I'm also going to send off a "will you sponsor us" e-mail to a contact I have at Torchbox, an Oxfordshire web-design for charities company. They sponsor the Oxford Geek Nights events so I'm optimistic they'll be persuadable to sponsor this.
I've just contacted 3 Oxfordshire coach companies about sponsoring us with free or discounted transport between Oxford and London airports, I'll let you know what I hear back.
What are people's thoughts on recruiting additional people to help with the bid? I could easily fire off a few e-mails to student mailing lists I'm on and would probably get some response. Do you have strong "if they don't care enough about wikis to be on this mailing list..." or "too many cooks" thoughts?
If you know anyone active on a Wikimedia project that is based in the UK and isn't on this mailing list, by all means contact them - this list isn't very well publicised, so there are lots of people that aren't on it that could be very useful. I'm not sure if there's much point emailing student mailing lists unless you know there are lots of Wikimedians on them.
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).
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.
Tom
Just got another reply from the Lord Mayor who has apparently been given the following advice from the leader of the council:
"I agree that it is a good thing to support, but I'm afraid that it probably falls outside the rules on reductions in room hire costs. They would have to apply for a specific grant - and I doubt whether that would fly either. They should be advised to look for a sponsor - eg Sophos or RM"
Unfortunate. Though we may as well have a go for a grant anyway I guess.
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tom Holden Sent: 14 July 2008 17:19 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010
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).
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.
Tom
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org