Hi Ivo et. al.,
Am 13.08.2014 22:28, schrieb Ivo Kruusamägi:
Even thou the movement grows and gets older, it also needs to renew. It has to attract new users to continue growing as rapidly it has in the past and it has to set up new ideas on how it can be pushed forward for the new ones to even have something to work on. As such, more emphasis for new users might be a good idea.
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We have the technology to make Wikimania even bigger and to bring it closer to people. Why not to use it? Maybe we could test it out in 2016?
I agree with your ideas but have a different perspective:
1) to bring in new community members etc. we need a more sustainable approach. A Wikimania can only have a local influence on this, not a global. Newbies need a local community, a group where they can become a team member of, which carry them through their hurdles.
Therefore I am confident that a local WikiCon is the right and better place for this. It is smaller, more familiar, the newbies will find people from their area which will be around later.
2) I think that making Wikimania bigger and bigger is not the right approach. Concentrate on a few things and do them right. Like local conferences can focus on their community and their work inside the projects, Wikimania should focus on strategy and bringing the international community together. Since several years attending Wikimania is a very exhaustive endeavor.
I would never recommend a newbie to attend Wikimania in order to become part of the movement. It is a good way for newbies who have already started working on our projects (and thus have their local friends inside the movements) to learn more and look beyond the places they currently work, though.
So, conclusion is that we shouldn't overload Wikimania and rather have more local conferences which have different measures of success - bringing new people into the project and help existing community to do actual content work. (been there, done that already)
/Manuel