On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:31 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Ed Summers wrote:
2011/5/10 Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com:
The Foundation will help out as it's able, I'm sure; but it has never taken legal responsibility for funding/organizing/etc. the previous Wikimania conferences, and is quite unlikely to do so now, for a variety of legal and financial reasons.
Ok, I didn't know that the Wikimedia Foundation hasn't assumed legal responsibility for previous Wikimania conferences. It seems odd to me, given that Wikimania is the premier event for the foundation. But if that is really the case, it makes perfect sense why there was this rush to incorporate as a non-profit.
Yes, it's an odd situation. The Wikimedia Foundation hosts Wikimania's website(s), owns the Wikimania trademark/logos, does the publicity for Wikimania (to a large extent, at least), and sends quite a bit of its staff to the conference, but does not actively involve itself in preparing/organizing the conference. It's bizarre.
As far as I know, the only reason this is so is "tradition"; I assume the first cities to bid really wanted to do it themselves, and WMF only had a handful of staff anyhow--the groups putting it on wanted it to be a community-organized conference. (I try to stay far away from anything resembling event planning and don't share this desire, but I appreciate that others do.)
Now it's still a community-organized conference--though WMF does "actively involve" itself, having a fairly large chunk of both funds and staff time allocated to assisting. (Please do ask for it when needed.) But for WMF to take on the final responsibility for managing and funding Wikimania, it would also want more control--final say over the venue and arrangements, staff or a designated group handling sponsorships, etc. (I doubt it would be an annual event if this were the case.)
-Kat