Yes, London was big, and the two Wikimaniae since have been on a smaller
scale, but I'm not sure a ~1,000-person conference is significantly less of
a headache than a ~2,000-person conference, and actually I'd wager that
Esino was more logistically complicated due to the location - for example
having to arrange buses to Varenna and the airports (which were around 50
miles away). Not that that should be taken as a criticism of the Esino team
- they did a fantastic job in a beautiful location and I'd love to have
another 'scenic Wikimania'.
I'll let Ed tell you about what he did. I know I saw him spend a lot of
time dealing with the venue and the programme and discussing finance and
logistics, but I'm sure there are lots of other things. Speaking for
myself: those volunteers in red shirts? That was my contribution. The
volunteers on the helpdesks, running sessions, meeting and greeting,
tweeting, photographing, doing odd jobs and generally making things run
smoothly ... I recruited most of them*, got to know them, trained them,
split them into teams, did a lot of the scheduling (easier said than done -
lots of moving parts!). During the conference, they looked after the
attendees, and I looked after them. And I've never worked with such an
amazing group of people. It was a truly humbling experience, but it was a
lot of work. At one point I was receiving something like 200 emails a day
just relating to Wikimania and was having to set aside time at the start
and end of the day to answer the ones that didn't require an immediate
response. I also devised the scheme of reporting and emergency/contingency
planning for volunteers (thankfully this wasn't necessary, but the death of
a Wikimedian at that year's Wikimedia Conference was painfully fresh in our
memories), and spent a lot of time trying to drum up and channel interest
within the UK Wikimedian community. I'm sure there were other things, but
those roles alone took up a significant amount of time - certainly in
excess of 40 hours a week in the final few weeks before the conference.
*(Not wishing to take credit from anyone else; I worked closely with lots
of other people on all these things, particularly Hera Hussain, and Fabian
Tompsett and Chris McKenna who were at the time employed by Wikimedia UK.)
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
+44 (0) 7507 536 971
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 7:40 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
Thanks Harry, Ed,
Of course London was a bit of an exceptionally big Wikimania - but did you
evaluate your effort somewhere, and note what you spent your time on
somewhere? Just to get an impression which components take most effort (as
Dariusz suggested)?
Best,
Lodewijk
2016-07-10 20:25 GMT+02:00 Harry Mitchell <hjmwiki(a)gmail.com>om>:
I agree with Ed here. Organising a conference of
this size is a huge
undertaking to ask of volunteers. I wouldn't want to see Wikimania go down
the road of being organised by a team of professional conference organisers
because then it would lose the organic community feel that makes it so
special, but we shouldn't rule out stipends for the local team. Otherwise
we end up with the slightly odd situation of the WMF or local chapter
bringing in paid staff to fill gaps left by volunteers but the volunteers
still effectively working full-time unpaid. I had a much smaller role in
2014 than Ed and others and was fortunate to be in a position to dedicate a
lot of time to it; I certainly wouldn't be in a position now to devote as
much time as I did for free and without wishing to speak for Ed, I doubt he
would be either even if he was willing.
If that's a problem in major developed economies, I'd imagine it would be
even more of a problem in places where people have less disposable income.
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
+44 (0) 7507 536 971
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Edward Saperia <edsaperia(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks for that comment, Dariusz;
Wikimania London took over two years of preparation, and occupied me
full time for six months in the run up to the event. It's a massive
undertaking, and in retrospect it seems deeply unfair to expect volunteers
to do this.
There was a bidding process, so there was heavy pressure to
minimise/understate the budget - which mostly comes at the cost of the
volunteers. I think the community just has to be more realistic about what
it costs to put on a 1000+ person event.
Were I to do it again I would absolutely include subsistence for the
organising team in the budget. It needs professional commitment and
professional skills, even with WMF staff support.
I do think that the movement deserves an annual event, and particularly
that the WMF should capitalise on it more from a comms perspective.
Wiki*edia is a significant entity and we should be presenting ourselves as
such.
*Edward Saperia*
Conference Director Wikimania London <http://www.wikimanialondon.org>
email <edsaperia(a)gmail.com> • facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia> • twitter
<http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia> • 07796955572
133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
In the same time, I've seen the following
problems over the years, not
directly linked to the financial cost (which in the face of our relative
financial stability can be justified by the benefits, depending on how we
define them):
- huge WMF staff involvement (most Wikimanias run smoothly also thanks
to countless hours put in by the staff),
- huge volunteer local organizers involvement (in fact, my observation
is that many chapters organizing WIkimanias suffer from a motivation crisis
afterward).
[...]
While we can get the money (at least for now), the human involvement
cost is something I would not dare to dismiss just by emphasizing the
benefits of Wikimania for the movement.
[...]
Instead of discussing whether we should have a Wikimania every year or
not, perhaps we should try to list and discuss the reasons why it is such a
big strain? If it is clear that we can't afford it every year (because of
the human cost, probably more importantly than the finances), the decision
to break with the annual format will be a natural consequence of such an
analysis.
[...]
Dariusz Jemielniak ("pundit", a current Trustee).
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