Let's spin-off the topic about Summit participants.

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Eran Rosenthal eranroz89@gmail.com wrote:

So the capability limit can be soften a bit - this could be a simultaneous event in multiple different locations where the main part take in SF, but Wikimedia chapters may organize in the same time smaller scale events (it could be even 1 room +pizza ++beer).

The capacity limit for 200 is actually a more flexible number, yes. This number is related to these expectations:

* size of the main room so everyone can fit * catering so everyone is fed * social events at night * accommodation booked by the organizers

While many participants basically "live" at the Summit using all of its services from beginning to end, others may be interested in participating without challenging the expectations mentioned, i.e. attending only some days / sessions, not requiring accommodations, etc. This is something that can be discussed.

The idea of remote participation needs to be better explored, but at least for the Summit I would start looking at the case of individual contributors willing to participate in specific discussions. The Summit is more about discussing that about hacking.

The idea of complementary locations organized by chapters sounds like a better fit for the hackathons. There is the aspect of timezones too. In any case, if a chapter wants to try, we are happy to experiment (WMDE sounds like a good candidate for experimentation, since they send a good number of people to the Summit but many more are "left" in Berlin).