2010/7/31 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 31 July 2010 16:32, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
OK, but how exactly? Why did people have to fly to another continent to start a chapter in their own country? Did they use Wikimania as an opportunity to talk to the people who started the pioneering chapters (Germany, France, Italy) and learned from them how to start them? Anything else?
You said "personal meetings between Wikimedians", not specifically Wikimania. Do you mean only Wikimania, or do you mean personal meetings in general?
Other examples are welcome, too, but i refer mostly to Wikimania, since my focus now is organizing one.
By "Wikimania" i mean "a general worldwide meeting of Wikimedia project editors, developers, WMF staff and other interested parties".
The advantages of local community meetings are rather obvious; i participated in many and organized one. Hacking days are also great, of course, but they are not general like Wikimania. It is also much easier and cheaper to organize such meetings, though.
No-one needs to convince me that Wikimania is great. It is. But examples of past - 2009 and earlier - experiences that grew into successful projects will help us define a better rationale and motivation for having a Wikimania and to make the next ones even better.