On 10/10/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
So you don't think that if we held the next one in Antarctica that it would be less useful? .... This should be a question of degree.
But...NO ONE lives in Antarctica (permanently, anyway). There likely wouldn't be any "locals" attending at all. Location would be one of many problems, and there'd be virtually no benefit.
I suppose Antarctica - being in no small degree a self-selecting population of educated bored people - might have one of the highest proportions of the local population predisposed to like us ;-)
There is also the question of who would front the money for a large regional event... though that could be resolved.
I thought Wikimania paid for itself. If the Foundation gave the Atlanta bid team, for instance, permission to hold the conference anyway, at the same time as Wikimania, wouldn't there be enough interested people to make it happen?
Almost certainly. You would probably get less interest from outside the WMF community - due to the lack of high-profile big-name speakers - and many more dedicated or more affluent people would travel to the "big event", but I don't see any real reason you wouldn't be able to pull a couple of hundred people together.
I would be less convinced that it would work for Cape Town - there, the proportion of local attendees was always going to be lower than Atlanta, and if you're flying abroad you may as well pay a bit more and go to the main event* - but for Atlanta, or for Turin last year, sure.
(The same could be said of any sizable regional bid a continent or so away from the chosen location)