On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
Thanks, it is a step in the right direction indeed.
Although a bit more
breakdown would be helpful,
I am working on that....
I'm guessing this also highly fluctuates year
by year.
Some observations:
A huge amount of money goes into flying WMF around the world (321k resp.
383k), which doesn't even take into account (I'm assuming) all the hours
invested into it.
The expenses related to staff time to attend and other staff support within
the Foundation is
not accounted for here. (We have included my time, and contract staff
support that we pay to
assist the local team.)
I'm assuming 'donations' includes
sponsorships. That amount is less than I
would have expected/hoped.
Not sure what you mean by 'donations'. Donors to WMF do support Wikimania
since we
heavily subsidize the event (registration fees are VERY low and don't cover
the costs... that has
been a policy to keep it very affordable. Sponsorships are from
corporate sponsors
like
ask.com, google, wikihow, etc. These relationships are managed by me
The local
host team also is involved in trying to get sponsorships, which is often
very difficult. I'd
welcome more suggestions and help in finding more sponsors.
Registration income is low, as expected (the
burden would just be moved to a different part of our movement: the
community)
'wikimania direct' is quite expensive, to be honest, and much more than I
would have expected. However, it does include catering, which is always an
expensive chunk (5days * 1000 people will even at a quite low 30 dollar per
day easily give 150k, not even counting the parties etc).
Catering is usually our highest direct cost. In London Wikimania '14, it
was the rental of
the Barbican Centre venue.
Many of these costs would still exist if you split the event up in multiple
events spread out. WMF would still want to fly everywhere (board has to
meet anyway, WMF staff wants to engage anyway, committees have to meet
somewhere), catering won't be much cheaper if spread over multiple events,
and don't underestimate the manpower it would take to organise all those
events - relatively it may be even more.
I do think we could consider some different models for how we produce
conferences
that would be more reasonable cost-wise. And yes, there might be
additional expense
for staffing, but this could be offset depending on the format, location
and size
of the conference.
So looking at these figures, I can agree that it should be possible to do
it for less, I'm less certain though whether the proposed splitting up
would significantly reduce the total costs for everything that is included
here.
Maybe we should do the "experiment" as suggested and see!
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Sam Klein <sjklein(a)hcs.harvard.edu>
wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical
experience should be very
helpful
for future discussions!
Best,
Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling <
cschilling(a)wikimedia.org
wrote:
> Hey folks,
> Ellie has put together a summarized
budget including revenue and
expenses
> > from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've
gone
>
ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
> [1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014>
> [2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> >
> > > Itzik writes:
> > >
> > > > If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great
if
the
> > WMF and the local team will share the costs.
> > >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
> > >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget
> > > Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
> > > place without a real budget breakdown.
> > > > To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ million USD" does not make
sense.
> > >
> > > Agreed 1million%. It would be important to see a rough cost
> breakdown, &
> > > compare that to the best-budgeted Wikimanias.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <
polimerek(a)gmail.com>
> >
wrote:
> >
> > > 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>om>:
> > >
> > > > FUDCons
> > >
> > > Also it is hard to compare Wikimanias with FUDCons as it is
> > > a) much smaller (usually bo more than 200 attendees)
> > > b) divided by regions - for example in 2015 there were 3 FUDCons
> > > (Argentina, India, Spain) and 2 Flocks (NY and Kraków) - so they
are
> > > rather like our Iberecop or CEE
meetings than the global
conferences.
>
>
>
> Thanks. Similar to regional events perhaps, not Wikimania. Still
worth
> comparing budgets perhaps, if available.
>
> But I was wondering about the trend over time: whether extensive
funding
> > during the RedHat days made the events less useful, in the years
after
> > that
> > > funding was reduced.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > And also Fedora developers have many potential sources of
external
> >
funding
> > > - mainly from IT companies which uses free software and want to
apply
> for
> > > their specific needs and for whom they quite often work.
> > >
> >
> > True. But attendees to GLAM or education conferences also tend to
have
> > many potential sources of funding -
mainly from archives or
educational
> > or
> > > technical companies who curate knowledge or develop education
tools.
And
> we
> > have IT industry partners who are similarly willing to support
> Wikimanias.
> > Not entirely dissimilar.
> >
> >
> > > But anyway, Fedora offers scholarships for attendees, see:
> > >
> >
> > Yes, wiki conferences should as well - that part of conference
funding
is
> > important. Even early Wikimanias with almost no WMF support had
> > significant scholarship pools.
> >
> > S
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Chris "Jethro" Schilling
> I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)>
> > Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation
> > <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>
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