Both Buenos Aries and Alexandria got their conference venue for free, so that was, and remains our target. If we can’t then we’re going to need fairly serious reductions on accommodation to be competitive. (And even then it’s going to be hard, Alexandria got accommodation for $6 per person per night.) Or of course a major UK only sponsorship deal. Gary Kirk had some success last year with Jim Knight (junior schools minister), so I’m going to pursue that avenue myself unless Gary wants to volunteer to pick up old contacts. I’ll also pester my google UK contact to see if he can give me a slightly better way in than he did last year. (Does anyone have any Amazon UK/Microsoft UK/Ebay UK/etc contacts?)

Jonathan Zittrain is leaving the OII which marginally reduces our chance of getting anything serious from Balliol/them on the accommodation front but we’ll see, he has promised to get some of his DPhil students onboard which should give us a voice on the inside hopefully. Balliol’s master is away on holiday for the next week or so, so it will be a while before we hear anything on that front.

Tom

From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Hardy
Sent: 14 July 2008 17:51
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010

2008/7/14 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>:

2008/7/14 Tom Holden <thomas.holden@gmail.com>:

> 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!

Not sure either. Last year an organiser for the previous year's wikimania offered to allow access to their budget[1]. I think it would be useful to look at that and see what sort of figures we are likely to be looking with regards to the various expenditures we would face in putting on such an event.

I would further suggest that having the event run directly or indirectly by a charity would be a big advantage as I believe that having charitable status would mean sponsorship from corporations could have some form of tax relief for them as they would count as charitable donations. That is of course only if such conferences are included in the approved charitable aims of wikimedia uk, (I haven't checked the charter etc so am not sure if this is the case). If not then wmuk funds could not be spent on this, and donations would have to be made directly to whatever entity was organising the event.

[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-September/032997.html

--
James