I found this the most interesting part of the recent IdeaLab discussion about changing the Wikimania framework. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania
"*The total spend by WMF for Wikimania 2014 in London and 2015 in Mexico, including all travel, accommodations, scholarships, staff support and direct conference expenses, was ~$1 million USD*"
This is a pity. Small grants to support a con is one thing, but this is too much.
Please let's stop encouraging conferences that do not cover their own costs. A good conference series pays for itself, including its scholarship pool. There are plenty of communities our size or larger with wonderful, regular conferences of hundreds or thousands of people, which break even or turn a small profit.
FUDCons are an interesting case in point. As I understand it, there was a time when RedHat basically sponsored the events, with scholarships for all active contributors and extensive grants. This was ok, but skewed participation. Then the lavish sponsorship stopped. Attendance dropped; community members felt unloved. Then after a time, this passed, and everyone attended again. (Perhaps a core Fedora contributor can describe this more accurately!)
SJ
Hoi, To quote a Wikipedia maxim .. "citation needed". It is one thing to say that something is costly and, it is. It is another to say that Wikimania is expensive. It is expensive when it does not provide a value relative to costs.
When you compare with Red Hat, you talk about professional people in relation to Red Hat. This is not what our community is. They are volunteers and while some have the money to pay their own way, this is certainly dependant on where people are from. Given that we suck at supporting the "global south", I am afraid that your thinking is in terms of money and not in terms of value and lost sight what our community is.
The comparison with Red Hat and your point is flawed. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 06:06, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I found this the most interesting part of the recent IdeaLab discussion about changing the Wikimania framework. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania
"*The total spend by WMF for Wikimania 2014 in London and 2015 in Mexico, including all travel, accommodations, scholarships, staff support and direct conference expenses, was ~$1 million USD*"
This is a pity. Small grants to support a con is one thing, but this is too much.
Please let's stop encouraging conferences that do not cover their own costs. A good conference series pays for itself, including its scholarship pool. There are plenty of communities our size or larger with wonderful, regular conferences of hundreds or thousands of people, which break even or turn a small profit.
FUDCons are an interesting case in point. As I understand it, there was a time when RedHat basically sponsored the events, with scholarships for all active contributors and extensive grants. This was ok, but skewed participation. Then the lavish sponsorship stopped. Attendance dropped; community members felt unloved. Then after a time, this passed, and everyone attended again. (Perhaps a core Fedora contributor can describe this more accurately!)
SJ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food and lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF Board members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF affiliates or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost of admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel time by train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low percentage of people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences which have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly higher percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more modest budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that merit careful reflection.
Pine
While everyone keeps looking at the cost thats not the question we should be asking, because even if the costs were reduced to 500,000, 100,00 or even 10,000 that doesnt reflect the value we get from the in person contacts, the global connections the sharing of experiences, learning of concepts, even the moral support and reenergization that occurs. When I talk to people who have attended Wikimanias nobody says that was a waste of my time, I learnt nothing, I wish I could get back those 5 days that is a better indicator of its value to the community.
On 10 February 2016 at 17:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food and lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF Board members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF affiliates or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost of admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel time by train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low percentage of people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences which have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly higher percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more modest budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that merit careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English Wikipedia has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value proposition. The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food and lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF Board members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF affiliates or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost of admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel time by train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low percentage of people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences which have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly higher percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more modest budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that merit careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks compete with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter system to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_... https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English Wikipedia has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value proposition. The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food and lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF Board members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost of admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly higher percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more modest budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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"We also do not have a strong chapter system"
This has always puzzled me, because I am a firm believer in the chapter system, despite its faults and limitations. Isn't it time to address this for the more active areas of the USA?
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks compete with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter system to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_... https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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The US may be too geographically spread out to develop a robust chapter system. We have vibrant chapters in a few dense population areas. Wikimedia District of Columbia is particularly awesome. But for most US editors there isn't a critical mass of editors in some areas. Often we work with with chapters that are geographically distant. There's at least two of us on the Board of Directors of WMDC who don't live particularly close to DC.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com wrote:
"We also do not have a strong chapter system"
This has always puzzled me, because I am a firm believer in the chapter system, despite its faults and limitations. Isn't it time to address this for the more active areas of the USA?
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks
compete
with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter
system
to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_...
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty
of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hi Wikimedians,
The "chapter system" in the US and North America is a work in progress.
In addition to the two full regional chapters (New York City - where I am, and Washington, DC), there are also usergroups for the New England, Cascadia/Northwest, and North Carolina Triangle regions, with other groups still in the process of formation.
There is a historical difference from the large-budget Western European chapters and the US situation, which has been more grassroots and never participated in things like fundraiser payment-sharing, and the funding for WMF HQ in San Francisco indeed shouldn't be conflated with funding of US volunteer-based activities.
If anyone else is interested in organizing regionally in any part of the US / North America, feel free to get in touch; Wikimedia NYC and others would be very glad to help you :)
Thanks, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:15 AM, Robert Fernandez wikigamaliel@gmail.com wrote:
The US may be too geographically spread out to develop a robust chapter system. We have vibrant chapters in a few dense population areas. Wikimedia District of Columbia is particularly awesome. But for most US editors there isn't a critical mass of editors in some areas. Often we work with with chapters that are geographically distant. There's at least two of us on the Board of Directors of WMDC who don't live particularly close to DC.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com wrote:
"We also do not have a strong chapter system"
This has always puzzled me, because I am a firm believer in the chapter system, despite its faults and limitations. Isn't it time to address this for the more active areas of the USA?
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com
wrote:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks
compete
with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter
system
to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always
gorging
at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_...
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed
having
more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty
of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel,
food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people
have
attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the
cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional
conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions
that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
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February is a very busy month with record number of events planned through out the United States.
Additionally, The Wiki Ed Foundation works with university based education programs including parts of the United States outside regions covered by the U.S. Chapters and User groups.
So, although we are doing it differently in the U.S. than other parts of the whole, it seems to be working pretty well today and has the potential to grow as more areas are covered by User Groups.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Wikimedians,
The "chapter system" in the US and North America is a work in progress.
In addition to the two full regional chapters (New York City - where I am, and Washington, DC), there are also usergroups for the New England, Cascadia/Northwest, and North Carolina Triangle regions, with other groups still in the process of formation.
There is a historical difference from the large-budget Western European chapters and the US situation, which has been more grassroots and never participated in things like fundraiser payment-sharing, and the funding for WMF HQ in San Francisco indeed shouldn't be conflated with funding of US volunteer-based activities.
If anyone else is interested in organizing regionally in any part of the US / North America, feel free to get in touch; Wikimedia NYC and others would be very glad to help you :)
Thanks, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:15 AM, Robert Fernandez <wikigamaliel@gmail.com
wrote:
The US may be too geographically spread out to develop a robust chapter system. We have vibrant chapters in a few dense population areas. Wikimedia District of Columbia is particularly awesome. But for most US editors there isn't a critical mass of editors in some areas. Often we work with with chapters that are geographically distant. There's at
least
two of us on the Board of Directors of WMDC who don't live particularly close to DC.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com
wrote:
"We also do not have a strong chapter system"
This has always puzzled me, because I am a firm believer in the chapter system, despite its faults and limitations. Isn't it time to address
this
for the more active areas of the USA?
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com
wrote:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants
get a
fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks
compete
with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter
system
to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always
gorging
at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_...
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed
having
more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have
plenty
of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel,
food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to
a
significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people
have
attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or
WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the
cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's
travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional
conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences,
including
regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a
more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions
that
merit
careful reflection.
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Hoi, There is only one argument that I cannot refute about American money. It is American money that gets us the bulk of our funding. The one obvious reason is that the fund-raising is targeting the USA. When money is spend, it is spend predominantly in the USA and targeted for Wikipedia and English Wikipedia at that.
Arguably the WMF is a global organisation and spending is best allocated based on where people live. When money is targeted on where we grow, we would not spend as much on the needs of Wikipedia. We would recognise the importance of projects like Wikisource and finally give it some attention. It would benefit particularly benefit India. When the model they have adopted is introduced elsewhere, it will make many, many more books available. THAT would have a real impact educationally speaking.
Given the small size of many communities, it is important that they benefit from the things we already have but the thing that is so easily forgotten is the road to get there. That road is not a universal given and it is dominated by the road English WIkipedia has taken. What I find is that people are happy where we are at. Never mind the nay sayers.
You mention chapters and we have good chapters in Europe. Sadly their impact on Wikipedia is neglible because they are "not part of the community" and what they do is largely fringe.
Really English and Wikipedia is over served. IMHO the law of diminishing returns applies. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 16:43, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks compete with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter system to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_... https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hi Andrew,
*For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a
fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships.*
Actually you are looking at the old numbers. Both Wikimanias 2015 and 2016 uses a new method of selection. Now, the Global North*[1] *has 25% of all scholarships, and the Global South*[2]* has 75%. Now that you have to compete with most of the rich countries in the world. And is not all: If you get into the final 10% of the "cutoff",your place may be taken away by a woman (or transgender) or a Latino, since that is the policy now*[3]*.
And I for one agree with the new policy. The effort made by a European (or American, or Canadian) to travel to a Wikimania, is something like one month of salary. For a woman from the same place will probably be 2 months (pay gap at its finest!) and for a Latino, African, or Asiatic the effort starts at 6 months and go on to even a decade*[4]* (A full decade of your salary to go to Wikimania).
So no, I don't feel sorry that most of the scholarships don't go to Americans, I'm not denying that there is poor people in rich countries but the level of poverty is *way* too different.
Béria L . de Rodríguez (a Latino Woman 😉)
_______________________________ *References:*
[1]: Australia, Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and all of Europe (including Russia, but excluding Turkey) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [2]: Asia (with the exception of Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), Turkey, Central America, South America, Mexico, Africa, and the Middle East (with the exception of Israel) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [3]: For applicants within 10% of the "cutoff", preference will be* first* given to the* non-male* applicant, and *secondary* preference to applicants from* Latin America*.(source https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process - enfasis added by me) [4]: Venezuela for example has a exchange rate Bolivar-US dolar of 1026 BSF to 1 dolar. Their average salary is 9,500 BSF (about $ 9,00) at that pace their probability to attend Wikimania on their own tends to zero. (source for the exchange rate https://dolartoday.com/)
_____
***Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.*
2016-02-10 13:43 GMT-02:00 Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks compete with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter system to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_... https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty of students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Béria L,
Yes, I was heartened to see that the formula had changed in 2015. But the complexity of the algorithm made it hard to discern what the eventual impact and numbers were for US-based editors. If you have good stats on this, I’d appreciate a pointer.
Again, I agree that Wikimania should have massive outreach goal with the bulk of the scholarships should be used to recruit new key members to our community and evangelizing the mission outside the US. When I was based in Asia, I was a big advocate for Wikimania being a way to engage new language groups.
However, I wanted to push back against the oft-heard refrain that the US is “overly subsidized” when in fact most metrics show this is not the case.
Thanks! -Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Béria Lima berialima@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Andrew,
*For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a
fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships.*
Actually you are looking at the old numbers. Both Wikimanias 2015 and 2016 uses a new method of selection. Now, the Global North*[1] *has 25% of all scholarships, and the Global South*[2]* has 75%. Now that you have to compete with most of the rich countries in the world. And is not all: If you get into the final 10% of the "cutoff",your place may be taken away by a woman (or transgender) or a Latino, since that is the policy now*[3]*.
And I for one agree with the new policy. The effort made by a European (or American, or Canadian) to travel to a Wikimania, is something like one month of salary. For a woman from the same place will probably be 2 months (pay gap at its finest!) and for a Latino, African, or Asiatic the effort starts at 6 months and go on to even a decade*[4]* (A full decade of your salary to go to Wikimania).
So no, I don't feel sorry that most of the scholarships don't go to Americans, I'm not denying that there is poor people in rich countries but the level of poverty is *way* too different.
Béria L . de Rodríguez (a Latino Woman 😉)
*References:*
[1]: Australia, Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and all of Europe (including Russia, but excluding Turkey) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [2]: Asia (with the exception of Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), Turkey, Central America, South America, Mexico, Africa, and the Middle East (with the exception of Israel) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [3]: For applicants within 10% of the "cutoff", preference will be* first* given to the* non-male* applicant, and *secondary* preference to applicants from* Latin America*.(source https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
enfasis added by me) [4]: Venezuela for example has a exchange rate Bolivar-US dolar of 1026 BSF to 1 dolar. Their average salary is 9,500 BSF (about $ 9,00) at that pace their probability to attend Wikimania on their own tends to zero. (source for the exchange rate https://dolartoday.com/)
***Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.*
2016-02-10 13:43 GMT-02:00 Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks
compete
with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter
system
to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_...
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty
of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I just want to clarify something. I apologize in advance for being pedantic.
In the US the term Latino is also applied to those of us who live in the United States who have cultural and ethnic ties to Latin America. Based on my reading of the selection process those Latinos would not be preferred applicants.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Béria Lima berialima@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Andrew,
*For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a
fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships.*
Actually you are looking at the old numbers. Both Wikimanias 2015 and 2016 uses a new method of selection. Now, the Global North*[1] *has 25% of all scholarships, and the Global South*[2]* has 75%. Now that you have to compete with most of the rich countries in the world. And is not all: If you get into the final 10% of the "cutoff",your place may be taken away by a woman (or transgender) or a Latino, since that is the policy now*[3]*.
And I for one agree with the new policy. The effort made by a European (or American, or Canadian) to travel to a Wikimania, is something like one month of salary. For a woman from the same place will probably be 2 months (pay gap at its finest!) and for a Latino, African, or Asiatic the effort starts at 6 months and go on to even a decade*[4]* (A full decade of your salary to go to Wikimania).
So no, I don't feel sorry that most of the scholarships don't go to Americans, I'm not denying that there is poor people in rich countries but the level of poverty is *way* too different.
Béria L . de Rodríguez (a Latino Woman 😉)
*References:*
[1]: Australia, Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and all of Europe (including Russia, but excluding Turkey) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [2]: Asia (with the exception of Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), Turkey, Central America, South America, Mexico, Africa, and the Middle East (with the exception of Israel) (source https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_South) [3]: For applicants within 10% of the "cutoff", preference will be* first* given to the* non-male* applicant, and *secondary* preference to applicants from* Latin America*.(source https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
enfasis added by me) [4]: Venezuela for example has a exchange rate Bolivar-US dolar of 1026 BSF to 1 dolar. Their average salary is 9,500 BSF (about $ 9,00) at that pace their probability to attend Wikimania on their own tends to zero. (source for the exchange rate https://dolartoday.com/)
***Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.*
2016-02-10 13:43 GMT-02:00 Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com:
GerardM,
As much as I agree with you on many things related to Wikimania, your statement about en.wp and USA being “over subsidized” is off base.
For the last few years I’ve held my tongue as American applicants get a fraction of 10% of all the funding for Wikimania scholarships. That’s because 10% is allocated to all of North America, so US based folks
compete
with Canadians for that small slice of the pie. Indeed, key community members from the US could not afford to go to Wikimania, and did not, because of the limited funding. We also do not have a strong chapter
system
to make up for that shortcoming, where European chapters can, and do, underwrite their local members with other funds.
I am not against the bulk of the scholarship money going to underrepresented developing markets and giving new voices a chance to attend. But I wanted to dispel the myth that Americans are always gorging at the trough.
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Scholarship_selection_...
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Selection_process
-Andrew
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, Pine with all due respect, the USA is not the problem and English
Wikipedia
has been overly subsidised, given way too much attention. Indeed having more people from the USA attend Wikimania is not a good value
proposition.
The USA and Britain is overrepresented as it is. Thanks, GerardM
On 10 February 2016 at 10:13, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
From a US perspective, even here in the global north we have plenty
of
students and middle-class participants for whom $1500 in travel, food
and
lodging plus 5 days away from work, family, or school amounts to a significant or impossible sacrifice.
Perhaps someone could tell us the statistics for how many people have attended Wikimania each year who were not WMF employees, FDC or WMF
Board
members, scholarship recipients, or financially sponsored by WMF
affiliates
or WEF. Of those people who pay 100% of their own costs plus the cost
of
admission tickets, my guess is that many live within a day's travel
time
by
train, car, or bus.
I would hypothesize that thematic conferences also have a low
percentage
of
people who pay 100% of their own costs, but that regional conferences
which
have lower travel costs for the average attendee receive modestly
higher
percentages of unsubsidized attendance.
It seems to me that WMF finacial support for conferences, including regional and thematic conferences, will continue to be the norm.
Whether $1 million is appropriate for Wikimania and whether a more
modest
budget would be appropriate and feasable are different questions that
merit
careful reflection.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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It's all very well to assume that certain demographics are wealthy. But it is simply a stereotype. Wikipedians I know personally from the "privileged" demographics vary from those who are well off through to those who are saddled with substantial debt and zero income.
But really the question is, given the funds available, and the benefits that accrue, why there should be such a limited WMF spend on Wikimania (and/or other gatherings). It is one of the few discretionary spends that we know from stories like Doc James' has a huge impact.
On 10/02/2016 16:27, Béria Lima wrote:
And I for one agree with the new policy. The effort made by a European (or American, or Canadian) to travel to a Wikimania, is something like one month of salary. For a woman from the same place will probably be 2 months (pay gap at its finest!) and for a Latino, African, or Asiatic the effort starts at 6 months and go on to even a decade*[4]* (A full decade of your salary to go to Wikimania).
Agreeing with Rich:
We actually have funds available for one international meting a year, plus one in each region, and to give scholarships covering the full cost to every committed WPedian who asks for them. ( On the whole I think most people would, from any region, thou some might not ask for anything beyond international transportation) . It would be different if we were barely making ends meet.
But tha last few years has shown that we have been obtaining each year more money than we can usefully spend, and even if we were to devote half the surplus into an endowment, there is still many millions remaining. The one thing we should not do with it is expand the WMF paid staff. (The only other practical use for the money is to expand access to paid resources)
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 2:15 PM, Richard Farmbrough < richard@farmbrough.co.uk> wrote:
It's all very well to assume that certain demographics are wealthy. But it is simply a stereotype. Wikipedians I know personally from the "privileged" demographics vary from those who are well off through to those who are saddled with substantial debt and zero income.
But really the question is, given the funds available, and the benefits that accrue, why there should be such a limited WMF spend on Wikimania (and/or other gatherings). It is one of the few discretionary spends that we know from stories like Doc James' has a huge impact.
On 10/02/2016 16:27, Béria Lima wrote:
And I for one agree with the new policy. The effort made by a European (or American, or Canadian) to travel to a Wikimania, is something like one month of salary. For a woman from the same place will probably be 2 months (pay gap at its finest!) and for a Latino, African, or Asiatic the effort starts at 6 months and go on to even a decade*[4]* (A full decade of your salary to go to Wikimania).
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2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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.
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.
But anyway, Fedora offers scholarships for attendees, see:
https://fedorahosted.org/fudcon-planning/wiki/FundingRequest
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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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
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@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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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@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@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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF) Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF) Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Thanks, it is a step in the right direction indeed. Although a bit more breakdown would be helpful, 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.
I'm assuming 'donations' includes sponsorships. That amount is less than I would have expected/hoped. 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).
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.
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.
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
The first thing that happens when you split up something like Wikimania in multiple events is you multiple the cost of WMF attendance because they need to deliver the same messages multiple times, an alternative decision to restrict who goes where you run into the issue of regions being treated differently or even getting a different message. Add to that the BoT would need to also attend multiple events in some form and other committees will still need to meet somewhere as well as have a presence at each event.
So what happens do we then say well since it'll be divisive to attend only some of the meetings WMF and BoT dont attend any that makes them more isolated from the wider community than they already are. Wkikmania may be expensive exercise and draw on a lot of resources but going smaller wont logically create combined cheaper outcomes.
On 19 February 2016 at 07:19, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Thanks, it is a step in the right direction indeed. Although a bit more breakdown would be helpful, 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.
I'm assuming 'donations' includes sponsorships. That amount is less than I would have expected/hoped. 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).
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.
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.
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com>
wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
> 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I mostly agree with a lot of the thoughts here about whether or not it would be more cost effective to do one event or multiple events, at least organizationally.
There are two things that cross my mind when we talk about this:
First, maybe one of the bigger drivers of cost is the time of year when we are holding these events. June-July-August is the most expensive period for just about everywhere in the world; March, April, September and October tend to be much less expensive in lodging, travel and direct conference costs. Maybe we need to rethink *when* we are holding Wikimania as much as anything else.
Secondly, while there are some pretty well articulated disadvantages to holding separate conferences, it is far more likely that Wikimedians who have to pay their own way (the majority of attendees, incidentally - and almost all from "Western" countries) will be able to attend a regional conference than an international one. The same scholarship dollars go much further, and so on. In a lot of cases, governmental travel restrictions are significantly lessened as well. This is something that those of us in Europe and North America easily forget - we rarely have to obtain visas and we generally have far more disposable income to attend these events.
Risker/Anne
On 18 February 2016 at 19:04, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
The first thing that happens when you split up something like Wikimania in multiple events is you multiple the cost of WMF attendance because they need to deliver the same messages multiple times, an alternative decision to restrict who goes where you run into the issue of regions being treated differently or even getting a different message. Add to that the BoT would need to also attend multiple events in some form and other committees will still need to meet somewhere as well as have a presence at each event.
So what happens do we then say well since it'll be divisive to attend only some of the meetings WMF and BoT dont attend any that makes them more isolated from the wider community than they already are. Wkikmania may be expensive exercise and draw on a lot of resources but going smaller wont logically create combined cheaper outcomes.
On 19 February 2016 at 07:19, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Thanks, it is a step in the right direction indeed. Although a bit more breakdown would be helpful, 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.
I'm assuming 'donations' includes sponsorships. That amount is less than
I
would have expected/hoped. 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).
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.
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.
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com: > > > 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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4266
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On 2016-02-18 7:18 PM, Risker wrote:
June-July-August is the most expensive period for just about everywhere in the world; March, April, September and October tend to be much less expensive in lodging, travel and direct conference costs. Maybe we need to rethink*when* we are holding Wikimania as much as anything else.
That is true, and availability of venues etc would be greatly increased.
The flipside, however, is that those months are not ones where *availability* for travel are high. Most schools/universities are in session, and employed participants (those most likely to have disposable income to travel) are generally less able to take time off they those months fall outside the general "summer vacation" period [at least in the Northern Hemisphere].
It's not clear to me that a cheaper event fewer people are able to attend is preferable.
-- Marc
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@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@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com>
wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
> 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529
4266
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Hi Ellie,
with donations, i was referring to the item on the linked financial report. Does it indeed include sponsorships?
Lodewijk
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:00 PM, Ellie Young eyoung@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@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@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com: > > > 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
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mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529
4266
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Ellie Young Events Manager Wikimedia Foundation eyoung@wikimedia.org c. 510 701 8649 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Hi Ellie,
with donations, i was referring to the item on the linked financial report. Does it indeed include sponsorships?
I've corrected-- it should just be sponsorships.
Ellie
Lodewijk
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:00 PM, Ellie Young eyoung@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@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@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos <
pharosofalexandria@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@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@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@gmail.com>
> wrote: > > > 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com: > > > > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529
4266
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-- Ellie Young Events Manager Wikimedia Foundation eyoung@wikimedia.org c. 510 701 8649 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation' or general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead. * Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board has a budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings. * The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling and finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct expenses, and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people who benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias: * 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K revenue, needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses * 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K revenue, needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses * 2016 budget: $290K? revenue + a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem on Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the out-of-pocket cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees is 10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local events has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more options for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit 1000 people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money spent goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that builds interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member at low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it were free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very helpful for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've gone ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
Itzik writes:
If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if
the
WMF and the local team will share the costs.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
place without a real budget breakdown.
To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
I have to disagree. money for WMF employee attendance is still WMF money... still coming from donations. I find it very interesting that so much more is spent on employee attendance then volunteer attendance.
From: meta.sj@gmail.com Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 20:06:28 -0500 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Reducing the net cost of Wikimania
Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation' or general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead.
- Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board has a
budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings.
- The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if
anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling and finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct expenses, and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people who benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias:
- 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K revenue,
needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K revenue,
needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2016 budget: $290K? revenue + a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem on Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the out-of-pocket cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees is 10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local events has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more options for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit 1000 people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money spent goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that builds interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member at low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it were free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very helpful for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've gone ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
Itzik writes:
If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if
the
WMF and the local team will share the costs.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
place without a real budget breakdown.
To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
> 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation' or general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead.
It usually isn't but this was prepared in response to people in earlier threads wanting to know the total WMF cost for Wikimania. When I get the detailed breakout for Wikimania direct expenses done, I will reformat/note this.
- Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board has a
budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings.
- The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if
anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling and finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct expenses, and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people who benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias:
- 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K revenue,
needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K revenue,
needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2016 budget: $290K? revenue
I think the Esino Lario team is projecting about $100K in other sources of revenue (but this will be updated I'm sure since the information on the bid is preliminary).
- a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem on Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
I could pitch that to WMF when we set fees/budget for future Wikimania's....
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the out-of-pocket cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees is 10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local events has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more options for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit 1000 people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money spent goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that builds interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member at low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it were free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very helpful for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've gone ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
Itzik writes:
If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if
the
WMF and the local team will share the costs.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
place without a real budget breakdown.
To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
> 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)%3E
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
Hoi,
Again, we have not "proven" in any way that it has to be cheap. When cheap comes at the prize of losing what is precious.
When we choose to ignore the cost of WMF travel of personnel, we effectively cook the books because the need for WMF inclusion is high. It is one of the aspects that makes Wikimania precious.
Much of the value of Wikimania is in meeting people from all over the world. This is happily ignored in a quest for a cheap experience. Thanks, GerardM
On 19 February 2016 at 02:06, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation' or general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead.
- Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board has a
budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings.
- The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if
anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling and finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct expenses, and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people who benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias:
- 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K revenue,
needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K revenue,
needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2016 budget: $290K? revenue + a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem on Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the out-of-pocket cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees is 10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local events has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more options for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit 1000 people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money spent goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that builds interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member at low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it were free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very
helpful
for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've
gone
ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
Itzik writes:
If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if
the
WMF and the local team will share the costs.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
place without a real budget breakdown.
To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com
wrote:
2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
> 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.
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4266
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An experiment I'd be more than willing to think about, is to have a 'real wikimania' every two years, and a more 'light edition' the other year (with less aimed attendance, less WMF participation, maybe less subsidised, a cheaper location, more like a wikicamp).
But, to look at that in a proper way, we have to know a bit more details, and that requires a good discussion, rather than a one-off survey.
Lodewijk
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:48 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi,
Again, we have not "proven" in any way that it has to be cheap. When cheap comes at the prize of losing what is precious.
When we choose to ignore the cost of WMF travel of personnel, we effectively cook the books because the need for WMF inclusion is high. It is one of the aspects that makes Wikimania precious.
Much of the value of Wikimania is in meeting people from all over the world. This is happily ignored in a quest for a cheap experience. Thanks, GerardM
On 19 February 2016 at 02:06, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation'
or
general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead.
- Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board has
a
budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings.
- The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if
anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling and finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct
expenses,
and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people
who
benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias:
- 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K
revenue,
needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K
revenue,
needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2016 budget: $290K? revenue + a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem
on
Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the
out-of-pocket
cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees is 10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local events has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more
options
for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit
1000
people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money
spent
goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that
builds
interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member at low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it
were
free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very
helpful
for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've
gone
ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
Itzik writes:
> If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great
if
the
WMF and the local team will share the costs. > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget > Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
place without a real budget breakdown. > To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com
wrote:
> 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com: > > > 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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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?subject=unsubscribe>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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4266
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529
4266
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I'd like to second Lodewijk's suggestion of something more like Wikicamp, though I don't think that necessarily means it has be much smaller.
I wonder how the economics of something like the Wikimedia Armenia experience would expand to a larger, more international participation.
Personally, it has always been my ambition to host a WikiWoodstock in an upstate New York campground, but that's just me :)
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 12:54 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
An experiment I'd be more than willing to think about, is to have a 'real wikimania' every two years, and a more 'light edition' the other year (with less aimed attendance, less WMF participation, maybe less subsidised, a cheaper location, more like a wikicamp).
But, to look at that in a proper way, we have to know a bit more details, and that requires a good discussion, rather than a one-off survey.
Lodewijk
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:48 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
Again, we have not "proven" in any way that it has to be cheap. When
cheap
comes at the prize of losing what is precious.
When we choose to ignore the cost of WMF travel of personnel, we effectively cook the books because the need for WMF inclusion is high. It is one of the aspects that makes Wikimania precious.
Much of the value of Wikimania is in meeting people from all over the world. This is happily ignored in a quest for a cheap experience. Thanks, GerardM
On 19 February 2016 at 02:06, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Chris & Ellie: I don't think I would include 'WMF Travel/Accomodation'
or
general Wikimedia PR in the Wikimania overhead.
- Staff have a budget for travel to events of all kinds; the Board
has
a
budget for its meetings wherever they are held; and similarly the few committees that meet in person have a budget for those meetings.
- The fact that these things happen to take place at Wikimania is, if
anything, a slight cost savings: some of the logistics of scheduling
and
finding venues can be shared, it allows coordinating press events, &c.
Lodewijk, I agree: we should be able to find ways to limit direct
expenses,
and increase sponsorships. We could also increase the number of people
who
benefit from scholarships, or are otherwise able to attend.
Focusing on direct expenses from recent Wikimanias:
- 2014 budget: $250K revenue + a $150K WMF grant. Actual: $280K
revenue,
needed $320K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2015 budget: $150K revenue + a $300K WMF grant. Actual: $100K
revenue,
needed $380K from WMF to cover direct expenses
- 2016 budget: $290K? revenue + a $250K WMF grant.
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the
post-mortem
on
Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately.
That
was for the finest event one could hope for.
Lodewijk writes:
'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...
Registration fees should at least cover the marginal cost of the event: catering & materials per person.
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.
The greater part of money spent on attending Wikimania is the
out-of-pocket
cost of flights and hotels. The cost of this for non-local attendees
is
10-50x the cost of registration. Running many simultaneous local
events
has a greater total budget, if you look only at the budgets of the organizers; but a much lower cost per person. There are many more
options
for free venues and low-cost lodging when you're not scrambling to fit
1000
people in a small region of a city. And a smaller fraction of money
spent
goes towards jet fuel.
For this reason, the same pool of scholarship funds would go farther.
Finally, I don't think we should oversell the current Wikimania as a universal connector. I too want there to be a community thing that
builds
interpersonal connections and is accessible to every community member
at
low cost. But that thing cannot be a $2,000-net-cost week-long conference. Many people could never attend such an event, even if it
were
free. It is a long time commitment, and is inevitably mono or
bilingual.
Sam (who loves the current Wikimanias, and thinks they should continue! but doesn't think they are the pinnacle of what movement-gatherings could
be)
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos <
pharosofalexandria@gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical experience should be very
helpful
for future discussions!
Best, Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've
gone
ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on
meta.
Thanks,
Chris
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com
wrote:
> Itzik writes: > > > If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be
great
if
the
> WMF and the local team will share the costs. > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget > > Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such
discussion
takes
> place without a real budget breakdown. > > To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ 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@gmail.com
> wrote: > > > 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com: > > > > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
>
-- Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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4266
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4266
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On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:06 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem on Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Yes, in Haifa we got $100K from the WMF (and $100K for scholarships handled by the WMF). The total event costs were $270K. The majority of the budget was raised by scholarships.
Ellie - "Project management from WMF" means you?
On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 6:46 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:06 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Itzik, what were the equivalent budgets for Haifa? From the post-mortem
on
Meta it looks like a $280K budget, and a $100K WMF grant. This included paying for the event coordinator, which is now budgeted separately. That was for the finest event one could hope for.
Yes, in Haifa we got $100K from the WMF (and $100K for scholarships handled by the WMF). The total event costs were $270K. The majority of the budget was raised by scholarships.
Ellie - "Project management from WMF" means you?
I wish! :-) It's actually my salary, the salary we pay for local host team project manager, and also registration services coordinator.
Ellie
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If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if the WMF and the local team will share the costs.
Until now Wikimania London didn't published anything: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
And also Mexico: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget
Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion takes place without a real budget breakdown. To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ million USD" does not make sense.
Itzik
*Regards,Itzik Edri* Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 7:06 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I found this the most interesting part of the recent IdeaLab discussion about changing the Wikimania framework. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania
"*The total spend by WMF for Wikimania 2014 in London and 2015 in Mexico, including all travel, accommodations, scholarships, staff support and direct conference expenses, was ~$1 million USD*"
This is a pity. Small grants to support a con is one thing, but this is too much.
Please let's stop encouraging conferences that do not cover their own costs. A good conference series pays for itself, including its scholarship pool. There are plenty of communities our size or larger with wonderful, regular conferences of hundreds or thousands of people, which break even or turn a small profit.
FUDCons are an interesting case in point. As I understand it, there was a time when RedHat basically sponsored the events, with scholarships for all active contributors and extensive grants. This was ok, but skewed participation. Then the lavish sponsorship stopped. Attendance dropped; community members felt unloved. Then after a time, this passed, and everyone attended again. (Perhaps a core Fedora contributor can describe this more accurately!)
SJ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel itzik@wikimedia.org.il wrote:
If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great if the WMF and the local team will share the costs.
Until now Wikimania London didn't published anything: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
And also Mexico: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget
Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion takes place without a real budget breakdown. To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ million USD" does not make sense.
I agree. Without public data, how can there be an informed public consultation.
I've asked for similar data at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania#...
Rather, we should spend more, possibly several times as much. We need much wider participation, both for Wikimania and for regional conferences, and the only practical way to achieve that is to pay full expenses for all regular participants who want to attend. It should not be an elite event. The WMF is running a considerable surplus, and we should spend 5 or 10 % of it on interpersonal live access to each other.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:02 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel itzik@wikimedia.org.il wrote:
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.
Until now Wikimania London didn't published anything: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
And also Mexico: 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.
I agree. Without public data, how can there be an informed public consultation.
I've asked for similar data at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania#...
-- John Vandenberg
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There pure costs shouldn't be the main or only argument. What does the movement pay, for what? How are the goals of the movement served by Wikimania or other conventions? The better we understand that the better our conventions are. For example, for the programme of the Wikimedia Conference Netherlands I looked at the strategy and annual plan of the association. It gives you a good feeling to see that our conference was already in line with that. :-) Kind regards Ziko
2016-02-13 7:52 GMT+01:00 David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com:
Rather, we should spend more, possibly several times as much. We need much wider participation, both for Wikimania and for regional conferences, and the only practical way to achieve that is to pay full expenses for all regular participants who want to attend. It should not be an elite event. The WMF is running a considerable surplus, and we should spend 5 or 10 % of it on interpersonal live access to each other.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:02 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel itzik@wikimedia.org.il wrote:
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.
Until now Wikimania London didn't published anything: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
And also Mexico: 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.
I agree. Without public data, how can there be an informed public consultation.
I've asked for similar data at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania#...
-- John Vandenberg
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-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:06 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I found this the most interesting part of the recent IdeaLab discussion about changing the Wikimania framework. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania
"*The total spend by WMF for Wikimania 2014 in London and 2015 in Mexico, including all travel, accommodations, scholarships, staff support and direct conference expenses, was ~$1 million USD*"
This is a pity. Small grants to support a con is one thing, but this is too much.
Please let's stop encouraging conferences that do not cover their own costs. A good conference series pays for itself, including its scholarship pool. There are plenty of communities our size or larger with wonderful, regular conferences of hundreds or thousands of people, which break even or turn a small profit.
FUDCons are an interesting case in point. As I understand it, there was a time when RedHat basically sponsored the events, with scholarships for all active contributors and extensive grants. This was ok, but skewed participation. Then the lavish sponsorship stopped. Attendance dropped; community members felt unloved. Then after a time, this passed, and everyone attended again. (Perhaps a core Fedora contributor can describe this more accurately!)
I have to say I totally disagree with your approach because of a number of issues:
* Wikimedia movement is not consisted [solely] of highly paid folk from the tech industry. * Wikimania is not an opportunity to find a job or to make business contacts. * Wikimedia movement is not the group of enthusiasts gathering because of their hobby, mostly relevant just to themselves. * Wikimedia movement is consisted of real people, not just of servers and bytes. Consequently, financially independent Wikimedia stakeholders (WMF and at least one chapter) should spend money not just on servers and bytes, but on people, as well. * While I am not against market per se, our core shouldn't be for sale. I am sure there are the ways how to make Wikimania more sustainable, but there are numerous things which shouldn't be done and it has to be carefully analyzed. (One of those being "we can't support that much of people".) * It's expensive to have a global movement. It will be just more expensive. That's the fact, not something to be negotiated. * Going into contraction without being inside of the financial crisis is something very common inside of the Wikimedia movement and utterly stupid.
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