On Nov 30, 11:03 pm, "Sarah McCulloch" <sarahmccull...(a)gmail.com> wrote: Many thanks for the offer! Let's see what people say about location and we may contact you later to follow this up. Would there be a charge for this or would it be free? Andrew

Manchester or Birmingham would be a good bet I think - nice and central to the whole UK, so everyone can get there without travelling too far. James Humphreys From: Sarah McCulloch Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 11:03 PM To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Location of AGM If you want to meet in Manchester I may be able to provide meeting space for up to 200 people in our student union/university depending on time of day. Dev 2008/11/30 AndrewRT <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk> At the last Board meeting, one of the matters that was briefly discussed what where the AGM in Jan/Feb should be held. London would seem an obvious option for me - although not geographically central, it is easy to get to from all parts of the country, Oxford would also be a good choice, as its the location for our Wikimania 2010 bid so would be a good opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the city (and have some experience organising an event - albeit much smaller event - there) I guess other cities that are fairly central could be candidates too - Birmingham was mentioned as was Manchester which is fairly central when looking at the whole of the UK rather than just England. Has anyone got any views on this? This probably wont be decide for a few weeks yet, but would be good to get peoples' views. Thanks Andrew _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l -- "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -WB Yeats -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l

If I may interject, Salford is quite hard to get to, even for locals. Proximity to Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria would be a better criterion. :) Dev 2008/12/1 Alison Wheeler <wikimedia(a)alisonwheeler.com> -- "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -WB Yeats

I said that because I suspect all the Londoners didn't realise the unhelpful location of Salford and made the effort, and those nearer didn't bother. 2008/12/1 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> -- "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -WB Yeats

2008/12/1 Michael Shilliday <mjshilliday(a)googlemail.com>om>: Online meetings of large groups of people aren't practical. If we wanted members to just vote and that's it, then it would be fine, but we would like to actually get people involved in discussion and debate. It's pretty much impossible to maintain order in an IRC channel with dozens of people talking at once.

2008/12/14 jonathan cardy <dahsun(a)yahoo.com>om>: Indeed. As I said in another thread, you can do a Q&A session that way, but not a discussion. I would hope WMUK AGMs will be more than just the membership quizing the board and will actually involve the membership having a say in how the charity is run (and not just by getting to vote for the board).

Absolutely. I was thinking along similar lines. I think that may even be a legal requirement (it's certainly a standard part of an AGM). If we can find a speaker or two, that would be great. I'd like it if it were a short talk followed by questions and discussion - let's try and get the membership involved as much as possible. It's a meeting, not a conference, after all (although I do think it should be a conference in future years).

If such AV equipment is available at the chosen venue, we could try and live stream video of the meeting (I think that would dependant on the venue being willing to assist us in that). Any kind of 2-way communication would be impractical, though. If people can't attend in person they'll have to chose a proxy, attending remotely is just asking for trouble.

2008/12/14 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: The key thing about an AGM that makes IRC impractical is the size. A board meeting with less than 10 people works great online (as long as you have a decent chair). An AGM with 20+ people is another matter and no chair could handle that well. You would end up with people talking over each other too much and everything would get confused. You can hold a Q&A with those kind of numbers online (people PM the chair with their questions), but not an actual discussion.

Do you know how long that would take? The chair having to either forward every message or voice and unvoice people constantly would add several seconds of delay to every single message. And there's a good chance someone will have already said what you wanted to say by the time the chair gets to you. It's not at all practical to have a proper discussion between a large group of people in real time online.

2008/12/1 Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com>om>: Yes, but if everyone is travelling there via Euston, then somewhere near Euston would be a far better venue.

2008/12/1 J.A. Humphreys <u7z44(a)students.keele.ac.uk>uk>: In what case? The case being discussed was a meeting Alison attended and has nothing to do with our AGM, it was just an example of one of the issues that needs to be considered. There is nothing wrong with Manchester, per se, it's just a bad venue if all the attendees are nearer to somewhere else. We don't know where are attendees are (although we should probably try and find out - there are sites that make maps of such things for you, although I don't remember what any of them are called), so we don't know if Manchester is a good choice or not.

Just because everyone turned up from Euston in this case simply confirms what I was saying - Londoners thought it was worth making the trip, people from say, Bolton, would have decided Salford was difficult to get to and stayed at home. When considering cities the ease with which the station can be reached from everywhere should be the priority, be it Manchester Piccadilly or London Liverpool Street. 2008/12/1 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> -- "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -WB Yeats

I'm not considering centrality - I'm considering that if you all come to Manchester I'll be able go to the AGM :P 2008/12/1 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> -- "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -WB Yeats

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:58 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Quite a few museums actually, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Museums_in_Manchester - also art galleries. -- Alex (User:Majorly)

2008/12/1 Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco(a)gmail.com>om>: Hear, hear. (sorry, this was just to prove to Thomas that I do manage, when I'm sitting in front of a real computer) In Switzerland, we held the founding assembly in Olten which is a traditional transport hub in Switzerland - in fact, in the restaurant of the train station, probably more associations have been founded (including the Swiss Alpine Club) than anywhere else. We chose the restaurant both for this "record of history" and because it is very central for many parts of Switzerland (granted, not all). The first annual assembly was then held in Lucerne, which is literally the centre of Switzerland (or rather, the town closest is). For the second annual assembly, we then chose Lausanne in the French-speaking west of Switzerland, which was also done to "make a point", as we have had several events in German-speaking (central/eastern) Switzerland, one big event in Italian-speaking (south) Switzerland but none really in the Romandie. Notably, there were then quite many people from the French-speaking region attending, even a couple who were not yet members, while also many of our German-speaking members (and yes, they are still by large a majority) attended. Conclusion/Suggestion: Try to find a transport hub (there I know too less about UK public transport to make a specific suggestion), which needn't necessarily be London, just a place where most people can get to by train / bus in the least amount of time and with the best connections. Try then to find for the second AGM (I know, this is far away...) again a central place, but somewhere else than the first time (well, okay, 2010 is special, if you do have a Wikimania in Oxford you might strongly consider just holding the AGM during Wikimania at Oxford) and after the third year, you can really get started with "regionalising", i.e. having AGMs somewhere not technically central in order to attract members from regions where you don't have a strong membership base yet (Edinburgh, Cardiff, why not Belfast...). You might want to stop somewhere, though, before you hold AGMs on the Channel Islands ;-) Regards, Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

On Dec 2, 1:45 pm, "Thomas Dalton" <thomas.dal...(a)gmail.com> wrote: My only thoughts on Birmingham is that we don't seem to have any activists from there who could organise venues. Andrew

If you could that'd be useful! Thanks On Dec 2, 7:18 pm, "James" <u7...(a)students.keele.ac.uk> wrote:

OK folks, I asked around at the sqn, and the general consensus of opinion was that the best place to meet would be Birmingham University itself - there's a railway station in the middle of the campus (a direct line from Birmingham New Street), plenty of rooms available for conference hire, and, of course, lots of cafés and bars around the place. James Humphreys (Colds7ream) -------------------------------------------------- From: "AndrewRT" <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 7:26 PM To: <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Location of AGM

On 1 Dec 2008, at 18:00, Al Tally wrote: There seems to be plenty enough around here for the Greater Manchester wikiproject (which has the largest number of FAs/GAs than any other UK-based wikiproject, I believe). Have a look at en:Manchester ? Mike

The population center of Great Britain is currently a bit south of Appleby Parva ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_population#Great_Britain ), which is roughly halfway between Birmingham and Leicester: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Appleby%20Parva.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&… ozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl Given Birmingham's such a transport hub as well, it really is the natural location, all other things being equal. (Yes GB is not the whole of the UK, but anyone in NI would be flying anyway, so anywhere with an airport is basically equivalent for them.) Cost potentially makes things unequal, so I'd suggest when comparing two places at which we can get free accommodation taking the distance to Appleby Parva would be a reasonable metric. Google's walking distance (which should be roughly the as-the-crow-flies distance) puts both Manchester and Oxford at around 71 miles. Tom

2008/12/1 Alison Wheeler <wikimedia(a)alisonwheeler.com>om>: The other issue to consider is that distance is not at all what we want to minimise. We want to minimise time and/or cost. For me in Durham, Manchester is 95 miles away and London 235 miles, as the crow flies. However, if I look at train tickets to both places for Saturday 24th January (a plausible date for the AGM), I find that Manchester will take about 2.5hrs each way and cost around £34. London on the other hand will take around 3hrs each way and cost around £67 (slightly less if we get a firm date and venue decided in the next couple of weeks so I can book advance tickets). So, in terms of distance, London is 150% further away, but in terms of time it's just 20% longer and in terms of cost it's about 100% more. So Manchester is a better choice for me, but not by anywhere near the amount you would expect from looking at a map.

mmmmm Wikipedian's aren't use this democratic type systems. Can't somebody right down some names of interesting towns in the UK and just pick one from a hat? Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham and London all seem pretty reasonable and easy to get to. m

2008/12/2 Sarah McCulloch <sarahmcculloch(a)gmail.com>om>: That was the general idea with my map (although I decided not to specifically restrict it to people that wanted to come to the AGM because my hope is that if we choose a good location it will encourage people nearby to come even if they weren't planning on it).

2008/12/2 AndrewRT <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk>uk>: We've been saying having the AGM is Oxford would be good because it would benefit the bid - perhaps we should be more optimistic: If the bid is successful then it would be good to have the January 2010 AGM in Oxford because it would benefit the conference. If Wikimania is going to be held in Oxford, we will need to make several trips to visit venues and accommodation and whatever else beforehand in order to get everything planned and prepared, the AGM would be a good opportunity for that. From that point of view, it might be good to go somewhere else this year so we have the option of going to Oxford next year.

That's only useful if we win the bid!

On Dec 22, 12:53 am, AndrewRT <ratur...(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: I should of course have said _next_ tuesday, i.e. 30th! Just confusing myself again!