I think everybody on this thread agree that funding in-person conferences is a crucial way to invest in our community ;)

And I think most of us agree too that we now know the survey results were unrepresentative of the actual distribution of community opinions. I'm simply making suggestions about what we can learn from the imperfections.

Deryck
On 9 Jul, 2016 9:49 pm, "Lodewijk" <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Deryck, all,
>
> While you can agree or disagree on the usefulness of the letter, I would like to make one point about the idealab survey. One thing that is not pointed out clearly, is that there was a lot of criticism on the methodology of that particular survey, and how the conclusions were drawn. Please take a look at the talk page attached to that outcomes page that you linked, and consider that much of the criticism wasn't even responded to. I think Marc was kind but correct in his characterisation as 'clearly flawed'. There was some useful data in there, but the conclusions that were drawn, were a few bridges too far. 
>
> Another thing that was mentioned in private conversations a lot, but not in many public discussions is that Wikimania is and should be primarily an investment in our community. Our community is by far our biggest asset. Having a healthy community is essential, and it is important that different communities learn from each other, exchange ideas and methods, interact. Not just with the few neighboring languages, but also with those far away. 
>
> You can investigate if this Wikimania structure if the most effective way, but please lets not approach this from a 'cost cutting' perspective. Lets not consider Wikimania as a cost, but as an investment in something intangible, in infrastructure. The financial picture should be only a very small part of the consideration - in my humble opinion. I'm not sure who mentioned this at Wikimania (was it Dimi? Liam?) but if you compare the amount of money we spend on community building, and how much big companies spend on their staff happyness programmes, annual meetups and all - we're probably not doing too bad. I would be much happier if we looked at this from the perspective of the most effective way to have an international, constructive, interactive and exchanging community. 
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
>
> 2016-07-09 21:50 GMT+02:00 Deryck Chan <deryckchan@gmail.com>:
>>
>> I find it a bit over the top too to have such a letter, so strongly worded, and signed by so many board chairs.
>>
>> It reveals a divide between those who participated in the IdeaLab survey[1] and those who were at the Future of Wikimania session in Esino.
>>
>> It would perhaps be interesting to see if correlations can be revealed as to what demographic of Wikimedian prefer 1 year per Wikimania and what demographic prefer 2 year per Wikimania - like geographical distribution, involvement in local Wikimedia groups (staff / board / other volunteer / not a participant), and past attendance at regional Wikimedia conferences and Wikimania.
>>
>> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania/Outcomes
>>
>> Thank you. I find it confusing that the letter starts with "The chairpersons of the Wikimedia chapters state that Wikimania needs to be arranged every year," which implies that all of the chapter chairs are united in agreement, but it appears several chapters didn't sign the letter. Looking further at the content of the letter, I would have some questions about some of the statements that were made there. In the future, I would encourage chapter chairs to have discussions about matters such as this on the Affiliates mailing list so that we can have more inclusive discussions among more affiliates before sending letters like that. The Wikimania situation is already convoluted, and I believe that letters such as this should get fuller discussion among affiliates before they are sent to WMF.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Pine
>>