So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up in the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in peoples' minds in 2016.
As the facilitator of the 2016 session discussing Wikimania, I don't recall the "main rationale" of the discussion being about "governance and accountability" and instead remember many more issues that stood out.
For example, the prominent phrases from the first part of the meeting include the following, with most of the notes echoing these themes:
- inspiring, and connecting
- opportunity for different communities to meet
- important to use opportunity to do outreach
- empower important volunteers
Sorry, previous email sent half-finished.
Sorry, don't think I expressed myself particularly well. Yes, those themes appear to have been present in the meeting, but they were also very much present in the WMF's consultation, which concluded that they could probably be fulfilled just as well by moving to a one-year-in-two rotation between Wikimanias and other regional gatherings.
The thing that was present in the in-person meeting, but not from the consultation exercise, was the statement from all the chapter chairs saying that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and accountability.
Then of course there was a lot of enthusiasm about the idea of continuing Wikimania from people attending Wikimania who have attended many previous Wikimanias. Putting a load of people present at an event in a room and saying "should this event continue to happen?" is not great for rigorous decision-making.
(BTW, I'm not saying I favour the other option - the regional conferences seem to be happening anyway)
- The Wikimedia Conference (WMCON) has pivoted to become the Wikimedia
Summit. In the process, they announced "learning and capacity-building will not be part of the program." [2] Therefore I'd argue that the onus is even *more* on conferences like Wikimania to facilitate this.
That would be good! But it kind of returns to the point that Wikimania's purpose is still fairly ill-defined. Personally I would really welcome Wikimania becoming explicitly focused on learning and capacity-building, because currently its focus changes every year and often when a focus is articulated it's not necessarily followed through.
Chris