Hi all,
With great regret I inform you that I can not attend Wikimania 2014. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office of UK informed me today that decided not to grant the visa. They say that the letter of support Wikimania should say that I was speaker and that they fear that I'll go to stay to live in UK.
For me it is a great pity the situation, I already had everything ready. For your information, my submision is: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Context_visualization_f... and be presented on Sunday, August 10th at 14:30.
I hope not cause serious problems and that space can be filled.
See you at Wikimania 2015 in Mexico.
Regards.
*--MIGUEL ALEJANDRO PARRALINKEDIN http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=32465802&trk=tab_pro::BLOG http://decabyte.blogspot.com/*
:-(((
A. On Aug 5, 2014 7:06 PM, "maparrar" maparrar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
With great regret I inform you that I can not attend Wikimania 2014. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office of UK informed me today that decided not to grant the visa. They say that the letter of support Wikimania should say that I was speaker and that they fear that I'll go to stay to live in UK.
For me it is a great pity the situation, I already had everything ready. For your information, my submision is: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Context_visualization_f... and be presented on Sunday, August 10th at 14:30.
I hope not cause serious problems and that space can be filled.
See you at Wikimania 2015 in Mexico.
Regards.
*--MIGUEL ALEJANDRO PARRALINKEDIN http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=32465802&trk=tab_pro::BLOG http://decabyte.blogspot.com/ *
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A friend of mine just let me know that he had visa issues as well. <"Edit conflict": same person Pine referenced>
I remember hearing that people from the middle east had trouble getting into the country for 2012 in DC. I heard of at least one person from India not being able to get into Hong Kong. Now people from Latin America are having problems getting into the UK.
I am not sure what the answer is; whether we should be encouraging organizing chapters to be significantly more aggressive in their communication with visa granting authorities, or possibly selecting future venues with an eye towards selecting countries that have fewer geopolitical rivalries and are less paranoid about immigration. If national government tourism agencies are sponsoring our events, we need to let them know too. Visa problems will certainly factor into my willingness to support future events in countries where it has been a problem before.
Also, not that I think they woul ask, but the WMF certainly shouldn't ask scholarship recipients that were denied visas to return any money that they could not get back from the airline and hotel.
My condolences, and hope to see you all in 2015.
Sven
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