On 26 August 2012 02:32, Edward Saperia
<edsaperia@gmail.com> wrote:
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 indeed; and it was posted to the worst list possible :(
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.
I've tried ot cover some of this on the CC's meeting page. I am just heading out the door so this addition might be a bit rough...
As I noted we need professionalism to cover infrastructure - the unseen things that always get complained about when they don't quite work right (although; professional approaches often fail here too - been to lots of bigwig conferences where the wifi is cruddy). More than anything these things need attention to detail (which is why hiring a media company or PCO etc. is not a good approach).
As we have a staff infrastructure in London as it is we should build upon this to meet our organisational needs, it will be cheaper.
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 tech event 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:
Grant requests should support the achievement of Wikimedia's mission and strategic priorities. We favor high impact requests over low impact requests; try to break new ground, and to increase your group's capacity for new programs and partnerships.
Holding such a conference is high impact, breaks new ground, and fosters links to local institutions and builds relationships with sponsors and partners. It's fantastic for encouraging innovation and with Jimmy on hand courting the press it should be great for increasing awareness and participation 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!
This is the one thing I've disagreed with on your approach so far. I've not really said much because you are getting up and doing something, which is more than anyone else. And not to be discouraged!
But the focus of the event should be Wikipedians. Awareness and press is nice, but we get a lot of that anyway - and we don't necessarily want it focusing on US (i.e. the volunteers) rather than the project.
(the one caveat to that is that I think we should pursue plans to hold big "come edit Wikipedia" sessions during Wikimania for newbies etc. like editathons/training on a MASSIVE scale).
The other things you mention are cool, but secondary to providing a friendly, safe, conference for Wikipedians to get together.
Tom