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...