It was almost certain that a decent bid from Asia
would be successful.
No it wasn't and I wish people didn't have this misconception.
All of the bids were considered against a range of criteria, not only
location. Amongst many other factors, Taipei offered the venue and
accommodation on a single site, and their organizing team had prior
experience from running the Chinese Wikimania this year. It's unfair
to them to suggest they only won because they're in Asia.
If Asia was a sure winner from the start, we wouldn't have needed a
meeting lasting more than 4 hours on Saturday to determine which city
would be successful. A few people seem to think that the others were
rejected purely for being in Europe, but that was not the case, and we
would have said from the start if we were only accepting bids from
other continents so as not to waste people's time.
Angela.