All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
------
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
* Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
* Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
* Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
* Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
* Latin America (2009, 2015)
* Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
* South Asia (none yet)
* Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
* Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
* 2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
* 2017: Canada and United States – TBD
* 2018: TBD – TBD
* 2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
* 2020: Canada and United States – TBD
* 2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Hi,
[for full disclosure, I work with the WMF's communications department, but this response is in my personal capacity.]
On 4 October 2015 at 19:10, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
I don't mean to slight yourself, James, or the committee, but this seems an unnecessary delay. Why is this only now being communicated? Would it not have been wise to reveal this as it was agreed upon rather than now, after at least two bidding parties have put time and effort into their bids for 2017?
I agree with the process as described and put forward, but really, a lot of tears could have been avoided by announcing this sooner.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
This is true and cannot be ignored. But why, then, is "Europe" such a narrow definition? Why no provision for Eastern Europe and Russia? This seems quite disappointing given we have active affiliates in these areas.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
We should probably cut to the chase and just name the location, since by now it's common knowledge. Other than my previous comment about the lack of inclusion of Eastern Europe—are we seriously suggesting holding one in Russia and then one in (for instance) Warsaw? That seems to defeat the point of this exercise somewhat.
Other than that, I personally commend this change. I only wish it had been communicated more quickly.
best, Joe
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 11:25 Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 4 October 2015 at 19:10, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
I don't mean to slight yourself, James, or the committee, but this seems an unnecessary delay. Why is this only now being communicated?
A fair question. We spent too long discussing options rather than presenting this earlier. I'm sorry. I have discussed this change with a variety of people since at least 2007, and others were talking about it before me, but as the complexity of Wikimania rises each year it has become more chronic. As Chair of the Committee, the delay is my fault, and I apologise.
Would it not have been wise to reveal this as it was agreed upon rather than now, after at least two bidding parties have put time and effort into their bids for 2017?
I might equally ask why people not associated with running Wikimania decided the create and keep updating mistaken pages on meta about Wikimania 2017 being open for bids without even a post to this list, let alone the Committee, where we could have pointed out it was false before people spent time ill-advisedly. :-(
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
This is true and cannot be ignored. But why, then, is "Europe" such a narrow definition? Why no provision for Eastern Europe and Russia? This seems quite disappointing given we have active affiliates in these areas.
The groupings are based on where the majority of Wikimedians are. They can of course change over time. I was hoping to work with fellow Wikimedians to narrow down these definitions so that it's clear for instance which group each interested community group falls.
I'd note that we've already had one Wikimania in the "Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" area, which is one more than, for instance, South Asia where we also have a large number of Wikimedians.
We should probably cut to the chase and just name the location, since by now it's common knowledge.
Despite people breaching trust and leaking "news" rather than seeking clarification, the announcement for 2017 is not final and is still subject to approval.
Other than my previous comment about the lack of inclusion of Eastern Europe—are we seriously suggesting holding one in Russia and then one in (for instance) Warsaw? That seems to defeat the point of this exercise somewhat.
No. "Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" would cover both of those locations, so at the smallest they would be three years apart, and in practice probably a great deal more.
Yours,
Thanks for your clarifications, James, they're quite helpful.
Joe
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 19:51 James Forrester james@jdforrester.org wrote:
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 11:25 Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 4 October 2015 at 19:10, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
I don't mean to slight yourself, James, or the committee, but this seems an unnecessary delay. Why is this only now being communicated?
A fair question. We spent too long discussing options rather than presenting this earlier. I'm sorry. I have discussed this change with a variety of people since at least 2007, and others were talking about it before me, but as the complexity of Wikimania rises each year it has become more chronic. As Chair of the Committee, the delay is my fault, and I apologise.
Would it not have been wise to reveal this as it was agreed upon rather than now, after at least two bidding parties have put time and effort into their bids for 2017?
I might equally ask why people not associated with running Wikimania decided the create and keep updating mistaken pages on meta about Wikimania 2017 being open for bids without even a post to this list, let alone the Committee, where we could have pointed out it was false before people spent time ill-advisedly. :-(
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
This is true and cannot be ignored. But why, then, is "Europe" such a narrow definition? Why no provision for Eastern Europe and Russia? This seems quite disappointing given we have active affiliates in these areas.
The groupings are based on where the majority of Wikimedians are. They can of course change over time. I was hoping to work with fellow Wikimedians to narrow down these definitions so that it's clear for instance which group each interested community group falls.
I'd note that we've already had one Wikimania in the "Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" area, which is one more than, for instance, South Asia where we also have a large number of Wikimedians.
We should probably cut to the chase and just name the location, since by now it's common knowledge.
Despite people breaching trust and leaking "news" rather than seeking clarification, the announcement for 2017 is not final and is still subject to approval.
Other than my previous comment about the lack of inclusion of Eastern Europe—are we seriously suggesting holding one in Russia and then one in (for instance) Warsaw? That seems to defeat the point of this exercise somewhat.
No. "Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" would cover both of those locations, so at the smallest they would be three years apart, and in practice probably a great deal more.
Yours,
On 5 October 2015 at 02:51, James Forrester james@jdforrester.org wrote:
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 11:25 Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 4 October 2015 at 19:10, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
I don't mean to slight yourself, James, or the committee, but this seems an unnecessary delay. Why is this only now being communicated?
A fair question. We spent too long discussing options rather than presenting this earlier. I'm sorry. I have discussed this change with a variety of people since at least 2007, and others were talking about it before me, but as the complexity of Wikimania rises each year it has become more chronic. As Chair of the Committee, the delay is my fault, and I apologise.
Would it not have been wise to reveal this as it was agreed upon rather than now, after at least two bidding parties have put time and effort into their bids for 2017?
I might equally ask why people not associated with running Wikimania decided the create and keep updating mistaken pages on meta about Wikimania 2017 being open for bids without even a post to this list, let alone the Committee, where we could have pointed out it was false before people spent time ill-advisedly. :-(
I followed the process because that is what was publish, it was the process that the community had developed over the last ten years and there was no indication that the community process had been usurped....
People on the committee had been through the very same process, you as Chair of this committee have been involved in the process for a long time and knew that people would be preparing to follow the Meta process well before the dates. You as chair lead the changes you as chair were responsible to ensure those changes were communicate and any processes already published you updated in a timely manor to ensure people knew about that...
oh and those pages suggested people join this list there was never an instruction to contact the committee and seek their permission to bid as the bid selction was to be done by a jury after a period of open public nominations.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
This is true and cannot be ignored. But why, then, is "Europe" such a narrow definition? Why no provision for Eastern Europe and Russia? This seems quite disappointing given we have active affiliates in these areas.
The groupings are based on where the majority of Wikimedians are. They can of course change over time. I was hoping to work with fellow Wikimedians to narrow down these definitions so that it's clear for instance which group each interested community group falls.
Dear all; I suggest North Africa for 2018 (Tunisia as an example)
2015-10-04 19:10 GMT+01:00 James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
I suggest the European Parliament in Strasbourgh (France) for 2019.
2015-10-04 20:42 GMT+02:00 Mounir Touzri touzrimounir@gmail.com:
Dear all; I suggest North Africa for 2018 (Tunisia as an example)
2015-10-04 19:10 GMT+01:00 James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Hello James, having read your announcement, I don't really see what you would like to consult with the community and when, as the decisions seem to be made by you and "we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond." I am also surprised that e.g. Gdańsk is in "Eastern Europe". And you put it in one venue bucket with Uzbekistan for some reason. Or that you "want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America." Combining these two would mean we could wait for a Wikimania in Ukraine, Poland, Mexico (Northern America) or some other "Eastern European" country (whatever it means here) forever. For the future, I would like to ask you and your committee for a more careful wording and a careful definition of geographic terms you want to use. I see this is a rushed anouncement but knowing that these decisions were done 80+ days ago makes it difficult to accept. Kind Regards, Michał Buczyński WMPL, WMF FDC member Dnia 4 października 2015 20:10 James Forrester napisał(a): All, TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months ------ At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided. Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses * Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)* Canada and United States (2006, 2012)* Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)* Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)* Latin America (2009, 2015)* Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)* South Asia (none yet)* Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)* Oceania (none yet) The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible. The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based. Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America. We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.) More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense. As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue. Our next few locations will thus go like this: * 2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy* 2017: Canada and United States – TBD* 2018: TBD – TBD* 2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD* 2020: Canada and United States – TBD* 2021: TBD – TBD As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall. Thank you. Yours,--James D. ForresterChair, Wikimania Committee
Michal's comments reflect part of what I'm thinking - and I think the exact splits of the regions may require some further discussions. Given the notes I've seen elsewhere, I trust that this is a first draft of the exact outlines of the regions, and not necessarily definitive? For example, I was also surprised to see your definition of 'North America' being US + Canada, and not to include Mexico.
Either way, the underlying discussion is much more important: how do we select our next Wikimanias, but maybe more importantly, what do we expect from our annual conference. Because there lies an assumption under your methods that we need more than 2 years of preparations, which I'm not certain to agree with.
I'm all for a lighter conference in general, maybe with more focus on online interaction. I think Esino Lario is a great experiment in that respect, to go back a bit to the roots of Wikimania, in some respects. I would be so glad to see lower standards for Wikimania, allowing more volunteers to feel confident to participate in organising it. Less people, even (I would be totally happy to limit it to 500-800 per year on-site).
This is a discussion we seem to skip each year as a community - what do we expect exactly of Wikimania, what do we want to accomplish with it? What are its goals? All other things (location, venue, structure, rotation) should be following that outcome.
Best, Lodewijk
On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 9:37 PM, Michał Buczyński sandbox@o2.pl wrote:
Hello James,
having read your announcement, I don't really see what you would like to consult with the community and when, as the decisions seem to be made by you and "we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond."
I am also surprised that e.g. Gdańsk is in "Eastern Europe". And you put it in one venue bucket with Uzbekistan for some reason. Or that you "want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America." Combining these two would mean we could wait for a Wikimania in Ukraine, Poland, Mexico (Northern America) or some other "Eastern European" country (whatever it means here) forever.
For the future, I would like to ask you and your committee for a more careful wording and a careful definition of geographic terms you want to use. I see this is a rushed anouncement but knowing that these decisions were done 80+ days ago makes it difficult to accept.
Kind Regards, Michał Buczyński WMPL, WMF FDC member
Dnia 4 października 2015 20:10 James Forrester napisał(a):
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 12:45 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Michal's comments reflect part of what I'm thinking - and I think the exact splits of the regions may require some further discussions. Given the notes I've seen elsewhere, I trust that this is a first draft of the exact outlines of the regions, and not necessarily definitive?
As has already been stated in this thread, yes.
For example, I was also surprised to see your definition of 'North America' being US + Canada, and not to include Mexico.
False.
We explicitly a repeatedly used the term "Canada and United States" because "North America" includes Mexico, and we didn't think that was appropriate.
This is a discussion we seem to skip each year as a community - what do we
expect exactly of Wikimania, what do we want to accomplish with it? What are its goals?
If you re-read our call for input, you might see that this is precisely the question asked:
We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the
programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Ensuring that as many Wikimedians can come to Wikimania each year is of little value if they event isn't as useful as it can be.
J.
Why it's no divided by continent? - North-America (3) Cambridge, USA 2006, Washington, USA 2012, Mexico 2015 - South-America (1) Buenos Aires, Argentinia 2009 - Europe (4) Frankfurt, Germany 2005, Gdansk, Poland 2010, London, UK 2014, Esino Lario, Italia 2016 - Africa (1), Alexandria, Egypt - Asia (3) Taipeh 2007, Haifa, Israel 2011, Hong Kong 2013 - Oceania (0) There was a Wikimania four times in America and Europe, tree times in Asia - also we need Africa and particularry Oceania.
2015-10-04 22:03 GMT+02:00 James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com:
On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 12:45 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Michal's comments reflect part of what I'm thinking - and I think the exact splits of the regions may require some further discussions. Given the notes I've seen elsewhere, I trust that this is a first draft of the exact outlines of the regions, and not necessarily definitive?
As has already been stated in this thread, yes.
For example, I was also surprised to see your definition of 'North America' being US + Canada, and not to include Mexico.
False.
We explicitly a repeatedly used the term "Canada and United States" because "North America" includes Mexico, and we didn't think that was appropriate.
This is a discussion we seem to skip each year as a community - what do we
expect exactly of Wikimania, what do we want to accomplish with it? What are its goals?
If you re-read our call for input, you might see that this is precisely the question asked:
We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure
the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Ensuring that as many Wikimedians can come to Wikimania each year is of little value if they event isn't as useful as it can be.
J.
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
2015-10-04 21:37 GMT+02:00 Michał Buczyński sandbox@o2.pl:
I am also surprised that e.g. Gdańsk is in "Eastern Europe". And you put it in one venue bucket with Uzbekistan for some reason. Or that you "want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America." Combining these two would mean we could wait for a Wikimania in Ukraine, Poland, Mexico (Northern America) or some other "Eastern European" country (whatever it means here) forever.
For the future, I would like to ask you and your committee for a more careful wording and a careful definition of geographic terms you want to use.
2015-10-04 21:44 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:
Michal's comments reflect part of what I'm thinking - and I think the exact splits of the regions may require some further discussions. Given the notes I've seen elsewhere, I trust that this is a first draft of the exact outlines of the regions, and not necessarily definitive? For example, I was also surprised to see your definition of 'North America' being US + Canada, and not to include Mexico.
While I do agree with the necessity of a reform of the Wikimania bidding process, I have to say that I totally quote those two passages from Michal and Lodewijk. My main concern is how the areas will be defined (and probably the UN macro-region division doesn't work that well), and secondly how the areas will rotate.
At the moment, I do acknowledge that the "Western World" may have more users than other areas, but if our idea is (to quote James himself) "to support the movement worldwide", allowing countries that are not the US, Canada or just-any-European-country-that-is-not-a-Central-Eastern-Europe-country to organise just one in three Wikimania IMHO won't work.
Anyway, let's just think of how to refine this draft. :)
What I like about the explicit rotation: * more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule; * more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time spent on (concurring) bids; * more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage, less "let's beat continent X"; * more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest groups of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Yes, thats right. +1
2015-10-04 22:55 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com:
What I like about the explicit rotation:
- more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule;
- more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time spent
on (concurring) bids;
- more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage,
less "let's beat continent X";
- more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest groups
of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
I agree that we should make rotation explicit, but that doesn't need to be done by region. We could achieve the same by requiring each bid to be a long haul flight from the previous one, and a medium haul flight from the one before. Under the region proposal we could have Amman in Asia, Cairo in Africa and Athens in Europe all within four years. Or El Paso, Texas one year and_Juarez, Chihuahua the next.
I suggest that instead we make the rotation explicit by distance, 4000 miles from the preceding venue, 3,000 miles from the one before that, 2,000 from the one three years prior and 1000 from the one four years earlier. We should also have a rule that prioritises countries that welcome such events with a more open visa policy.
Also if the Foundation wants to get better value for money, the venues could be determined through a commercial evaluation looking for the best value locations in the world regardless of whether or not there are locally organised wikimedians. Then get the programme determined by global volunteers. It wouldn't be too much of a burden on scholarship attendees if they got an email with their flight details asking them to volunteer to moderate or video a session.
Jonathan
On 4 Oct 2015, at 21:57, Ralf Roletschek ralf@roletschek.de wrote:
Yes, thats right. +1
2015-10-04 22:55 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com:
What I like about the explicit rotation:
- more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule;
- more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time spent on (concurring) bids;
- more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage, less "let's beat continent X";
- more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest groups of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Ralf Roletschek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ralf_Roletschek Fragen zum Fahrrad? - http://www.fahrradmonteur.de Hinweis wegen immer mehr aufkommendem Werbemüll: Alle Mails, die die Wörter "Faceb00k" oder "Twi††er" enthalten, landen bei mir ungelesen im Spam. _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 4:33 AM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
I suggest that instead we make the rotation explicit by distance, 4000 miles from the preceding venue, 3,000 miles from the one before that, 2,000 from the one three years prior and 1000 from the one four years earlier.
I like this idea, although it would be even better if some notion of "airfare expense" could be baked in as well. The reason why Mexico is not included along with Canada and the US is (I assume, I could be wrong) because a number of attendees this past year complained that airfare to Mexico was much more expensive than airfare to the US or Europe. Like it or not, (inexpensive) air travel seems to be arranged around global hubs; if you are flying to Mexico City from North Africa or India your best flight may take you via stops in Europe and the US. It was suggested that (somewhat paradoxically) hosting conferences in US/Europe then allowed *more* of the global south to attend by eliminating punishing airfare to the locale.
I'm not really interested in debating this point, since it wasn't me who raised it originally in the context of Wikimania 2015 and I have no first hand experience. But I would love to hear more about the issue from those who live outside the main air travel corridors (if only to refute the suggestion, which again I'm relaying second-hand).
It also seems like a four-year rotation might make some folks happier: US/Canada, "the rest of the world", Europe, "the rest of the world". --scott
I like the idea of distance as measure to choose the next location, but that should also be coupled with a timezone factor +- 6 hours at a minimum as well...
Wikimania still needs a local group to volunteers who understand the local language and customs, it needs their enthusiasm and energy to keep it on the front burner locally
On 5 October 2015 at 16:33, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that we should make rotation explicit, but that doesn't need to be done by region. We could achieve the same by requiring each bid to be a long haul flight from the previous one, and a medium haul flight from the one before. Under the region proposal we could have Amman in Asia, Cairo in Africa and Athens in Europe all within four years. Or El Paso, Texas one year and_Juarez, Chihuahua the next.
I suggest that instead we make the rotation explicit by distance, 4000 miles from the preceding venue, 3,000 miles from the one before that, 2,000 from the one three years prior and 1000 from the one four years earlier. We should also have a rule that prioritises countries that welcome such events with a more open visa policy.
Also if the Foundation wants to get better value for money, the venues could be determined through a commercial evaluation looking for the best value locations in the world regardless of whether or not there are locally organised wikimedians. Then get the programme determined by global volunteers. It wouldn't be too much of a burden on scholarship attendees if they got an email with their flight details asking them to volunteer to moderate or video a session.
Jonathan
On 4 Oct 2015, at 21:57, Ralf Roletschek ralf@roletschek.de wrote:
Yes, thats right. +1
2015-10-04 22:55 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com:
What I like about the explicit rotation:
- more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule;
- more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time spent
on (concurring) bids;
- more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage,
less "let's beat continent X";
- more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest groups
of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Ralf Roletschek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ralf_Roletschek Fragen zum Fahrrad? - http://www.fahrradmonteur.de Hinweis wegen immer mehr aufkommendem Werbemüll: Alle Mails, die die Wörter "Faceb00k" oder "Twi††er" enthalten, landen bei mir ungelesen im Spam.
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OK, great that you like it - but what is your argument for it? I get the arguments for measuring distance in flight cost rather than time, and I get the reasoning that conferences shouldn't be too close together. But why should a conference in China disqualify Australia? Or why should London disqualify New York? Or even Moscow?
Before we start to come up with all kind of random reasonings: focus on the basics please. We want the conference to cover multiple places, be relatively as cheap as possible and also be fun to attend.
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the chapters meeting...
Best, Lodewijk
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of distance as measure to choose the next location, but that should also be coupled with a timezone factor +- 6 hours at a minimum as well...
Wikimania still needs a local group to volunteers who understand the local language and customs, it needs their enthusiasm and energy to keep it on the front burner locally
On 5 October 2015 at 16:33, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers@gmail.com
wrote:
I agree that we should make rotation explicit, but that doesn't need to be done by region. We could achieve the same by requiring each bid to be a long haul flight from the previous one, and a medium haul flight from the one before. Under the region proposal we could have Amman in Asia, Cairo in Africa and Athens in Europe all within four years. Or El Paso, Texas one year and_Juarez, Chihuahua the next.
I suggest that instead we make the rotation explicit by distance, 4000 miles from the preceding venue, 3,000 miles from the one before that, 2,000 from the one three years prior and 1000 from the one four years earlier. We should also have a rule that prioritises countries that welcome such events with a more open visa policy.
Also if the Foundation wants to get better value for money, the venues could be determined through a commercial evaluation looking for the best value locations in the world regardless of whether or not there are locally organised wikimedians. Then get the programme determined by global volunteers. It wouldn't be too much of a burden on scholarship attendees if they got an email with their flight details asking them to volunteer to moderate or video a session.
Jonathan
On 4 Oct 2015, at 21:57, Ralf Roletschek ralf@roletschek.de wrote:
Yes, thats right. +1
2015-10-04 22:55 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com:
What I like about the explicit rotation:
- more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule;
- more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time spent
on (concurring) bids;
- more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage,
less "let's beat continent X";
- more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest groups
of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Ralf Roletschek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ralf_Roletschek Fragen zum Fahrrad? - http://www.fahrradmonteur.de Hinweis wegen immer mehr aufkommendem Werbemüll: Alle Mails, die die Wörter "Faceb00k" oder "Twi††er" enthalten, landen bei mir ungelesen im Spam.
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the idea is moving not just in distance but also in time that way travel will be shared more equally the time shift creates new opportunities for other people to access the event at low cost, ok 6 hours maybe too much but o hours has a serious potential to introduce bias....
the idea is to ensure that Wikimania isnt concentrated around Europe/North America for an extended period ie London, New York, Barbados, Paris, Washington, Warsaw, Berlin, Toronto, Prague, Madrid, Boston
Australia would already be exculded for a number of years(at least 6) under this new process if an event is held in China,if we going to dump a transparent system for a rotation the rotation which is already bias needs to ensure that their arent further failings that will divide the community
On 6 October 2015 at 16:58, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
OK, great that you like it - but what is your argument for it? I get the arguments for measuring distance in flight cost rather than time, and I get the reasoning that conferences shouldn't be too close together. But why should a conference in China disqualify Australia? Or why should London disqualify New York? Or even Moscow?
Before we start to come up with all kind of random reasonings: focus on the basics please. We want the conference to cover multiple places, be relatively as cheap as possible and also be fun to attend.
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the chapters meeting...
Best, Lodewijk
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of distance as measure to choose the next location, but that should also be coupled with a timezone factor +- 6 hours at a minimum as well...
Wikimania still needs a local group to volunteers who understand the local language and customs, it needs their enthusiasm and energy to keep it on the front burner locally
On 5 October 2015 at 16:33, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree that we should make rotation explicit, but that doesn't need to be done by region. We could achieve the same by requiring each bid to be a long haul flight from the previous one, and a medium haul flight from the one before. Under the region proposal we could have Amman in Asia, Cairo in Africa and Athens in Europe all within four years. Or El Paso, Texas one year and_Juarez, Chihuahua the next.
I suggest that instead we make the rotation explicit by distance, 4000 miles from the preceding venue, 3,000 miles from the one before that, 2,000 from the one three years prior and 1000 from the one four years earlier. We should also have a rule that prioritises countries that welcome such events with a more open visa policy.
Also if the Foundation wants to get better value for money, the venues could be determined through a commercial evaluation looking for the best value locations in the world regardless of whether or not there are locally organised wikimedians. Then get the programme determined by global volunteers. It wouldn't be too much of a burden on scholarship attendees if they got an email with their flight details asking them to volunteer to moderate or video a session.
Jonathan
On 4 Oct 2015, at 21:57, Ralf Roletschek ralf@roletschek.de wrote:
Yes, thats right. +1
2015-10-04 22:55 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com:
What I like about the explicit rotation:
- more transparency, the rotation is no longer an unwritten rule;
- more time (2 years) to make Wikimania great, less volunteer time
spent on (concurring) bids;
- more concreteness and (hopefully) cooperation in the selection stage,
less "let's beat continent X";
- more pragmatism, recognising we can't always flight the biggest
groups of people in the farthest places.
Nemo
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
Ralf Roletschek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ralf_Roletschek Fragen zum Fahrrad? - http://www.fahrradmonteur.de Hinweis wegen immer mehr aufkommendem Werbemüll: Alle Mails, die die Wörter "Faceb00k" oder "Twi††er" enthalten, landen bei mir ungelesen im Spam.
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On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 at 01:59 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the chapters meeting...
I've been doing this regularly for years in an *ad hoc* way. It informed the pick of areas. For example, the additional cost to the community of hosting Wikimania in Australia is (very roughly) US$1k extra per person from outside Oceania compared to the base cost, and US$1k less for each person in Oceania. At typical levels of 800 non-local self-funded attendees, of whom we have around 10 from Oceania, and 400 local people who wouldn't otherwise come at all, This means an additional community cost of ~US$750k (and a bunch more for Wikimedia organisational funds, paid directly from WMF or via the chapters) in return for the opportunity for 400 local Oceanians to attend who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.
This is, clearly, not a completely unacceptable additional burden, but it is one we should take on carefully. By picking the venue for Wikimania we are not just 'awarding' some locals, but demanding a great many community people reach even deeper to try to attend, and for a great many, put it beyond their financial reach. Though Wikimedia organisational funds pay a huge amount for scholarships, almost entirely focussed on the less-represented countries in our community, but this does not (and cannot reasonably) cover the majority of attendees.
Off the top of my head, the numbers are roughly comparable for Latin America (slightly less for Mexico), a bit lower for South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe/Russia/Central Asia, and lower still for Asia Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa. The numbers drift from year to year a bit, but sadly there's not much impact on the overall headline whilst the editing community is so unequally geographically distributed.
This is why we included the call to area to get into the practice of having annual regional or sub-regional conferences. These would let a much larger portion of our community more easily afford to come to an in-person community event to share their passion, talk about what we can do to improve the projects, and learn new things. This is what the Wikimedia conferences, be they the global Wikimania or the regional "Wikimeetings" (people should suggest a great name!), should be about.
J.
Did you also consider the hotel costs etc in this calculation? I recall that catering and hotel costs in India were so much cheaper that it balanced out the additional flight costs for the chapters meeting - not sur ehow that would work oout on this scale though.
Either way, it would be interesting to do this calculation somewhere on meta, some day - and help people be aware of what we're talking about, It's not an unimportant assumption/argument we work from :)
as a side note, of course I strongly support the regional conferences, and I am thrilled to see that the WikiArabia conference is seeing a second edition!
Lodewijk
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 4:35 PM, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 at 01:59 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the chapters meeting...
I've been doing this regularly for years in an *ad hoc* way. It informed the pick of areas. For example, the additional cost to the community of hosting Wikimania in Australia is (very roughly) US$1k extra per person from outside Oceania compared to the base cost, and US$1k less for each person in Oceania. At typical levels of 800 non-local self-funded attendees, of whom we have around 10 from Oceania, and 400 local people who wouldn't otherwise come at all, This means an additional community cost of ~US$750k (and a bunch more for Wikimedia organisational funds, paid directly from WMF or via the chapters) in return for the opportunity for 400 local Oceanians to attend who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.
This is, clearly, not a completely unacceptable additional burden, but it is one we should take on carefully. By picking the venue for Wikimania we are not just 'awarding' some locals, but demanding a great many community people reach even deeper to try to attend, and for a great many, put it beyond their financial reach. Though Wikimedia organisational funds pay a huge amount for scholarships, almost entirely focussed on the less-represented countries in our community, but this does not (and cannot reasonably) cover the majority of attendees.
Off the top of my head, the numbers are roughly comparable for Latin America (slightly less for Mexico), a bit lower for South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe/Russia/Central Asia, and lower still for Asia Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa. The numbers drift from year to year a bit, but sadly there's not much impact on the overall headline whilst the editing community is so unequally geographically distributed.
This is why we included the call to area to get into the practice of having annual regional or sub-regional conferences. These would let a much larger portion of our community more easily afford to come to an in-person community event to share their passion, talk about what we can do to improve the projects, and learn new things. This is what the Wikimedia conferences, be they the global Wikimania or the regional "Wikimeetings" (people should suggest a great name!), should be about.
J.
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
.. as a side note, of course I strongly support the regional conferences, and I am thrilled to see that the WikiArabia conference is seeing a second edition!
When looking for parts of a new process for Wikimania selection, I think it is worth building in a requirement that a 'regional' conference has been held in the city, or at least the country, and was successful at getting the locals ('casual' editors and non-editors alike) to walk in the doors.
This would provide a clearer path towards hosting a Wikimania, allowing a lower cost event to provide a testing ground of both the organisers capabilities and local communities interest.
-- John Vandenberg
very irony of all of this is that the Australian chapter had scheduled a national-semi regional conference this past weekend but was that abandoned when the funding request was decline
On 7 October 2015 at 08:11, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
.. as a side note, of course I strongly support the regional conferences,
and I
am thrilled to see that the WikiArabia conference is seeing a second edition!
When looking for parts of a new process for Wikimania selection, I think it is worth building in a requirement that a 'regional' conference has been held in the city, or at least the country, and was successful at getting the locals ('casual' editors and non-editors alike) to walk in the doors.
This would provide a clearer path towards hosting a Wikimania, allowing a lower cost event to provide a testing ground of both the organisers capabilities and local communities interest.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Dear Harry,
Wikimedia select a rotativity between Canada, the US and Europe for the simple reason that it is easier to justify the exorbitant payment (relative to other countries) of Wikimanias in these places where wikimedia has presence as fundation.
I'm not against that are carried out, these expenses are easier to justify in these countries, however, seems to me a great hypocrisy that donations are being used to pay for hotel accommodations in the most expensive cities world and forgetting and leaving aside the minority community countries who can not get easily visa to visit these countries.
I'm afraid that Wikimania is starting to lose some Community to become some kind of commercial gain.
2015-10-06 21:48 GMT-03:00 Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com:
very irony of all of this is that the Australian chapter had scheduled a national-semi regional conference this past weekend but was that abandoned when the funding request was decline
On 7 October 2015 at 08:11, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 7:57 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
.. as a side note, of course I strongly support the regional conferences,
and I
am thrilled to see that the WikiArabia conference is seeing a second edition!
When looking for parts of a new process for Wikimania selection, I think it is worth building in a requirement that a 'regional' conference has been held in the city, or at least the country, and was successful at getting the locals ('casual' editors and non-editors alike) to walk in the doors.
This would provide a clearer path towards hosting a Wikimania, allowing a lower cost event to provide a testing ground of both the organisers capabilities and local communities interest.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
-- GN. Vice President Wikimedia Australia WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 4:35 PM, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 at 01:59 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the chapters meeting...
pick of areas. For example, the additional cost to the community of hosting Wikimania in Australia is (very roughly) US$1k extra per person from outside Oceania compared to the base cost, and US$1k less for each person in Oceania. At typical levels of 800 non-local self-funded attendees, of whom we have around 10 from Oceania, and 400 local people who wouldn't otherwise come at all, This means an additional community cost of ~US$750k (and a bunch more for Wikimedia organisational funds, paid directly from WMF or via the chapters) in return for the opportunity for 400 local Oceanians to attend who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.
Off the top of my head, the numbers are roughly comparable for Latin America (slightly less for Mexico), a bit lower for South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe/Russia/Central Asia, and lower still for Asia Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa. The numbers drift from year to year a bit, but sadly there's not much impact on the overall headline whilst the editing community is so unequally geographically distributed.
This is why we included the call to area to get into the practice of having annual regional or sub-regional conferences. These would let a much larger portion of our community more easily afford to come to an in-person community event to share their passion, talk about what we can do to improve the projects, and learn new things. This is what the Wikimedia conferences, be they the global Wikimania or the regional "Wikimeetings" (people should suggest a great name!), should be about.
that is an interesting way to see it. i checked flight prices from europe to america. in the same category around 400-600 usd are: san francisco, new york, washington, boston, chicago, orlando, miami, montreal, toronto, belo horizonte, brasilia, porto alegre, rio de janairo, sao paolo, natal, recife, goiana, fortaleza, macelo, manaos, sao luiz, vitoria, florianopolis. this would suggest that brazil is included together with canada and united states, don't you think?
if we want to change something i'd find it appropriate to put a little bit more thought into it. how much of the total 100 mio USD should be spent to "let the right person meet somebody else in person" would be the basic guiding principle. and all meetups would need to be part of that thought. to give a couple of examples which only involve wikimania:
option1 would be to let people apply and then choose the location according to a calculation to minimize total cost. this of course takes the tourist aspect out of wikimania :) you could go the FIFA way and let the orgainzing city pay wikimania.
option2 would be to increase the fun and tourist factor. then you have to go to every country once, so the next wikimania in the united states would be in the year 2170. so a person can have a lifetime achievement list "go to wikimania once".
option3 would be to classify participants. who are the persons we want to meet. persons fully in their professional life, who sell every hour to somebody, where time counts, who cannot afford to travel a little bit further to sleep cheaper. or persons who do not care so much about time, who travel further to sleep cheapter, who maybe have time to contribute to wikipedia. you then would look out for cheap medium attracting cities.
option4 is be to see it as marketing event for wikipedia contribution. one could only meet in countries where there are not so many wikimedians to allow a lot of persons with little idea about how wikipedia works to participate, and see. cities like accra, lagos, johannesburg, dehli, shanghai, etc.
option5 is to see it as source of income. then you could organize the event in easy to reach locations, and set a high price tag to attend.
option6 is to scrap the current format, as travelling 2000km to listen to a presentation is a last century concept. presentations would be encouraged to be done at home and shared via youtube/commons or whatever is technologically good. presentations are voted on, and wikimania might get a workshop format to discuss the presentations.
james, does it make sense to consider some of these options? i know this is nothing for next years wikimania, but for 2017.
best, rupert
On Oct 4, 2015 8:10 PM, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement
department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter
the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become
unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years
ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania
four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make
sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants
from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe",
"Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future.
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees.
Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho.
Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience.
Cheers, Katie
Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open,
engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a
'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United
States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
I'm simply baffled in the way the Committee has just decided to explicitly reduce the participation from the so-called Global South, specially when we are supposed to promote the communities in those countries. Although I agree and understand that places with bigger communities should host Wikimania more often, the decided rotation is more unbalanced that in the past. Since 2009, Wikimania has rotated between the Global North and the Global South each year; now, the Global North will have 2 Wikimanias for each one hosted in the Global South (and I'm not considering the case of developed countries -such as Poland or Australia- hosting those years with the weird classification others have pointed out).
Considering this rotation system, one of 21 countries from Latin America will only have an opportunity to host in 2035, while the US will have the opportunity 7 times in the same timespan. Absurd.
2015-10-04 18:01 GMT-03:00 aude aude.wiki@gmail.com:
On Oct 4, 2015 8:10 PM, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement
department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter
the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become
unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two
years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania
four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make
sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants
from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe",
"Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future.
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees.
Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho.
Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience.
Cheers, Katie
Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open,
engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have
a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the
United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
015-10-04 18:41 GMT-03:00 Osmar Valdebenito b1mbo.wikipedia@gmail.com: I'm simply baffled in the way the Committee has just decided to explicitly reduce the participation from the so-called Global South, specially when we are supposed to promote the communities in those countries. (...) Considering this rotation system, one of 21 countries from Latin America will only have an opportunity to host in 2035, while the US will have the opportunity 7 times in the same timespan. Absurd.
Let's even forget for a second that Latin America, Asia and Africa will only host one Wikimania once or twice each in 2 decades. The committee also forgot that in the other 10-12 Wikimanias pretty much no one from those regions will be able to attend without a Scholarship. Right now the rate exchange to USD and EUR to BRL (my currency and one of the strongest of Latin America) is - respectively - 4 BRL to USD and 5 BRL to EUR. Which makes a coffee in Paris as expensive as a dress in São Paulo.
And besides the costs, lets remember who gets rejected the most to enter Europe and USA in any kind of visa (I'm a "white" latina and was held in an European Airport - twice. I can't even imagine how it is for Africans or Indians). So that decision basically solidified the fact that for now on, US and Europe and not only the hosts of pretty much all wikimanias, they are also almost all of the attendees.
Seriously, the committee couldn't do a better job in excluding the Global South. _____ *Béria L. de Rodríguez*
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.*
2 015-10-04 18:41 GMT-03:00 Osmar Valdebenito b1mbo.wikipedia@gmail.com:
I'm simply baffled in the way the Committee has just decided to explicitly reduce the participation from the so-called Global South, specially when we are supposed to promote the communities in those countries. Although I agree and understand that places with bigger communities should host Wikimania more often, the decided rotation is more unbalanced that in the past. Since 2009, Wikimania has rotated between the Global North and the Global South each year; now, the Global North will have 2 Wikimanias for each one hosted in the Global South (and I'm not considering the case of developed countries -such as Poland or Australia- hosting those years with the weird classification others have pointed out).
Considering this rotation system, one of 21 countries from Latin America will only have an opportunity to host in 2035, while the US will have the opportunity 7 times in the same timespan. Absurd.
2015-10-04 18:01 GMT-03:00 aude aude.wiki@gmail.com:
On Oct 4, 2015 8:10 PM, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement
department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter
the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become
unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two
years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania
four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to
make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North
America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that
participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern
Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future.
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees.
Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho.
Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience.
Cheers, Katie
Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open,
engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have
a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the
United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
(Not directed at Beria or anyone else, just an observation) We should go where there is a local community that can put together a Wikimania, where the local infrastructure is suitable, where there are venues and accommodation of a decent standard, and where as many of our community as possible can get to with the least hassle and expense, where the members of our community will be welcomed (including, for example, openly LGBT people and those with disabilities), and where the atmosphere is politically stable. Unfortunately, that's going to exclude a lot of places, and it does carry a certain bias towards major cities in Western countries, but we should not fall into the trap of putting Wikimania in a certain place for the sake of political correctness. Harry Mitchellhttp://enwp.org/User:HJ Phone: +44 (0) 7507 536971 Skype: harry_j_mitchell From: Béria Lima berialima@gmail.com To: Wikimania general list (open subscription) wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 5 October 2015, 15:31 Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] Coming up with a new process for Wikimania selection
015-10-04 18:41 GMT-03:00 Osmar Valdebenito b1mbo.wikipedia@gmail.com: I'm simply baffled in the way the Committee has just decided to explicitly reduce the participation from the so-called Global South, specially when we are supposed to promote the communities in those countries. (...) Considering this rotation system, one of 21 countries from Latin America will only have an opportunity to host in 2035, while the US will have the opportunity 7 times in the same timespan. Absurd.
Let's even forget for a second that Latin America, Asia and Africa will only host one Wikimania once or twice each in 2 decades. The committee also forgot that in the other 10-12 Wikimanias pretty much no one from those regions will be able to attend without a Scholarship. Right now the rate exchange to USD and EUR to BRL (my currency and one of the strongest of Latin America) is - respectively - 4 BRL to USD and 5 BRL to EUR. Which makes a coffee in Paris as expensive as a dress in São Paulo.
And besides the costs, lets remember who gets rejected the most to enter Europe and USA in any kind of visa (I'm a "white" latina and was held in an European Airport - twice. I can't even imagine how it is for Africans or Indians). So that decision basically solidified the fact that for now on, US and Europe and not only the hosts of pretty much all wikimanias, they are also almost all of the attendees.
Seriously, the committee couldn't do a better job in excluding the Global South. _____ Béria L. de Rodríguez
Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. 2015-10-04 18:41 GMT-03:00 Osmar Valdebenito b1mbo.wikipedia@gmail.com:
I'm simply baffled in the way the Committee has just decided to explicitly reduce the participation from the so-called Global South, specially when we are supposed to promote the communities in those countries. Although I agree and understand that places with bigger communities should host Wikimania more often, the decided rotation is more unbalanced that in the past. Since 2009, Wikimania has rotated between the Global North and the Global South each year; now, the Global North will have 2 Wikimanias for each one hosted in the Global South (and I'm not considering the case of developed countries -such as Poland or Australia- hosting those years with the weird classification others have pointed out).
Considering this rotation system, one of 21 countries from Latin America will only have an opportunity to host in 2035, while the US will have the opportunity 7 times in the same timespan. Absurd.
2015-10-04 18:01 GMT-03:00 aude aude.wiki@gmail.com:
On Oct 4, 2015 8:10 PM, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future.I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions. Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences.
I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees. Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho. Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience. Cheers, Katie Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
_______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
_______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
_______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
dear all the rotation we have set for Wikimania guarantees that at least once every three years we do not pick the easiest, cheapest and safest location.
The reality is that US-Canada and Europe are the easiest and cheapest locations. Well, with Esino Lario we have done our best to assure some complexities, but in general organizing wikimania in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia is more challenging and more expensive for people who have the money to pay their travel to travel there (let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip. If the event is in Europe, US and Canada it is much more likely that a person from there can afford his/her trip. Australia is an exception in many ways but in general it is expensive for the majority of the partcipants).
I personally believe the real criteria to choose where to host Wikimania should be a positive impact. If organizing Wikimania in a location can bring resources (volunteers, brains, fundings, content...), boost projects, involve communities it does make sense to organize it there even if it is much more expensive than in other location. I personally believe our goal should not be to put our flag in a new location but to make the best impact where Wikimania takes place. And let’s get ready to invest more (money, time, difficulties) if it makes sense.
Wikimania needs to change its selection process. My experience (and the experience of others) is that the current system is not a healthy system. We are putting teams one against the other and hurting people we do not want to hurt: we want everyone to win and to be involved in different capacities in the Wikimedia projects and in Wikimania.
Montreal has been chosen because it is a very good site, with a very good team, a safe place, and for the first time in a francophone location; by selecting as rapidly as possible the venue for 2017 we provide the Montreal team enough time to prepare the event and we have time ourselves to discuss and establish a new process.
The committee has met twice in the past three months and we were getting ready to announce the news. The delays are never positive and it is good that the topic is now at the centre of discussions. please do contribute to the process and the discussion about it also on meta to make sure its more easily recorded and accessible https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process iolanda / iopensa member of the Wikimania Committee and volunteer for Wikimania Esino Lario
Here is another suggestion to help make the Wikimania region selection a *community effort*, rather than a competition:
It would be nice to see coordinated efforts on local issues in the months surrounding a non-US/European Wikimania (assuming for the moment that the US/Europe can take care of their own issues). For example, volunteer days concentrating on eswiki and Spanish localization issues in the months leading up to Wikimania 2015. Otherwise it feels that Wikimania can be just a "tourist visit" with little long-term contribution.
It's important to note that building the *community* required to host a Wikimania is indeed a worthwhile achievement and does have long-term influence. So the area for improvement I'm discussing is a broadening to technical or content issues. For example, deciding to adopt Mexico-related entries on eswiki, or some feature to better support <translate> for Wikimania content. The coordinating committee could "adopt" certain projects or features for the year.
In my ideal world, Wikimania would be the culmination of a year-long focus[*] by the broader movement on a specific country or region, with many coordinated events planned, content written, and technical features implemented in anticipation of the conference. --scott
[*] With the three-year rotation, perhaps this could even be a three-year focus? But let's not jump ahead of ourselves yet.
Hi Iolanda,
This is Reem from Egypt. Thank you for your email. I'm silently following the threads of emails about this. But would you please explain to me what do you mean by the following:
let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip.
I'm not sure I understand why (maybe something is lost in translation as I'm a non-native speaker of EN) ^_^
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 18:58, Iolanda Pensa iolanda@pensa.it wrote:
dear all the rotation we have set for Wikimania guarantees that at least once every three years we do not pick the easiest, cheapest and safest location.
The reality is that US-Canada and Europe are the easiest and cheapest locations. Well, with Esino Lario we have done our best to assure some complexities, but in general organizing wikimania in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia is more challenging and more expensive for people who have the money to pay their travel to travel there (let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip. If the event is in Europe, US and Canada it is much more likely that a person from there can afford his/her trip. Australia is an exception in many ways but in general it is expensive for the majority of the partcipants).
I personally believe the real criteria to choose where to host Wikimania should be a positive impact. If organizing Wikimania in a location can bring resources (volunteers, brains, fundings, content...), boost projects, involve communities it does make sense to organize it there even if it is much more expensive than in other location. I personally believe our goal should not be to put our flag in a new location but to make the best impact where Wikimania takes place. And let’s get ready to invest more (money, time, difficulties) if it makes sense.
Wikimania needs to change its selection process. My experience (and the experience of others) is that the current system is not a healthy system. We are putting teams one against the other and hurting people we do not want to hurt: we want everyone to win and to be involved in different capacities in the Wikimedia projects and in Wikimania.
Montreal has been chosen because it is a very good site, with a very good team, a safe place, and for the first time in a francophone location; by selecting as rapidly as possible the venue for 2017 we provide the Montreal team enough time to prepare the event and we have time ourselves to discuss and establish a new process.
The committee has met twice in the past three months and we were getting ready to announce the news. The delays are never positive and it is good that the topic is now at the centre of discussions. please do contribute to the process and the discussion about it also on meta to make sure its more easily recorded and accessible https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process iolanda / iopensa member of the Wikimania Committee and volunteer for Wikimania Esino Lario
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
I think Iolanda means that, even though Ghana and Senegal are both in Africa, the cost of travelling from one to the other is still very high—probably too expensive for many people.
Joe
On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 at 21:08 Reem Al-Kashif reemalkashif@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Iolanda,
This is Reem from Egypt. Thank you for your email. I'm silently following the threads of emails about this. But would you please explain to me what do you mean by the following:
let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it
is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip.
I'm not sure I understand why (maybe something is lost in translation as I'm a non-native speaker of EN) ^_^
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 18:58, Iolanda Pensa iolanda@pensa.it wrote:
dear all the rotation we have set for Wikimania guarantees that at least once every three years we do not pick the easiest, cheapest and safest location.
The reality is that US-Canada and Europe are the easiest and cheapest locations. Well, with Esino Lario we have done our best to assure some complexities, but in general organizing wikimania in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia is more challenging and more expensive for people who have the money to pay their travel to travel there (let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip. If the event is in Europe, US and Canada it is much more likely that a person from there can afford his/her trip. Australia is an exception in many ways but in general it is expensive for the majority of the partcipants).
I personally believe the real criteria to choose where to host Wikimania should be a positive impact. If organizing Wikimania in a location can bring resources (volunteers, brains, fundings, content...), boost projects, involve communities it does make sense to organize it there even if it is much more expensive than in other location. I personally believe our goal should not be to put our flag in a new location but to make the best impact where Wikimania takes place. And let’s get ready to invest more (money, time, difficulties) if it makes sense.
Wikimania needs to change its selection process. My experience (and the experience of others) is that the current system is not a healthy system. We are putting teams one against the other and hurting people we do not want to hurt: we want everyone to win and to be involved in different capacities in the Wikimedia projects and in Wikimania.
Montreal has been chosen because it is a very good site, with a very good team, a safe place, and for the first time in a francophone location; by selecting as rapidly as possible the venue for 2017 we provide the Montreal team enough time to prepare the event and we have time ourselves to discuss and establish a new process.
The committee has met twice in the past three months and we were getting ready to announce the news. The delays are never positive and it is good that the topic is now at the centre of discussions. please do contribute to the process and the discussion about it also on meta to make sure its more easily recorded and accessible https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process iolanda / iopensa member of the Wikimania Committee and volunteer for Wikimania Esino Lario
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
*Kind regards,Reem Al-Kashif* _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Hi joe,
Thanks for you reply ^_^ I get it now.
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 23:38, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I think Iolanda means that, even though Ghana and Senegal are both in Africa, the cost of travelling from one to the other is still very high—probably too expensive for many people.
Joe
On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 at 21:08 Reem Al-Kashif reemalkashif@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Iolanda,
This is Reem from Egypt. Thank you for your email. I'm silently following the threads of emails about this. But would you please explain to me what do you mean by the following:
let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it
is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip.
I'm not sure I understand why (maybe something is lost in translation as I'm a non-native speaker of EN) ^_^
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 18:58, Iolanda Pensa iolanda@pensa.it wrote:
dear all the rotation we have set for Wikimania guarantees that at least once every three years we do not pick the easiest, cheapest and safest location.
The reality is that US-Canada and Europe are the easiest and cheapest locations. Well, with Esino Lario we have done our best to assure some complexities, but in general organizing wikimania in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia is more challenging and more expensive for people who have the money to pay their travel to travel there (let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip. If the event is in Europe, US and Canada it is much more likely that a person from there can afford his/her trip. Australia is an exception in many ways but in general it is expensive for the majority of the partcipants).
I personally believe the real criteria to choose where to host Wikimania should be a positive impact. If organizing Wikimania in a location can bring resources (volunteers, brains, fundings, content...), boost projects, involve communities it does make sense to organize it there even if it is much more expensive than in other location. I personally believe our goal should not be to put our flag in a new location but to make the best impact where Wikimania takes place. And let’s get ready to invest more (money, time, difficulties) if it makes sense.
Wikimania needs to change its selection process. My experience (and the experience of others) is that the current system is not a healthy system. We are putting teams one against the other and hurting people we do not want to hurt: we want everyone to win and to be involved in different capacities in the Wikimedia projects and in Wikimania.
Montreal has been chosen because it is a very good site, with a very good team, a safe place, and for the first time in a francophone location; by selecting as rapidly as possible the venue for 2017 we provide the Montreal team enough time to prepare the event and we have time ourselves to discuss and establish a new process.
The committee has met twice in the past three months and we were getting ready to announce the news. The delays are never positive and it is good that the topic is now at the centre of discussions. please do contribute to the process and the discussion about it also on meta to make sure its more easily recorded and accessible https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process iolanda / iopensa member of the Wikimania Committee and volunteer for Wikimania Esino Lario
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
*Kind regards,Reem Al-Kashif* _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
No problem. :)
Joe
On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 at 22:52 Reem Al-Kashif reemalkashif@gmail.com wrote:
Hi joe,
Thanks for you reply ^_^ I get it now.
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 23:38, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I think Iolanda means that, even though Ghana and Senegal are both in Africa, the cost of travelling from one to the other is still very high—probably too expensive for many people.
Joe
On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 at 21:08 Reem Al-Kashif reemalkashif@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Iolanda,
This is Reem from Egypt. Thank you for your email. I'm silently following the threads of emails about this. But would you please explain to me what do you mean by the following:
let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that
it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip.
I'm not sure I understand why (maybe something is lost in translation as I'm a non-native speaker of EN) ^_^
Best, Reem
On 5 October 2015 at 18:58, Iolanda Pensa iolanda@pensa.it wrote:
dear all the rotation we have set for Wikimania guarantees that at least once every three years we do not pick the easiest, cheapest and safest location.
The reality is that US-Canada and Europe are the easiest and cheapest locations. Well, with Esino Lario we have done our best to assure some complexities, but in general organizing wikimania in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia is more challenging and more expensive for people who have the money to pay their travel to travel there (let’s be very clear: if the event is in Ghana, this does not mean that it is possible for a person from Senegal to afford his/her trip. If the event is in Europe, US and Canada it is much more likely that a person from there can afford his/her trip. Australia is an exception in many ways but in general it is expensive for the majority of the partcipants).
I personally believe the real criteria to choose where to host Wikimania should be a positive impact. If organizing Wikimania in a location can bring resources (volunteers, brains, fundings, content...), boost projects, involve communities it does make sense to organize it there even if it is much more expensive than in other location. I personally believe our goal should not be to put our flag in a new location but to make the best impact where Wikimania takes place. And let’s get ready to invest more (money, time, difficulties) if it makes sense.
Wikimania needs to change its selection process. My experience (and the experience of others) is that the current system is not a healthy system. We are putting teams one against the other and hurting people we do not want to hurt: we want everyone to win and to be involved in different capacities in the Wikimedia projects and in Wikimania.
Montreal has been chosen because it is a very good site, with a very good team, a safe place, and for the first time in a francophone location; by selecting as rapidly as possible the venue for 2017 we provide the Montreal team enough time to prepare the event and we have time ourselves to discuss and establish a new process.
The committee has met twice in the past three months and we were getting ready to announce the news. The delays are never positive and it is good that the topic is now at the centre of discussions. please do contribute to the process and the discussion about it also on meta to make sure its more easily recorded and accessible https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_selection_process iolanda / iopensa member of the Wikimania Committee and volunteer for Wikimania Esino Lario
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
*Kind regards,Reem Al-Kashif* _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
--
*Kind regards,Reem Al-Kashif* _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
On 4 October 2015 at 22:01, aude aude.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees.
Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho.
Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience.
Likewise, accommodation in western, northern and southern Europe is also pretty expensive.
I'll agree that having US/Canada hold the conference every three years is a bad idea for the community, even if convenient for the WMF and their staff.
Cheers, Katie
Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open,
engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have
a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the
United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
(I mean in terms of applying for and receiving visas, sorry if that wasn't clear.)
*Joseph Fox* enwp.org/user:foxj
On 4 October 2015 at 22:42, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 4 October 2015 at 22:01, aude aude.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I also think having wikimania in Canada + US every three years is too often. The visa process for the US is hugely annoying, difficult and results in excluding attendees.
Also, while great and important to have wmf support for wikimania, imho it is important that ultimate leadership for wikimania each year is from volunteers. I am not sure the volunteer community in the US + Canada has this capacity to be lead organizer every three years. Maybe once every four years is reasonable, imho.
Also, stuff like accommodations tends to be a bit expensive in the US compared to elsewhere, and flights within north America (especially Canada) are also somewhat pricey in my experience.
Likewise, accommodation in western, northern and southern Europe is also pretty expensive.
I'll agree that having US/Canada hold the conference every three years is a bad idea for the community, even if convenient for the WMF and their staff.
Cheers, Katie
Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open,
engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have
a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the
United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
2015-10-04 23:01 GMT+02:00 aude aude.wiki@gmail.com:
On Oct 4, 2015 8:10 PM, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future.
I am not convinced this is a good idea, given this definition of regions.
Eastern Europe should definitely be considered along with western, southern, ... It is pretty cheap to travel there from elsewhere in europe, probably venue + accommodations are cheaper, and most important we have significant communities there with track record of organising regional conferences. I would also be tempted to include north Africa and middle east with europe. (after all, the next European hackathon is being held in Israel)
I think that the mistake comes from the UN macroregion system, which is unfortunately still affected by Cold War considerations for what it may concern the "Eastern Europe" macroregion.
Moving from James' idea of a three-years rotation between regions, and taking into account Katie's idea, we may define three rotating areas: * First year: Europe + Middle East + North Africa * Second year: Americas + Oceania * Third year: rest of Asia + Sub-Saharan Africa
This will give Global North a slight statistical advantage over Global South (all of Europe is included in GN) the first year, a 50/50 chance the second year, while on the third year it will be Global South to have a slight statistical advantage over Global North.
Luca Martinelli, 05/10/2015 00:22:
Moving from James' idea of a three-years rotation between regions, and taking into account Katie's idea, we may define three rotating areas:
- First year: Europe + Middle East + North Africa
- Second year: Americas + Oceania
- Third year: rest of Asia + Sub-Saharan Africa
I'd rather group regions by the likelihood that people in those regions come together and cooperate on an event (once their region is chosen): it's no use selecting a region if 5 "big" competing bids then emerge for it.
Europe should definitely be (at least) in Council of Europe terms. Americas have Iberocoop + all the spanish-speaking USA people and might indeed be considered as a whole.
As for Africa, I'd really like to see a map of the continent where distance is measured by flight cost... we might discover that the centre of Subsaharian Africa is Dubai, Paris or Frankfurt. My search results were poor: * https://whoee.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/fun-with-maps/ * http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2006/01/map_of_europe_i.html
As for the rest of the world, no idea...
Nemo
James,
Can you describe the source of your authority, and that of the committee, to make such a decision? Do you have the approval of Lila and/or the Board? Which movement organizations, including those responsible for funding endeavours like Wikimania, did you consult?
~Nathan
On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 2:10 PM, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Hi,
I think dividing Europe into two is not a good idea.
More precisely dividing it by the Cold War logic is a bad idea as it has ended 26 years ago.
As of today, -ALL- "Eastern Bloc" countries except Albania are part of the European Union, including even some ex-Soviet states (the Baltic countries). Plus a third of ex-Yugoslavia.
The current geographical distribution would definitely make it hard to have a Wikimania in the eastern part of the EU if there was one in the western part of it the year before.
Just play with the thought that after a "western event" in say Vienna, CEE comes and the best proposed location would be Budapest, Hungary.
I am pretty sure many would consider the locations "too close" in a number of ways (culture, geo, EU, etc) and would prefer a location further east, to have a "better distribution".
I'd be therefore more happy with one single "EU and immediate surroundings" category -Everything west of the Russian border that is considered "Europe" plus some "close enough" locations, like the European part of Turkey (Istanbul&west), St Petersburg and its surroundings in Russia (but Moscow not!), Iceland, etc.
Follow real geography instead of some now obsolete political geography.
Europe proper (meaning as above), Middle East, Central Asia (inc Caucasus, all "-stan"s, Russia except St Petersburg etc), SE Asia, Africa, South-, Central-, North America, etc.
Think outside the box. Not too much though, but definitely a bit.
Balázs 2015.10.04. 20:11, "James Forrester" jdforrester@gmail.com ezt írta:
All,
TL;DR: The Wikimania Committee and the WMF Community Engagement department will be working on coming up with a new process for venues for future Wikimanias, which we will be seeking input from the community in the next few months
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.
The existing bidding process has developed over time. It has become unwieldy and hard work for the community and staff. It demands that people pour a huge amount of effort into building local teams, contracts and institutional relationships only for rejected bids' work to be left unused. A lot of pressure is put on volunteers to try to work on logistics rather than dream about what would make a great programme for our communities. Each year, the jury has to decide on a venue based on what is presented by each group divisively, rather than what we as a community could come together and build.
The process is too short-term, setting out venue much less than two years ahead (often only just more than twelve months in advance). This greatly increases expenses when other similar conferences plan locations out many years ahead. This makes it impossible for us to be strategic about location, prevents us from arranging co-location with like-minded conferences, and it means that some areas of the world are ignored when they could provide great Wikimanias.
Consequently, from now on the Committee will pick an area for Wikimania four to five years in advance, from the following (provisional) list. The years in which we have already held Wikimanias in these areas are shown in parentheses
Western, Northern, and Southern Europe (2005, 2014)
Canada and United States (2006, 2012)
Asia-Pacific (2007, 2013)
Middle East and North Africa (2008, 2011)
Latin America (2009, 2015)
Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2010)
South Asia (none yet)
Sub-Saharan Africa (none yet)
Oceania (none yet)
The Committee intends to deliberately rotate between these areas to make sure we allow as many community members to attend as cheaply as possible.
The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.
Locating Wikimania in other continents does not assure that participants from these areas can attend more cheaply. Nevertheless, to support the movement worldwide, we do want to ensure that, every third year, Wikimania will take place neither in Europe nor North America.
We propose that a sequence of "Western, Northern, and Southern Europe", "Canada and United States", and one of the others every three years, picked out several years into the future. Beyond the first two areas, we may not visit some as often as others. (I have not listed Antarctica as an area to which we will rotate, which may well be a disappointment to members of the British Antarctic Survey and others in that location.)
More widely, we would like to encourage Wikimedia conferences as open, engaging and fun community meetups, alongside the annual Wikimania conference. I know that several chapters run country-specific conferences each year, which is a good move. I think that there should be at least one annual Wikimedia conference in each of these areas. This would help newer editors know that there are people like them nearby without requiring the existence of, or putting too great a demand on, every national chapter or other local affiliated body. In some areas like Africa where the distances are great, multiple regional conferences may make sense.
As part of the new system of location selection, we will no longer have a 'bidding' process. Instead, the Committee invites people interested in leading or helping to run a Wikimania to contact us on-wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania, or via the wikimania-l list. If you think that you know a great team, venue or concept for holding Wikimania, in your area or anywhere else, please discuss the possibilities with us. We will work with interested community members to narrow down the selection to a particular venue.
Our next few locations will thus go like this:
2016: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – Esino Lario in Italy
2017: Canada and United States – TBD
2018: TBD – TBD
2019: Western, Northern, and Southern Europe – TBD
2020: Canada and United States – TBD
2021: TBD – TBD
As you can see, as well as picking the 2017 venue in Canada or the United States, for which we have a candidate lined up, we need to select very quickly the area for 2018, and after that, 2019 and beyond. There are several areas we’ve outlined above that have never had a Wikimania, and others where we have not visited for some time. We would love your thoughts on the areas on which we should focus for 2018 and beyond. We’ll also be asking in future for your thoughts about how to structure the programme of each Wikimania to make it as good as it can be for you, for others, and for our community overall.
Thank you.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Chair, Wikimania Committee
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org