Anthony wrote:
What's the goal of Wikimania? Depending on the answer to that, a location away from the larger user clusters might even be seen as a good thing.
It's an opportunity to see the human side of the ogres that you meet on line. It cements relationships among active people. It can draw significant people to a world event when they might not otherwise attend. It gives global exposure to otherwise local ideas. It's good publicity about our world-wide scope.
You really should try to attend one.
Considering that there are only about 500 attendees each year out of the millions of people ever involved in the project (and probably tens of thousands of whom would attend if it happened to be located in their city), maximizing the number of attendees certainly doesn't seem to be the goal.
The number of attendees is so tiny compared to the number of people who are involved in the project, I really don't think it much matters where to go.
Remember that Frankfurt drew more Europeans; Boston drew more Americans, and Taipei drew more from Hong Kong and Australia.
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.
Maybe we don't need to go quite so far south. If a US based Wikimania can happen in Georgia, we should not neglect the possibility that the Antarctic rotation be in South Georgia. :-)
Obviously a conference that lots of people can't go to is less useful ... I think there is something wrong when we're holding conferences and directly involved people are nearly a minority at them.
As someone else suggested, hosting local Wikimanias is a good option. Why not get behind Atlanta (I assume you live in the US as you agree with Greg's comments) and organise a US Wikimania maybe a couple of weeks before or after the official one.
Honestly, if we fork the conference with a US version (and potentially an offset European version) there is a substantial risk that the popularity of these events will endanger the success of Wikimania proper.
As long as "Wikimania proper" gets first dibs on the speakers, and is the one that the board attends, I don't see that happening.
I don't see that there needs to be a fork at all. Wikimania would continue as an annual event, but there are 11 other months in the calendar. Local or regional get-togethers don't need to be completely tied to national boundaries. Here in the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland sector of the I-5 corridor I can go anywhere on fairly short notice, and at relatively small expense. The geographical size of Canada and the United States turn national events into major efforts. I don't know how the Aussies view travel between Sydney and Perth.