On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org wrote: <snip>
An agent asked me, at the Tel Aviv airport, what community or congregation I belonged to. I didn't understand at first, and my first thought was, "the free software community, I guess?" The community that congregates at Wikimania, that I'd come to Haifa to celebrate.
This is my favorite quote from this thread :) I feel similarly.
I had a conversation with a dear friend near the end of Wikimania that went something like this: - "It is terrible that preemptive travel security screening is so often demeaning and inefficient; it seems like there has to be a better way." - "And a way that doesn't perpetuate a culture of fear and racism" - "Well, if we really wanted to find a distributed global solution we could unleash 1,000 Wikimedians on the problem."
:-)
On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:05 PM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Serious suggestion for the future, amongst the many criteria we use to judge bids for Wikimania we not only need to add "Who isn't allowed to go there or wouldn't be allowed in" but also something about the attitudes of the authorities.
Wikimania is educational for many reasons -- not least it is always an education in international travel restrictions and travails. There is no question that it difficult for many people to come to the US, and those who do are often subject to some pretty serious screening -- we learned this in 2006. The other thing that we've learned in the last 8 years is that there are few to no countries that are as open as we would like to visitors from all parts of the world. Some are more open than others, but everywhere has problems. So we can make the "is the country open?" criteria that we use more fine-grained; but I think the answer is 90% of the time "it depends" and "for who?" (Look at, for instance, the hugely varied responses on this thread.) But, you are right that there is a gulf between "is it possible to enter?" and "it is possible, but you'll probably be strip-searched for three hours and have heaps of paperwork."
NB: it would be super if comments on the judging criteria could also be put on the talk page for 2013: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013/Judging_criteria this will help the future jury as they review the criteria for next time.
I think as we plan we can take what we've learned and continue to iterate best practice [visa support, etc]; in this area we should also make more of an effort to learn from other seriously international conferences. I would love to someday see our attendee list break the 100-country mark.
best, phoebe