Unfortunately this is with many other things something we could improve on, but comes at a cost. And while the cost itself is reasonable, it adds up. 

It would be awesome if Wikimania could become a little more the volunteer conference it is, where people do their bit of what they would like to see happen. If you like to see childcare: great, help organise it! (for the record: Daniel's response was very reasonable in this regard) If you like certain topics on the programme - lets propose it! If you would enjoy different entertainment in the evenings, here's your challenge. 

In these discussions, and this is a slippery slope argument, we tend to look at the organising team to fix things for us, while on many occasions we can do a lot ourselves. This is a great list for such coordination, by the way. 

Best,
Lodewijk

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 12:46 PM, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm sure this is not a new issue, I remember it coming up at either Gdansk or Buenos Aires and it may not have been new then. I know from surveys and those wikipedians I have got to know well that we underrepresent those who currently have kids, with the "greying of the pedia" the community may not be as unrepresentative of parents of adult children as we once were, but we don't have many parents of young children amongst our editors. I think this is a gap we should try to fix, I suspect that childcare for the few parents who bring their children would be a service that only a small minority of editors would take up, and that offering such a service in 2016 and future Wikimanias would be something of a statement that the community wants members who have dependent children.

Regards

Jonathan Cardy


> On 9 Jul 2015, at 21:46, Ellie Young <eyoung@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Sorry for the delay in responding.   WMF will not be able to provide child care services at the venue.  The Hotel can arrange for babysitters directly with parents who need this.    From registration and looking at WMF travels, it looks like few people are bringing families.  For those that are, someone might want to put something on wiki or this mailing list to contact other families about trip, sharing services, etc.   I would be happy to put anyone who needs babysitters at the hotel in touch with the right person to arrange this.
>
> Ellie
>
> WMF Conference Coordinator
>
>> On Jul 4, 2015, at 1:49 AM, Maarten Dammers <maarten@mdammers.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Daniel,
>>
>> Daniel Schwen schreef op 1-7-2015 om 20:30:
>>> Hello all!
>>> Will any form of child care be provided at this year's Wikimania? OpenStreetMap's SotM apparently offered some this year (http://openstreetmap.us/2015/03/children-at-sotmus/)
>> This years Wikimedia Hackathon (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2015) also had a kindergarten. Looked like a success and I heard several parents say that they might have brought their kids if they would have known it in advance.
>>
>> Maarten
>>
>>
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