On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 5:20 AM Tisza Gergő <gtisza(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 1:12 PM effe iets anders
<effeietsanders(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I would even argue that for by far most people,
the registration cost
will not be the limiting factor - other components of the trip would likely
be (unless they are local to Stockholm, maybe). The travel to Stockholm
alone will outweigh this fee by a factor of 2, maybe 4 for most, and a week
of accommodation with the remaining dinners will probably set you back at
least the same amount (if you go very low budget).
Those estimates are way off. Most of our volunteer base is in Europe,
where flight costs are typically below $100; you can find accomodation in
the immediate vicinity of the conference for $200 (and you can probably go
way cheaper with hostels, or by being in a more distant part of the city);
if you actually want to go very low budget and skip on restaurants / pubs /
etc, food costs are minimal (and obviously people do need to eat outside of
Stockholm as well, so it's not really an extra spending). So the conference
fee would be about half of your total costs.
That depends what you're using as your base, of course. I'm trying to think
a little beyond our traditional community, which is why I was talking about
'people'. Even if we would take a highly Eurocentric approach and only
think about Europeans without any visa requirements, living nearby airports
that are well-connected to Stockholm (mind you, these are quite a few
assumptions we're making), we would be talking about airfare of often more
than $100, accommodation for $200 would still be on the low end of the
spectrum (six nights, hostels cost $31 per night, although there are a few
further away that cost less), you would still have to include all kinds of
smaller expenses though (dinners that will definitely more expensive than
at home. Are you planning to take public transportation or walk for a few
hours each day? Will you join in evening events and buy a drink? Do you
plan to get a data plan for your phone?) And let's not forget that you have
to take a week off to be able to attend the conference and pre-conference.
All in all, I am pretty confident that even for these well-connected
Europeans, the conference fee will be a smaller part of the amount that
traveling will cost them. Finding a cheaper hotel than the recommended
hotel (at $115/night) would definitely do a good job at that.
There are two ways that our movement can try to
address this hurdle: one
way would be to reduce the price even further for everyone, the other is to
provide help for some people to overcome all these financial hurdles. I
personally prefer that we spend more on scholarships (travel, accommodation
and registration) rather than even further subsidizing the registration fee
for all other participants.
So are we actually spending more on scholarships?
There is no consistent reporting on scholarships (nor any other aspect of
Wikimania for that matter) but some wiki archeology gives:
- 2012: 87 full + 47 partial per [1]
- 2013: 62 full + 18 partial (which apparently somehow adds up to 86...)
per [2]
- 2014: 109 per [3]
- 2015: 110 per [4]
- 2016: 88 full + 35 partial + 6 additional (whatever that means) per [5]
([6] claims 99 full)
- 2017: 81 full + 17 partial per [5]
- 2018: 125 full + 16 partial per [5]
- 2019: 96 full + 20 partial per [5]
So it seems like the higher price of the conference was indeed offset
somewhat by a slightly higher number of scholarships in 2018, but that is
not the case for 2019. (Granted this is WMF only, and a significant part of
scholarships tend to come from affiliates, but it's even harder to find
data on that.)
(I should probably disclose that I'm a partial scholarship recipient,
although I doubt it would affect my argument if I weren't)
This focus on scholarships is not a new thing - I'm happy that the WMF has
chosen to support them for a long time now. And indeed there is a
significant bump from mostly European chapters that help volunteers to
attend (a big chunk of them being from their own country).
You're claiming that this year is a higher rate than usual, I don't think
this is actually true. Some context:
- 2016: 500 euro, but this included accommodation and full board
- 2017: 315 CAD (~233 USD)
- 2018: 275 USD
In that sense, this fee is quite in range from the past few years (I was
not motivated enough to go back to earlier years). Some years were indeed
cheaper, especially if located in a country with lower incomes, and when
the express purpose was to get more locals/regionals to attend (Mexico,
Hong Kong) that might otherwise not have been able to.
My point is: if we're not willing to spend even more donor money on this
conference than we already do, we need to make choices. You could choose to
make the conference less fancy (although the opportunities to cut costs are
limited in that field, I understand), you could stop offering lunch and
refreshments or you could cut in scholarships (which is a huge chunk of our
budget as a movement regarding this conference). I wouldn't mind making the
event 'less fancy' if that would actually bring down the cost
significantly, although all attempts at that in the past were met with
complaints too. But I don't think it is feasible to cut on things that make
up the main budget items. Unfortunately, I'm currently unable to find
reliable and publicly available budgets for Wikimania from recent years, so
I have to work from recollection.