I believe we all know now by now that the Committee regrets the delay in posting a recommendation about the process change for venues/hosts for Wikimania. There was no intention to blindside anyone or to not seek input from the community. We should have updated the bid timeline to reflect that things were being discussed and might be possibly changed. (I was also wanting more time to investigate whether the idea of Montreal for a 2017 venue could become a reality e.g., meeting space, prices, hotels, etc confirmed, etc.)
I have reached out to the Perth bid, and also to Josh Lim about a bid from the Philippines (although it wasn't listed) about the future and to offer whatever support they need. If anyone else is thinking about hosting a future Wikimania, I would like to strongly encourage you to get in touch directly with me before starting. We are not happy about wasting any volunteer time. I have worked closely with recent groups in preparing their proposals and it was worked well-- saving time and effort on both ends.
In the near future I will be working with the Foundation and the Steering Committee to support development of a clearer process going forward. Siko has outlined some of that in her posting. And as Richard has said below, I am usually very prompt in responding, but I also have a lot on my plate right now that are taking precedent-- like the financial reporting from the past two Wikimanias to attend to, survey results, preparing for a site visit to Montreal (and I am part-time).
I look forward to working with everyone in the coming months and years on improving the conference and meeting the community needs.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
Ellie
Ellie Young Events Manager Wikimedia Foundation eyoung@wikimedia.org
Message: 2 Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2015 15:27:35 +0100 From: Richard Symonds richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Biggest disappointment from Wikimania 2017 Message-ID: <CACHSVDwdU4tm8=YWm0v3jMxTbtZY= XcGCNEaYLvqVTY3acggXA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Yaroslav,
To be fair to Ellie (and speaking as an outsider), she is extremely busy and usually answers direct emails quite quickly, but doesn't usually get involved in big community discussion threads on mailing lists because she spends a lot of her time travelling (and thus, I suspect,using a mobile device).
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
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On 6 October 2015 at 15:21, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2015-10-06 06:25, Gnangarra wrote:
This has been going on for three days, yet not one person involved in
this
decision has take a moment to reachout personally to the people who
worked
on bids, They have tabled justifications on list discussions, they have changed the status of Meta pages but not once have they given anyone the courtesy of owning the mistakes that have caused this, not even the WMF has made any personal attempt to help reconcile the damage at a more
personal
level..
To be honest, I can not recollect a single instance WMF people ever apologized to the community for any decision, even when it was
immediately
clear that they screwed up badly (like removing admin rights on WMF Wiki etc). I do not expect it this time. I do not see Elly Young in any of the Wikimania threads.
Cheers Yaroslav
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