Alan, have you seen someone who's from Ottawa and involved in any Wikimania bid process? I think there's no interested person from Ottawa who wants to host Wikimania (or at least not a big crowd).
Andrew
"Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:04:34 -0800
> From: saintonge@telus.net
> To: wikimedia-ca@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-Canada] Fwd: Montreal wikimania bid
>
> Alan Walker wrote:
> > I vote for Toronto, the center of the universe. All joking aside,
> > wouldn't Ottawa be a better venue?
>
> I think that a key positive element in the previous Toronto bids was the
> availability of U of T student residences at a reasonable cost. Many of
> the delegates at Wikimania are students with student budgets. If we
> want to have more delegates from poorer countries scholarships need to
> be provided. Plane fares are already a huge expense for these students.
> The Bauen accomodated Wikimanians for $30 per person per night, and you
> can't get that by leaving people on their own to find hotel rooms in a
> big city. Delegates also like to stay near each other so that they can
> get together over drinks after the official sessions are over for the
> day. They go to their rooms to drop off the day's paperwork, and come
> back down to meet up with whatever others happen to be in the lobby.
> This doesn't work when the hotel rooms are scattered.
>
> Both Montreal and Toronto have the advantage of having major airports.
> Ottawa, despite being the capital, still has a smaller proportion of
> direct international flights. That means we need to insure that people
> can easily get from either Toronto or Montreal to Ottawa. In Egypt
> Alexandria has two international airports, but that doesn't change the
> fact that most of the air traffic goes through Cairo.
>
> Ray
>
> >
> > 2010/1/16 Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net <mailto:saintonge@telus.net>>
> >
> > Zana Gordon wrote:
> > > I have to admit I am new to this discussion, but is there
> > anything wrong
> > > with a joint venture - east and west - I am from Vancouver and I
> > think I may
> > > welcome the challenge.
> > >
> > Considering that there has been little done to maintain a series of
> > local meetups in Vancouver, I don't think that we are ready for
> > the kind
> > of sophisticated organization that Wikimania requires. I tested the
> > waters when I came home from the Frankfurt Wikimania, and there wasn't
> > much enthusiasm then; I even floated the idea of something in Seattle
> > without success. It takes having attended a Wikimania to see
> > how much
> > goes into a conference that draws delegates from about 50 countries.
> >
> > From Vancouver there's not much difference between flying to Montreal
> > of flying to Toronto.
> >
> > Ray
> >
>
>
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