A Wikimania committee would be good, but even better would be some
continuing organiser resource. There are lots of really suitable potential
venues out there if we could only reduce the minimal role of the local
organisation.
The ideal Wikimania venue is in a country a medium or longhaul flight from
the last two years venues, where there are few or no visa barriers to
entry, tolerance of the various diverse sorts of people who attend
Wikimania and which is relatively cheap when you aggregate the costs of
transport, venue and simply being there. If you add sufficient local
Wikimedians to put a viable bid together then you have to make compromises.
In the 80s I used to go to an annual conference that wandered round the UK,
most of the organisation of which was done by the same people regardless of
where the event was held. I think that would be a good model for Wikimania.
Yes of course it would be nice to have a local team, to have one thread of
discussions in the local language, to have local volunteers check out some
of the venues and arrange some local speakers. But people who edit an
encyclopaedia are not necessarily people who want to print visitor badges
and bargain with hotel chains and airlines. I suspect that if the WMF
employed a conference organiser to organise Wikimania it would be an
investment that paid for itself in opening up cheaper venues and reducing
community burnout.
WSC
On 23 April 2013 06:17, James Forrester <jdforrester(a)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.
Here are our drafts of what we think we'd want the committee to be
like, a charter, and the resolution which we're submitting to the WMF
Board:
*
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee
*
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee/Charter
*
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_resolutions/Wikimania_Committee
Comments are very welcome; we're trying to get this done fairly
quickly, and of course we will iterate these plans as we get feedback
and hopefully more forward on the oft-stalled next steps.
J.
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal
capacity)
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