Hello everyone,

Wikimedia Hungary has recieved an interesting "sales pitch" today if we can call a two liner that.

One of the largest Hungarian travelling agency's department (or subsidiary?) for conference tourism have expressed interest in organizing a Wikimania in Budapest, Hungary in 2015 in cooperation with WMHU. (My understanding is that WMHU would be a content advisor or similar in it) They've expressed interest in individual workshops as well (of course).

They've emailed us the bidding page for Wikimania 2015 [1] and the blog entry about the Program Evaluation Workshop that will be held in June in Budapest [2] (I guess) to underline their interest (and inadvertently highlight they're actively monitioring these events)

I believe you already have the questions in your mind about this; here are my ones:

1) What if a third party applies to create an event? (like a workshop or Wikimania)

It is not prohibited for a for profit company to create a bid, nor they have the necessity to consult or cooperate with any of the chapters (though it is almost certain that they'll get some wikip/medians to help with the content). There are many workshops and meetups where Wikipedia is being discussed or being the topic without having any wikim/pedians speaking or attending, but something like a workshop, or Wikimania would be an "internal event" (even if maximum possible outreach is the ultimate goal in the latter)

1/b) What if their bid is the best overall? Would they be allowed to execute it (a.k.a. being announced winners)?

note these bids would not be coming from the local communities as they are coming now, but from outside.

1/c) What if such a bid comes from a country where is no chapter formed yet (or a non active or too small /or etc./ exists)?

Given the fact that Wikimania is so far the best local outreach tool of the movement, creating one in a country with small, or struggling (for whatever reasons) communities/chapters could result in a huge boost of that community/chapter. (it would be nice to know btw the aftereffects of the previous Wikimanias on the organizing chapters if it was ever measured)

2) Could it be an option for future bidders to outsource some or (almost) all parts of the organization/catering/other tasks to a third party (outside of the movement) keeping only the content management to themselves ?

The (future?) Wikimania Committee is in broader terms an officially not registered - internal - project company to help creating future Wikimanias in general.

Feel free to add your questions, while answering mines and others' :)

Cheers, Balázs

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015_bids [2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/09/program-evaluation-workshop-budapest/