[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

[cohesion]

On 10/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Certainly the track record of selections is far more appealing to *me*
> as a jetsetter than as a Wikipedian... and as long as we're still
> looking at airfare well over $1000/person (which wouldn't be the case
> for me traveling to canada, mexico, or much of western europe), my
> money would be better spent contributing to other non-profits and
> traveling to regional Wikipedian events.  (And certainly, I don't find
> Egypt appealing, with its poor track record of intolerance and
> mistreatment of female travelers who are foolish enough to violate
> Islamic norms)

Agreed. Is there anything stopping people from organizing an event
somewhere that isn't so expensive? I'm all for having Wikimania's in
exotic locations every year, and I'm sure the people that go have a
great time, but I don't really see myself paying that much to go to a
place that has such a bad reputation re gay people...

It would be cool to have an actually useful conference. Since so many
people that work on Wikipedia, Commons etc are English speaking when
the conference is in places like Taipei and Alexandria it seems like
it's more for fun than anything worthwhile for me, being primarily
interested in enwiki.

I know that's not the only goal of course, and I wouldn't want to stop
having them in cool places, and places that people in various
geographic locations can get to. What I'm saying is, why not have
another conference that focuses a little more on the actual population
distribution of the people that actually use the sites?

Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion