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