effe iets anders wrote:
Hello everybody,
As you all know, Wikimania is only in one place in the world. And well, lots of people are unable to attend. On #wikimedia , we had a healthy discussion about the possibilities of side-events. Both national as continental events had supporters, but the biggest contra was that it could be a competitor for the WIkimania. That is why this idea came up:
A annual world wide Wikimania, about august
Lots of national events, as far as countries or parts of countries
of groups of countries care to orginize them: about october, november
- Continental Events, about march. Of cource as far as the
continents feel ok to orginize them. Only one event per continent of this size.
In principle this is fine, and setting the date and place of Wikimania sooner would make that kind of planning easier. Below that, the continental and national levels of organization are likely to be different in each continent. In North America, a national conference miight as well be continental with a day set aside for the three nations to meet separately to deal with their own special concerns. Where Europe would have national conferences, we here would be inclined to less formal regional meetups. It is certainly more convenient for me to drive two hours to Seattle for such a thing than to go to Eastern Canada, and yet the combined area of Oregon, Washington and the southern 10% of British Columbia is a big as the largest European country.
That national events are wanted, is proven already numerous times by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Nederland and also in China, Poland and other countires. People like to meet eachother, and have a good conference in their own language. They can speak much more freely, mostly about a smakker group of projects, and share thoughts more easily.
Language based conferences may require a different level of organization, and a different time slot. (End of December perhaps?) It is not a problem for English since Wikimania is primarily conducted in English anyways. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese and Arabic are all spoken over a large geographical area. Even Russian remains as a common tie for much of the former Soviet Union, but for that we could have our own definition of continent. I don't know how the Dutch would handle Surinam and Curaçao.
The continental events could be like wikimania, so a conference mainly for the active contributors, but could also get another character. The orginizers should really think well about this. What kind of public do you want to attrack, what kind of event do you want it to become. The major pro for this event is that the travelcosts will be reletively low, and people will go somewhere with somehow, minor or less, the same culture.
Essentially yes
The big Wikimania would mainly be for the world wide public, would be for sharing thoughts such as "how do you guys do this, and you?". People from all the communities could meet eachother, and a lot of mixing of thoughts could happen. However, it is very well possible that Wikimania would change it's identity over the years, as the tradition is not that old.
The role of Wikimania does need to be reviewed. In some respects it's a PR showcase, and media event that draws attention from the entire world. It did that very well at both Frankfurt and Boston. It also does a good job of presenting a big picture of what is happening in Wikimedia around the world.
In addition, it should have part of it's time closed to all but active Wikimedians. That should be the major policy and planning event of the year. It should be able to do almost everything that the Frankfurt retreat did, but without leaving the impression that this event is only for the invited few. Those who are interested in that kind of thing would still need to find their way to Taipei or wherever the conference is held in future years, and a preference for continental rotation of Wikimania would insure that policy is not overwhelmingly influenced by the views of one continent.
Ec