Wikimedia Canada was not the requester behind having Wikimania in Montreal,
so it cannot be blamed for that. A "Wikimania Montreal Committee", now
defunct, was behind the request to WMF to have Wikimania in Montreal and
they did not coordinate with the chapter in doing this. As a chapter, we
are picking up some of the slack right now to ensure a smooth conference,
but I don't think it is fair to blame the chapter for not doing this.
Jean-Philippe Béland
Vice President, Wikimedia Canada
User:Amqui
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 6:57 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
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)
Lodewijk
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Felix Nartey <flixtey(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This is a big issue and I think should be looked
into more seriously.
Similar challenges were faced by participants from the Global South
selected to attend the CC Summit in Toronto early this year.
This should inform future selection for all conference venues as it
allows for poor representation of the Global South at international
conferences.
Cheers,
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
These issues are a symptom of the closed
processes that have occurred
firstly with Montreal and next year with middle eastern attendees to Cape
Town . Acknowledging that the change was because of the amount effort put
in by unsuccessful bidders was said to be wasted its showing that some
things need to be opened for community discussion before decisions are
made.
That it may be better for the WMF to require applicants to first obtain
a visa before being confirmed for the scholarships in the future.
Perth/Australia is another place that visas for attendees wouldnt have been
a big issue.
On 22 June 2017 at 17:43, cs <cs(a)edubkk.org> wrote:
That’s one of the reasons why I proposed
Bangkok, Thailand, for 2019
- apart from its extremely tolerant social cultures and very low cost,
while being a very modern hi-tech city easily accessible by direct
flights from most parts of the world. Almost everyone can enter the
country for at least 15 days without even a visa. Thailand only makes
it difficult for people wanting to stay longer (years) in the country on
the pretext of being tourists.
It’s a shame for the visa refusals, but perhaps this will open up the
possibility to some refused scholarship applications.
Kudpung.
On 22Jun, 2017, at 16:23, Bodhisattwa Mandal <
bodhisattwa.rgkmc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
The main topic of discussion among the scholarship recipients from
global south this month is the high visa rejection rate by Canadian
embassies from these countries.
This year, we had 7 scholarship recipients from Bengali community, 4
from India and 3 from Bangladesh. Already 3 out of 4 scholarship recipients
from Indian part of the communities got their visa rejected, others are
waiting. Although I am hoping for the best for all the scholarship
recipients, but may be news of more rejections are coming soon.
Wikimania should be organised in a visa friendly country, and not in
those countries where global south citizens are not allowed to enter even
for a 6-days conference. Otherwise, a global community is not truly
presented.
Best wishes,
Bodhisattwa
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[image: Wikimedia Canada] Vice-président — Wikimédia Canada
<https://ca.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?uselang=fr>, chapitre national
soutenant Wikipédia
Vice president — Wikimedia Canada
<https://ca.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?uselang=en>, national chapter
supporting Wikipedia
535 avenue Viger Est, Montréal (Québec) H2L 2P3,jpbeland(a)wikimedia.ca