Re: [Wikimania-l] Wikimania-l Digest, Vol 77, Issue 15

Ah, the downside of doing your work open and in public is that people see a half finished doodle of a budget and get overexcited and you come back to 45 emails in your inbox... Yes, it's likely that the Wikimania 2014 London Bid Committee is going to be applying for a grant to help it put together a good bid, but we're still figuring out which roles are required and waiting for other inputs, so the numbers were really just placeholders for now. The deeper question I see here is - what sort of event does the community want Wikimania to be? It's a conference that is really beginning to come of age, and with this comes growing pains. From a 200 person glorified pubmeet it's become a five day long 1000+ person multi-track affair with all the attendant expectations on AV, travel logistics, social events, catering, multi-tiered accommodation... and unless it's not handled well, potentially a very frustrating experience for a lot of wikimedians who have invested their time and money travelling to take part. With the correct facilitating software, a lot of people have been able to collaborate together to build a killer encyclopaedia. Similarly, a well designed conference can allow for positive interactions between a very large number of people. As the size increases, the complexity increases, the risk increases, and the cost increases - but so do the possible benefits. Let us be clear: running an event this size is not cheap. A Wikimania costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, and probably significantly more in a place like London. Tickets to your average <http://www.websummit.net/get-tickets/> tech <http://www.leweb.co/register/paris> event<http://www.ted.com/pages/tedglobal>of a similar size and scope would easily cost £1000+ per delegate, and in comparison a Wikimania is basically free. This means that we need to do a lot more work fundraising, which takes a lot of time and planning, and a chief concern of potential sponsors is whether the event will be delivered to a professional standard. We are finding that a lot of the groundwork for the event has to be laid well before the bid process even starts. Not to sound patronising, but event organisation is different to wiki editing; there are deadlines which must be met, and mistakes that cannot be reverted. So let us ask ourselves, why should the community spend so much donor money on Wikimania (bids)? What is Wikimania there to achieve? WMF's policy on grants: Holding such a conference is high impact, breaks new ground, and fosters links to local institutions<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_London>… builds relationships with sponsors and partners<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_bids/London#Part…ns>. It's fantastic for encouraging innovation<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strateg… with Jimmy on hand<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014_bids/London#Supporte… the press it should be great for increasing awareness and participation<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Stra…gt;too. It seems as good a thing to invest in as any - after all, if it didn't have community support, a thousand people probably wouldn't show up to it every year! Ed On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 9:14 PM, &lt;wikimania-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;wrote;wrote: