Cary Bass wrote:
I believe that bringing up the dates for Wikimania 2009 was advantageous for several reasons; the first being that it allows a specific 2009 team to learn from the 2008 conference.
Absolutely. This was the subject of an informal post-mortem after Wikimania Boston, and I'm happy to see that we have gone this way.
The question now is whether bidding for 2010 should take place in the fall, shortly after Wikimania 2008, to take advantage of the momentum generated by the current conference, while the event is still fresh in people's heads; or should we wait until the beginning of 2009, like we did this year with Wikimania 2009.
Doing this in the fall should be just fine. Remember that in the past year both 2008 and 2009 had to be allocated on a catch-up basis. Now we go back to one decision per year. There is an advantage to an early start in that it allows the new city to put together and fund the team members who will be at the preceding Wikimania.
No matter when the decision is made, there will always be procrastinators who wait for the last minute to make their submissions anyway.
I'm sure this will be somewhat of a discussion during this year's event. ~ I'd also like to involve as wide a representation of the community at large in the process; this is why I'm sending this email out now, while Wikimania is on people's minds.
Ec.
PS: re Buenos Aires: The site still shows a "proposed" date of August 28-30. Has this been firmed up? My reason for asking is that my wife has agreed to come with me to Buenos Aires, and she wants to slot in her vacation time at work before someone else claims that spot.
Ray