I am very sorry, it seems this email never made it to the lists yesterday. Gmail or mailman ate all my emails sent to lists yesterday.

I *did* send it yesterday.

Delphine ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com Date: Sep 15, 2006 10:50 AM Subject: Wikimania 2007 - Bidding cities shortlist To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@wikimedia.org, wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Translators translators-l@wikimedia.org

Dear Wikimedians,

first an foremost, the jury would like to thank all the people who have worked on putting together those bids. We all know it is a hard task and that it takes both time and ressources that volunteers already give for Wikimedia altogether.

We have chosen 4 cities for the shortlist:

Alexandria, London, Taipei, Torino

The bids of Orlando, Hong-Kong and Istanbul were unfortunately not precise enough in what opportunities there are especially for conference venues. Singapore's bid almost made it to the shortlist but the lack of opportunities for common accommodation made it fall through.

The jury will be asking questions on the talk pages of the chosen bids, please do make sure that you answer them. And do not hesitate to ask us questions too.

We also encourage the cities that have not made it to the shortlist, and even those who have, to start thinking about opportunities for the coming years and especially 2008. We expect to be chosing the city for 2008 within a couple of months, so for those who are already at it, work your contacts and opportunities, for those who have not started thinking, it's time to come up with fresh ideas!

Again, thanks to all of you who have worked hard on these bids, and as we say in French, "que le meilleur gagne ! " (May the best win!).

We will have a public meeting with the bidding teams, the jury and and whoever wants to join on IRC in the #wikimania channel on freenode on Saturday 23rd September at 15.00 UTC.

Stay tuned for more and happy further bidding!

Cheers,

Delphine

PS. Merci to the translators in advance for forwarding this to the appropriate lists. -- ~notafish