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