I suggest we take this on a positive direction and ask the wider community for "virtualisation" proposals/grants immediately after Wikimania, not just to support Wikimania 2016, but all of our other events, potentially down to the level of edit-a-thons (which I have run successfully with live hangouts + IRC participation with no expenses incurred).
Some suggestions in this thread for solutions, such as amateur recording of video casts or audio recording to supplement presentations, are worth facilitating, as would using this conference as a platform to experiment and demonstrate virtual reality presence and remote participation. Even a simple rolling Wikimania google hangout for those that can't be there, to drop in and chat about events and ideas would be great. A someone who is advised to avoid long flights for medical reasons, it would be great to have the opportunity to take part beyond this email and the odd comment on the meta wiki.
Reporting the cost of all aspects of Wikimania is critical. Measuring the return on investment for producing videos is an excellent thing to do, though I would expect when this is compared to the returns and environmental impact of so many international flights, there is more that could be done at a cheaper burn rate than the estimated $1,000 / hour.
Fae