Just a point of information, re: "However, out of 18 Wikimanias so far, most of them have been in Europe..."

Wikimania has been in Europe five times in its history and has been held outside of Europe ten times. This means only 1/3 of all Wikimanias have been in Europe.

With no disrespect to anyone on the list, I feel this illustrates how Wikimania's perception differs each year to a different set of attendees as it moves around the globe to expand our engagement. Wikimania has changed as the movement has changed in the last 18 years. This includes fostering deeper collaboration, engaging new communities, the rise of GLAM wiki and cultural partnerships, or simply connecting on a human level face-to-face, which we cannot do over Zoom.

I'd encourage folks to attend the office hours for Wikimania to learn more about how this year's Wikimania is a very different concept than in the past – it is a regional collaboration of ESEAP, and next year's is a regional collaboration with CEE. In this sense, the conference has already adapted to the ideas that JB and others have alluded to – a super-regional conference that aims to keep the hybrid elements we've used during the pandemic while encouraging regional collaborations. Stay tuned for more details as this year's Wikimania organizers announce even more plans for the hybrid conference.

-Andrew

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 6:44 PM Evelin Heidel <scannopolis@gmail.com> wrote:

El lun, 20 mar 2023 a las 17:54, phoebe ayers (<phoebe.wiki@gmail.com>) escribió:

For folks who are newer to Wikimania, one core principle we do have is to make sure the conference goes to different parts of the world, precisely because we have community members everywhere and we don't want it to always be an extra-long journey for the same people. Of course rotation by itself isn't enough: we also need a group or collaboration that is excited to host the conference, as well as a location that will work well for a global conference. But these factors together hopefully result in a Wikimania that moves around. We got some great expressions of interest for Wikimania, and I find it exciting that after the lull of the pandemic there is lots of interest in hosting Wikimania going forward from so many groups.

I'd argue that based on that criteria ("a location that will work well for a global conference") unfortunately the only good place to ever do it is Europe (both for convenience of travel & because it's an international flying hub), and we'd probably all agree that's a very bad idea. However, out of 18 Wikimanias so far, most of them have been in Europe nevertheless.

This is not a critique to Wikimedia Polska -- I'm very happy for them and I have no doubt they deserve this, but there's a need to review the whole model with some type of community discussion that goes well beyond a session on Wikimania about the "Future of Wikimania", some discussions on a mailing list, and the steering committee. Maybe it's time to do a committee that focuses specifically on "re-imagining the future of Wikimania" that can focus on doing several needed things -- like analyzing all the reports, learnings & surveys from previous years, running a community survey, and actually advocating more time to run a community conversation on what things are important; including how the WMF can (or cannot) support this event.

I'm saying this too because one can personally find some arguments compelling (i.e. sustainability) but then others in the movement might find other arguments more important, and it's always good to know that.

cheers,
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