From personal experience in Taiwan, I found it enormously helpful to be able
to meet other Wikimedians from so many different places. (Japan, Taiwan, Australia, India, the Middle East, Europe, Canada, the U.S., and many other places) As well, there are positive benefits of cultural exchange, and outreach to Egypt and other nearby countries also has positive benefits.
There will always be a certain percentage of attendees that are from the local country or region, who otherwise will not attend. As mentioned already, for whatever reasons, the Arabic Wikipedia is still small (compared to the number of speakers of the language). This is an excellent opportunity to outreach to them and grow the community.
Then in 2009, we will have Wikimania in another place (maybe Atlanta or Toronto?), which will draw different people from the local region. Though, I'm sure there will be people from Taiwan and Egypt who will continue to come to Wikimania, regardless of where it is. In my experience of organizing conferences, I find this to be the case.
-Aude
In this thread, I see people raising the issues regarding the Egyptian government. As we know, it's not a democracy and the Egyptian people did not choose the government. The government there is more repressive, but not so much so (like Burma) that we can't have Wikimania there. To penalize Egyptian Wikimedians (and those from Jordan and other nearby places), for what their government does is not cool with me.
At the same time, I know plenty of people from Europe, Canada, the Middle East and elsewhere in the world... I don't necessarily approve of things my government does, and it's important that they distinguish me (as an individual American), from what my government does (including providing enormous amounts of aid to the Egyptian government and other undemocratic regimes).
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0412/p07s01-wome.html http://www1.usaid.gov/our_work/features/egypt/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061201...
Thinking about that, if you are not happy with repressive things the Egyptian government does, maybe it's time to write congress, ask questions of the U.S. presidential candidates, etc. about our policy of supporting such regimes.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/ http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
-Aude
One more issues I see people raising the issue that they can't afford to travel to Alexandria. I think this is something that we can help address, through sponsorships and providing scholarships to help Wikimedians attend (who otherwise cannot afford to).
I know that the Alexandria team has already thought about sponsorships. I think there is very good opportunity this time for sponsorships. There are organizations out there who support cultural exchange between the U.S. and other countries, and the Middle East, as well as the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Enough of my talking here, but I would be more than happy to get started on this and do something. I have some contacts with organizations in Washington, who I think can provide me leads on this. I'm sure there are similar organizations in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc. Let's be proactive and get working on this.
-Aude
Aude wrote:
In this thread, I see people raising the issues regarding the Egyptian government. As we know, it's not a democracy and the Egyptian people did not choose the government. The government there is more repressive, but not so much so (like Burma) that we can't have Wikimania there. To penalize Egyptian Wikimedians (and those from Jordan and other nearby places), for what their government does is not cool with me.
Well from what I'm gathering the scary part is that the vocal ones get jailed. Now, if you have someone like Jimmy Whales show up in a country that he has previously denounced the policies of the government of which has a tendency to put those people like that in jail, how can we be certain that the government isn't going to have some people that attend the conference who will start arresting people that are speaking or having conversations about things that the Egyptian government wants oppressed?
I attended the first two conferences and I remember some very heated and controversial conversations that people enjoyed being apart of and discussing (including problems of the current global wars, the censorship of wikipedia in certain counteries, etc.) and it would be very disconcerting to have to be watching what we say in egypt to make sure we don't end up in jail.
so in short, I believe the question is what guarantees will the attendees and speakers have that they will not be arrested even if they say something that the government doesn't agree with?
Important note: I'm going off from the limited knowledge of what I've read in this thread and of some of the concerns listed with the bid and a brief search on google about some of the arrests made since 2000 that were publicized. I do not know the current state of politics of Egypt. If this isn't how the government normally operates then just tell me to shutup :)
cheers, Kyle
Kyle Lutze wrote:
it would be very disconcerting to have to be watching what we say in egypt to make sure we don't end up in jail.
so in short, I believe the question is what guarantees will the attendees and speakers have that they will not be arrested even if they say something that the government doesn't agree with?
Common sense is your best guarantee. The best advice for anyone who travels to any other country is, "Don't act stupid." If you stand in the middle of Tien An Min Square in Beijing and start making public speeches condemning Chinese human rights policies, you're asking to be arrested... especially if you do it in Chinese instead of English. If there is a problem with human rights in another country it's up to the people there to fix it. The circumstances where foreign meddling might be justified are so exceptional, that those places can never reach the point of even asking for a Wikimania.
If attendees start carrying on about the lack of Egyptian democracy, the easiest countermeasure is not to report it (in Arabic) in the local media. They know these foreigners are only there for a short while, and the last thing they would want is an international incident. That would not be good for Egypt's very important tourist industry.
Ec
Arresting foreign nationals for reasons like these would result in a diplomatic disaster for Egypt, at the very least, which is not something which it can afford.
The Arab Republic of Egypt is not a democracy in the complete sense of the word, but it is not controlled by a military junta as in Burma.
What we are trying to do here is to promote free culture and open content movement all over the world. Neither can we expect ourselves to change the world in one go, nor can we afford to miss out on a variety of venues for our conferences, which actually symbolise free culture and open content everywhere. Restricting ourselves to a couple of places, which are real and true democracies would give us a lot less options indeed, and would also imply that we are not really going anywhere with spreading our ideals.
The "Free culture" movement can only succeed if we become tolerant of different cultures and propagate our goals to the world.
--Anirudh
On 11/5/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net > wrote:
Kyle Lutze wrote:
it would be very disconcerting to have to be watching what we say in egypt to make sure we don't end up in jail.
so in short, I believe the question is what guarantees will the attendees and speakers have that they will not be arrested even if they say something that the government doesn't agree with?
Common sense is your best guarantee. The best advice for anyone who travels to any other country is, "Don't act stupid." If you stand in the middle of Tien An Min Square in Beijing and start making public speeches condemning Chinese human rights policies, you're asking to be arrested... especially if you do it in Chinese instead of English. If there is a problem with human rights in another country it's up to the people there to fix it. The circumstances where foreign meddling might be justified are so exceptional, that those places can never reach the point of even asking for a Wikimania.
If attendees start carrying on about the lack of Egyptian democracy, the easiest countermeasure is not to report it (in Arabic) in the local media. They know these foreigners are only there for a short while, and the last thing they would want is an international incident. That would not be good for Egypt's very important tourist industry.
Ec
Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org