2008/7/14 Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com>om>:
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...