Ah, the downside of doing your work open and in public is that people see a half finished doodle of a budget and get overexcited and you come back to 45 emails in your inbox...
Yes, it's likely that the Wikimania 2014 London Bid Committee is going to be applying for a grant to help it put together a good bid, but we're still figuring out which roles are required and waiting for other inputs, so the numbers were really just placeholders for now.
The deeper question I see here is - what sort of event does the community want Wikimania to be? It's a conference that is really beginning to come of age, and with this comes growing pains. From a 200 person glorified pubmeet it's become a five day long 1000+ person multi-track affair with all the attendant expectations on AV, travel logistics, social events, catering, multi-tiered accommodation... and unless it's not handled well, potentially a very frustrating experience for a lot of wikimedians who have invested their time and money travelling to take part.
With the correct facilitating software, a lot of people have been able to collaborate together to build a killer encyclopaedia. Similarly, a well designed conference can allow for positive interactions between a very large number of people. As the size increases, the complexity increases, the risk increases, and the cost increases - but so do the possible benefits.
Let us be clear: running an event this size is not cheap. A Wikimania costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, and probably significantly more in a place like London. Tickets to your average http://www.websummit.net/get-tickets/ tech http://www.leweb.co/register/paris eventhttp://www.ted.com/pages/tedglobalof a similar size and scope would easily cost £1000+ per delegate, and in comparison a Wikimania is basically free. This means that we need to do a lot more work fundraising, which takes a lot of time and planning, and a chief concern of potential sponsors is whether the event will be delivered to a professional standard. We are finding that a lot of the groundwork for the event has to be laid well before the bid process even starts. Not to sound patronising, but event organisation is different to wiki editing; there are deadlines which must be met, and mistakes that cannot be reverted.
So let us ask ourselves, why should the community spend so much donor money on Wikimania (bids)? What is Wikimania there to achieve?
WMF's policy on grants:
Grant requests should support the achievement of Wikimedia's mission and strategic priorities. We favor high impact requests over low impact requests; try to break new ground, and to increase your group's capacity for new programs and partnerships.
Holding such a conference is high impact, breaks new ground, and fosters links to local institutionshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_Londonand builds relationships with sponsors and partnershttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_bids/London#Partner_Organisations. It's fantastic for encouraging innovationhttp://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary/Encourage_Innovationand with Jimmy on handhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014_bids/London#Supporterscourting the press it should be great for increasing awareness and participationhttp://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary/Increase_Participationtoo. It seems as good a thing to invest in as any - after all, if it didn't have community support, a thousand people probably wouldn't show up to it every year!
Ed
On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 9:14 PM, wikimania-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Re: UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid (Joseph Fox)
- Re: UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid (Theo10011)
- Re: UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid (Thomas Morton)
- Re: UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid (Joseph Fox)
Message: 1 Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:19:17 +0100 From: Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid Message-ID: < CADbK8XcMSQDbSsrUwDKT16TTcoPXt4vZch7M+RCcBvW8eLRyTg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
I understand this. But people here seem to have seen that they'll be making up a financial plan for the event, then announcing that there is no raw passion underneath the money. I'm just telling you that there are a *lot* of very active and very passionate Wikimedians in the UK looking to make the best possible event.
Also remembering that Brits are all tightfisted, of course, so they'll not be silly with their money ;)
(Also, James, my apologies for the assumption. I wonder if WMUK will be able to negotiate such a discount...)
Joe
On 25 August 2012 21:15, Manuel Schneider <manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch
wrote:
Am 25.08.2012 22:10, schrieb Joseph Fox:
To be honest I'm rather offended that the UK bid is being written off
while
it's still 2014. I agree with you, but London is far from the cheapest
city
in the world, as I'm sure you're aware - money will be required.
from my experience on the Wikimania Jury I can assure you that it is pretty much taken into account how much Wikimania experience the bidding team has and how much the understand to make a Wikimania as Wikimania is.
/Manuel
Regards Manuel Schneider
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge www.wikimedia.ch
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