also refers to this: "Visa assistance—This is probably one of the most time-consuming and complicated thing to consider... Writing these letters is a full-time job". While writing this email I added: "... a full-time job for about two weeks or even more", and I moved the suggested time for this to April–May instead of May–June.
The Wikimania Handbook is awesome, and it's written based on real experience—future organizers should take it seriously. (I'm _not_ implying that the 2017 organizers didn't take it seriously. I acknowledge that it's complicated and that every country is different.)
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore