I rather fear that hosting Wikimania is a bit like the Olympics or the Eurovision song contest, a dubious honour that saps more from the host organisation than it generates. That said if there are a keen group of people who want to organise a UK Wikimania I have no objection to it being here in 2014 or 2015.
Better still we should encourage those who want to organise a UK Wikimania to get involved in the team running DC in 2012 and/or help Manila or whoever gets 2013 (by 2013 we really should be taking Wikimania back to the far East rather than yet another event at this end of Eurasia).
II think that a UK bid for 2014 or 2015 would be much more impressive if the bidders included people who'd played key roles in making 2012 and 2013 a success. If the UK was to fund flights and accommodation for UK Wikimanians who made those events a success then I'd consider that money well spent.
One criticism of the Wikimania process is that it involves reinventing the wheel, so a bid for 2014 that included "accommodation booking will be organised using the same software as 2012 run by the UK 2014 bid member who is currently running it for 2013" or "scheduling team includes ***** who has been a full participant in program scheduling for 2013" would impress me and I hope others.
Another feature of some Wikimanias has been linguistic diversity and even a non-English channel in the program. Now we could try for that, perhaps with a collaboration with Wikipedia France. But I'd prefer a more global approach - perhaps with skype channels and translation on demand so that we or the Foundation provide scholarships for people who speak a wide range of languages and can then offer skype channels in various languages based on demand from Wikipedians around the globe.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
On 25 July 2011 14:22, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
On 24/07/2011 16:11, Christopher Cooper wrote:
> In the longer-term, the chapter would benefit greatly if the UK > hosted the conference, of which it has not yet done so.
Ah, yes, that old chestnut....
Gordo
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Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com http://www.joly.org.uk/ Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!