On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 4:35 PM, James Forrester <jdforrester(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 at 01:59 Lodewijk
<lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote:
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say,
London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a
cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget
wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs
privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised
that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the
chapters meeting...
pick of areas. For example, the additional cost to the community of hosting
Wikimania in Australia is (very roughly) US$1k extra per person from outside
Oceania compared to the base cost, and US$1k less for each person in
Oceania. At typical levels of 800 non-local self-funded attendees, of whom
we have around 10 from Oceania, and 400 local people who wouldn't otherwise
come at all, This means an additional community cost of ~US$750k (and a
bunch more for Wikimedia organisational funds, paid directly from WMF or via
the chapters) in return for the opportunity for 400 local Oceanians to
attend who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.
Off the top of my head, the numbers are roughly comparable for Latin America
(slightly less for Mexico), a bit lower for South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa,
and Eastern Europe/Russia/Central Asia, and lower still for Asia Pacific and
the Middle East and North Africa. The numbers drift from year to year a bit,
but sadly there's not much impact on the overall headline whilst the editing
community is so unequally geographically distributed.
This is why we included the call to area to get into the practice of having
annual regional or sub-regional conferences. These would let a much larger
portion of our community more easily afford to come to an in-person
community event to share their passion, talk about what we can do to improve
the projects, and learn new things. This is what the Wikimedia conferences,
be they the global Wikimania or the regional "Wikimeetings" (people should
suggest a great name!), should be about.
that is an interesting way to see it. i checked flight prices from
europe to america. in the same category around 400-600 usd are: san
francisco, new york, washington, boston, chicago, orlando, miami,
montreal, toronto, belo horizonte, brasilia, porto alegre, rio de
janairo, sao paolo, natal, recife, goiana, fortaleza, macelo, manaos,
sao luiz, vitoria, florianopolis. this would suggest that brazil is
included together with canada and united states, don't you think?
if we want to change something i'd find it appropriate to put a little
bit more thought into it. how much of the total 100 mio USD should be
spent to "let the right person meet somebody else in person" would be
the basic guiding principle. and all meetups would need to be part of
that thought. to give a couple of examples which only involve
wikimania:
option1 would be to let people apply and then choose the location
according to a calculation to minimize total cost. this of course
takes the tourist aspect out of wikimania :) you could go the FIFA way
and let the orgainzing city pay wikimania.
option2 would be to increase the fun and tourist factor. then you have
to go to every country once, so the next wikimania in the united
states would be in the year 2170. so a person can have a lifetime
achievement list "go to wikimania once".
option3 would be to classify participants. who are the persons we want
to meet. persons fully in their professional life, who sell every hour
to somebody, where time counts, who cannot afford to travel a little
bit further to sleep cheaper. or persons who do not care so much about
time, who travel further to sleep cheapter, who maybe have time to
contribute to wikipedia. you then would look out for cheap medium
attracting cities.
option4 is be to see it as marketing event for wikipedia contribution.
one could only meet in countries where there are not so many
wikimedians to allow a lot of persons with little idea about how
wikipedia works to participate, and see. cities like accra, lagos,
johannesburg, dehli, shanghai, etc.
option5 is to see it as source of income. then you could organize the
event in easy to reach locations, and set a high price tag to attend.
option6 is to scrap the current format, as travelling 2000km to listen
to a presentation is a last century concept. presentations would be
encouraged to be done at home and shared via youtube/commons or
whatever is technologically good. presentations are voted on, and
wikimania might get a workshop format to discuss the presentations.
james, does it make sense to consider some of these options? i know
this is nothing for next years wikimania, but for 2017.
best,
rupert