Wikimediauk-l July 2008

wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org

34 participants
92 discussions

Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010
by Thomas Dalton 06 Aug '08

06 Aug '08

2008/7/14 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>: > I've just heard back from the booking officer at the town hall (an employee, > not a councillor) with a quote. Obviously if the Lord Mayor could help us > then these figures would be revised downwards. > > First bit of news is that the weekend of the 7th of August is booked already > (as is the 3rd of July), so we'd probably want to have it at the very end of > July instead. > > Second bit of news is that there's a 20% discount if we book all of the > public rooms, so on a 6 hour per day basis he's quoting £10569 (compared to > £2844 for just the main hall). I honestly don't know if that's a big number or a small number, does anyone have anything to compare it to? Either way, it's good to have a number! > The final, and perhaps most important thing to note is that, and I quote: > "If your organisation is a registered charity I may be able to offer up to > 50% discount on the standard fee." I will e-mail back to see if he'll accept > Wikimedia's not for profit status, but I very much doubt he will. Is this a > sufficient motivation to do everything conceivably possible to hurry our > application for charitable status? Or perhaps to just commit to creating a > new charity solely for the running of Wikimania 2010. They might accept foreign charities, it's certainly worth a try. If there is any reason in the world (the juries still out!) then creating a new charity just for the conference should be more work than finishing sorting out the one we already have in the pipeline. Hopefully we'll hear something from WM UK soon...

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Thomas Dalton 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

2008/7/31 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>: > Ack! Sorry. No offence was intended. I'm really not sure who exactly does > count as a VIP. I was just kidding - Cary's not important at all. ;) > Which raises a good question: > > How many people do we expect to have to put up in hotels? It's the kind of > thing that can eat into your budget pretty quickly. Once we have a rough > indication of numbers we could start to investigate getting discounts. It's a good question, you're right. Cary?

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Thomas Dalton 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

> For the tier below VIPs which I presume you fall into Ouch! Well, I think you're very important, Cary! ;)

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Cormac Lawler 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

On 7/31/08, Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Balliol is just for accommodation and social spaces. People from the OII > are going to get in contact with its master imminently to see how they could > help. We will however need at least one other college for accommodation > though, which the OII is also investigating for us. A £50 per person per > night figure sounds like the upper bound at the moment (fingers crossed). > Thanks for all your work Tom, and this update. Though this accommodation situation is another thing I would identify as already being a point of concern. One of the criticisms of this year was that attendees' accommodation was scattered across different places, meaning that social potential was compromised. Of course, it was still liveable with :-) - but just to point out that it would probably be a "perceived weakness" of the bid. If there is any way of accommodating people all together, and as near to the venue as possible, that would be best. These practical questions are the things most likely to swing a bid IMHO, more than partnerships with prestigious organisations (even though these are of course *great*). Cormac

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Thomas Dalton 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

Excellent news! Well done. I agree we need to assign tasks, that's something which hasn't been done in previous years and has led to nothing getting done - leaving people to get on with whatever they want works for writing an encyclopaedia, it doesn't work for organising a conference. As for a timetable, that's a little difficult at this point without the bidding timetable having been announced. We can put together a rough estimate, though.

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Al Tally 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

2008/7/31 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> > Balliol is just for accommodation and social spaces. People from the OII > are going to get in contact with its master imminently to see how they could > help. We will however need at least one other college for accommodation > though, which the OII is also investigating for us. A £50 per person per > night figure sounds like the upper bound at the moment (fingers crossed). > > > > I am using 700 as our guideline figure for attendance, so on that basis the > town hall would be just about big enough. The alternative, as I've mentioned > before, is either Town Hall + Exam Schools or Sheldonian + Exam Schools. > > > > Tom > Thanks , that's what I thought. For those who use IRC, I've set up a channel on the freenode network: #wikimania-oxford Cheers, -- Al Tally (User:Majorly)

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Al Tally 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

2008/7/31 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> > I've just got back from meeting the OII's director and two of his > associates with Kaihsu Tai (User:Kaishu). > > > > All in all it was a very promising meeting. They are keen to help because > they believe in the project more than because they are looking to get out > anything particular out of it, which is the ideal situation really (which is > not to say that they weren't also excited by the probably press coverage). > They were not quite ready to commit definitely yet but they seemed very keen > and they expect to be able to give me a definite answer by mid-September. > They understand how much work it is to run a conference of this size due to > their contacts with the Berkman Centre at Harvard (something User:SJ who ran > the Harvard bid had expanded on to me in a very useful chat on the phone > last night) and seem prepared to put in a fairly significant amount of > effort themselves (starting with costing accommodation for us over the next > few weeks and beginning to draw up a budget). The suggestion was raised at > the meeting of partnering with other university departments which should > increase the amount the university could help us financially. This is > something I will be investigating over the next few weeks. They have > suggested several other potential sponsors which I shall be updating the bid > page with and contacting in turn if no one else volunteers to. > > > > It is really looking like we could potentially present a pretty damn > compelling bid. From going through three years of conference abstracts last > night I got the firm impression that the Harvard/Berkman bid was the most > interesting of those three years, and the OII potentially offers a very > similar flavour of conference. > > > > So this is now serious. Unless there's strong opposition in the next 24 > hours I'll be removing all mention of UK bids other than Oxford since I > don't get the impression they're going anywhere. Even if the OII decided > this would not be feasible for them I do not see there being a better UK bid > at this point in time than Oxford. > > > > We also need to start assigning people to clear, definite roles and to > start drawing up a timetable working backwards from the conference date to > begin to get an idea of when things need to be done by. (Both suggestions of > SJ.) > > > > As a first step it would be good to get a list of people who are prepared > to put some time into this. It would be particularly useful if some of the > "Wiki celebrities" on this list (or at least people who are well known on > en.wiki) would sign up to help since I imagine their name will carry more > weight with the bidding panel than mine. > > > > We have a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to make this happen, but > it's far from impossible. > > > > Tom > This is great news. I agree we should assign roles/make a timetable. I also definitely think we should stick with Oxford from now on. -- Al Tally (User:Majorly)

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Report back from meeting at the OII + Help request
by Tom Holden 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

I've just got back from meeting the OII's director and two of his associates with Kaihsu Tai (User:Kaishu). All in all it was a very promising meeting. They are keen to help because they believe in the project more than because they are looking to get out anything particular out of it, which is the ideal situation really (which is not to say that they weren't also excited by the probably press coverage). They were not quite ready to commit definitely yet but they seemed very keen and they expect to be able to give me a definite answer by mid-September. They understand how much work it is to run a conference of this size due to their contacts with the Berkman Centre at Harvard (something User:SJ who ran the Harvard bid had expanded on to me in a very useful chat on the phone last night) and seem prepared to put in a fairly significant amount of effort themselves (starting with costing accommodation for us over the next few weeks and beginning to draw up a budget). The suggestion was raised at the meeting of partnering with other university departments which should increase the amount the university could help us financially. This is something I will be investigating over the next few weeks. They have suggested several other potential sponsors which I shall be updating the bid page with and contacting in turn if no one else volunteers to. It is really looking like we could potentially present a pretty damn compelling bid. From going through three years of conference abstracts last night I got the firm impression that the Harvard/Berkman bid was the most interesting of those three years, and the OII potentially offers a very similar flavour of conference. So this is now serious. Unless there's strong opposition in the next 24 hours I'll be removing all mention of UK bids other than Oxford since I don't get the impression they're going anywhere. Even if the OII decided this would not be feasible for them I do not see there being a better UK bid at this point in time than Oxford. We also need to start assigning people to clear, definite roles and to start drawing up a timetable working backwards from the conference date to begin to get an idea of when things need to be done by. (Both suggestions of SJ.) As a first step it would be good to get a list of people who are prepared to put some time into this. It would be particularly useful if some of the "Wiki celebrities" on this list (or at least people who are well known on en.wiki) would sign up to help since I imagine their name will carry more weight with the bidding panel than mine. We have a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to make this happen, but it's far from impossible. Tom

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK
by Thomas Dalton 30 Jul '08

30 Jul '08

2008/7/30 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>: > That would be superb. Alison could you possibly make an official request > asap? Seconded. This sounds like just the solution we need. > Once we've done that I hope there will be no delay in starting to accept > memberships, and if by some unfortunate circumstance we still haven't had an > AGM at that point, the immediate calling of one. Charity status takes a while, there are lots of checks to go through before you get the rubber stamp. I see no need for a bank account in order to hold an AGM, though - people can either pay their membership fees in cash, or even better, arrange a system of deferring fees until there is a bank account. The AGM needs to be held pretty soon anyway, and I really don't like Alison's idea of holding a mini-AGM and deferring everything to an EGM. AGM's are held annually for a reason, they shouldn't be deferred. What's the latest on the Companies House records inaccuracies? It's a really serious matter, I'd really rather not see the chapter and, potentially, the board getting fined...

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Oxford: new venue?
by peterc＠cix.compulink.co.uk 30 Jul '08

30 Jul '08

In-Reply-To: <p06240800c4b37199f54b(a)[192.168.116.8]> Is there a reason that people are going for university facilities and not hotels? Science Fiction Conventions tend to be hotel based.

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Wikimediauk-l July 2008