2008/8/7 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>:
> The OII have unfortunately decided that they cannot spare either staff or
> funds for Oxford's bid, as they have too much else going on. This is
> certainly a shame, but it is by no means the end of the Oxford bid. It just
> means we have to redouble our efforts looking for other sources of funding.
> They had never committed definitely to anything so given the potential scale
> of what was asked of them, we can't begrudge them this particularly.
>
> They are happy to say that the conference is 'in collaboration with the OII'
> which may be of some use getting funds from other sources and raising our
> credibility, and they have also offered us the OII's seminar rooms, which is
> a nice gesture, if basically useless to us due to their size. They've also
> offered to help recruit and identify speakers which may be of some value
> still as a selling point for our bid.
>
>
>
> So all in all not great news, but not the end of the world either.
Oh well, thanks for trying. Their help with speakers could be good.
Once we're a little further on with plans we should start asking round
at seeing who we can get to express an interest in speaking (it's far
too soon for commitments, I'd expect).
The OII have unfortunately decided that they cannot spare either staff or
funds for Oxford's bid, as they have too much else going on. This is
certainly a shame, but it is by no means the end of the Oxford bid. It just
means we have to redouble our efforts looking for other sources of funding.
They had never committed definitely to anything so given the potential scale
of what was asked of them, we can't begrudge them this particularly.
They are happy to say that the conference is 'in collaboration with the OII'
which may be of some use getting funds from other sources and raising our
credibility, and they have also offered us the OII's seminar rooms, which is
a nice gesture, if basically useless to us due to their size. They've also
offered to help recruit and identify speakers which may be of some value
still as a selling point for our bid.
So all in all not great news, but not the end of the world either.
Tom
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...
Arkady says Wikimedia Educational Resources' records will be updated soon (go, Arkady!!). I've raised the finance/charity related things with the board, and by email with Cary and WMF, so far so good. We're also all waiting for news if Alison's bank idea shortcut works, but they probably won't have a reply this week.
Oxford sounds great. When will they be ready to come back to us?
Other stuff...
The student club idea's great, but will a
research/editing club really be appealing or what would attract people
and make them stick past college?
If we did seek startup donations of "a sum of your choice between £150 and £250" contingent on charity
registration and say payable over 12-15 months to kickstart the charity, how many would be
interested?
I've also done some work on a basic presentation for the banks before now that we could adapt, if anyone wants to start a team to work on presenting and promoting, and designing promotional material. I've got a lot of commercial experience in the conference business that might help (mostly commercial conferences and 10 years ago but I might have an odd contact from those days for organization, information and planning ideas).
Re materials, if we're researching venues and accomodation, then promotional materials helps everyone when we're pitching for support and facilities, we can put them online to get early traction for the bid. Things like theme + banners, handouts, multimedia
presentations, mail-outs/leaflets can help a lot if we need to
pitch to anyone and we'd need them anyway. Anyone with flash, web, marketing and promotion, or graphic design skills who wants to grab this and get the team going?
Paul Sinclair.
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There two wiki related meetings in August in London.
The next London Wikipdia Wikimeet (12 in the series) is on Sunday
10th August at 1pm (13:00) at Penderel's Oak (near Holborn Tube).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/London_12
And on Wednesday 13th August there will be a London Wiki Wednesday
meeting at NYK Line, 17th Floor, CityPoint, 1 Ropemaker Street,
London EC2Y 9NY. This meeting is restricted to 45 people, and there
will be badges on the door so signing up on this page
http://www.eu.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london_wikiwed_13_august_2008
is a good idea.
I intend to be at both events.
Regards,
Gordon
--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///
Dear everyone.
I am in possession of a book, "The University of Glasgow Old and New".
(Partial details:
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/july2008.html). My copy is
#22 of 50, I believe there was also a cheaper edition of 150
or 250. I really want to make this available to Wikipedia, but need help:
The book is relatively tightly bound, and the spine gets in the way of the
scanner. I need someone with either a scanner that doesn't have a one-inch
bit of plastic between the scanner bed and the edge of the scanner, thus
cutting off the photos, or a photographer able to take high-quality photos
of the photos.
I would also like to donate copies of some very large (A0 and A1) medical
posters, from the series "Supplement to the Anatomy of Labour". These are a
bit delicate, though not ridiculously so, but I'd be uncomfortable running
them through a strip scanner. If someone has a sufficiently large flatbed,
or can take photos of them, let's do this.
Please help, I've been trying to get these to Wikipedia for 6 months now.
Thank you,
Adam Cuerden
Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I?m not sure paying for commercial closed source software is really
> necessary at this point. There are plenty of open source alternatives:
>
>
It certainly would not be the policy of WMUK to pay for closed-source
commercial packages when there is an abundance of open-source packages
available.
Regards,
Arkady
2008/7/31 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>:
> As a first step it would be good to get a list of people who are prepared to
> put some time into this.
I can certainly add my name to this list. I'm at the "other place",
so getting to Oxford is something of a trial in term-time, but I am
certainly up for putting in some hours.
Thanks for your work in getting this moving!
--
Sam
PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key
A great idea from the WMAU list. University students could have a
spectacular time taking photos and writing stuff. Particularly as they
tend to have *rather nice* libraries to hand.
The main thing they would need is a few individuals at the university
in question willing to form the club, etc. Not sure what a Wikimedia
chapter could do in the first instance, but I'm sure someone will
think of something.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2008/8/1
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Chapter activity ideas
To: Wikimedia-au <wikimediaau-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> ...
> *? I thought of this last night, maybe encourage "Wikimedia Editors
> Clubs" in schools/universities? like enable local groups that are
> extremely light-weight on the admin side.
This is a brilliant idea, even more so because I separately thought of
in another post to this list just an hour ago!
University students are a group that are pour hours into Wikipedia and
other projects, both in reading, creating and maintaining. There are
also many existing clubs which we could work with. e.g. the
photography club at UoM would likely be interested in working closely
with Wikimedia Commons, and also to provide good quality photos for
Wikipedia articles about Melbourne and Australian flora and fauna.
http://union.unimelb.edu.au/clubs/special-interest#foto
There will also be Uni clubs existing or forming around "free content" themes.
--
John
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Tom,
it might be a good idea to wait until the preparations have progressed a
little more. Currently I see a few minor problems in approaching major
sponsors:
* The official UK bid city has not been decided upon yet
* Location in Oxford (venue) and dates have not been set
* Official bid on wiki is underpopulated currently
and a few more I can't remember of the top of my head. The reason I see this
as problematic is that when questions are raised, there is little "official"
information to rely on. This is why for one we should decide which UK city
is going to be the official bid city and then of course also the venue.
Once some of this has been worked on, not only by you but all involved in
the discussion and process, I think it would be the right time to approach
major sponsors, such as telco companies (BT, Virgin...), UK branches of
large Internet multinations (Google, Yahoo! etc) as well as local companies
and start-ups (Zopa, web hosters, ...) and obviously any other companies
that might potentially be interested in sponsoring such an event.
Now to the most important part: As this is a task that can be done
non-locally I would be willing to help along with it, for example creating
an "information pack" (introduction, key facts, links and contacts) that can
be e-mailed with a cover letter to potential companies and then if requested
also mailed. I believe that this task is too large to be just manned by one
person and would like to do this, if I am asked to get involved, in a small
team and open to suggestions, contacts and so on.
Ian
[[User:Poeloq]]
2008/8/1 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>
> At least for the moment it makes sense if Kaihsu and I focus on the
> Oxford centric jobs (e.g. dealing with the OII/venues/accommodation/local
> sponsorship) but I really need someone to take the lead on looking for big
> national corporate sponsors.
>
>
>
> I already seem to be spending about half my day on the bid, so it would be
> good if someone could take this task off my hands. (It's pretty damn crucial
> that someone does it.) It basically just entails firing off lots of emails
> explaining what Wikimania is, why we need money, how they might benefit,
> what we'd like to get them from.
>
>
>
> It would also be good if someone could start work on improving our
> presentation. E.g. knocking up a banner, perhaps making a dedicated sub-page
> of our bid to show sponsors explaining who we are, what Wikimania is etc.,
> tidying up the main bid page.
>
>
>
> A final task for someone else (I'll do this eventually if no one else
> volunteers) is to start knocking up a Gantt chart working backwards from the
> bid date. Copying Buenos Aires's chart would be a good start.
>
>
>
> Tom
>
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