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

[phoebe ayers]

On 10/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/9/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Agreed. Is there anything stopping people from organizing an event
> > > somewhere that isn't so expensive?
> >
> > "Expensive for me" you mean? Someone always loses out.
>
> That is true, which is one reason why rotation is a criteria, but this
> selected location isn't particularly ideal for any of the larger user
> clusters.
>
> Had a location in western Europe been selected the costs would have
> been much lower for eastern north America, most of europe, and I'm
> guessing less costly for Australia.


Well, yes... except for the part where there were no bids from western
Europe this year that didn't drop out before the final judging :) Unless
you're suggesting that the jury should start choosing the location by fiat,
then it's awfully difficult to choose a community bid that doesn't exist.

We've also never had a Wikimania that was conveniently placed for the
> Western side of north America, or south America.


All in good time. There's only been three conferences total, and anyway I
don't think that there's been any good bids for these places to date. I
certainly hope to see some in the future!

> As someone else suggested, hosting local Wikimanias is a good option.
> > Why not get behind Atlanta (I assume you live in the US as you agree
> > with Greg's comments) and organise a US Wikimania maybe a couple of
> > weeks before or after the official one.
>
> Honestly, if we fork the conference with a US version (and potentially
> an offset European version) there is a substantial risk that the
> popularity of these events will endanger the success of Wikimania
> proper.


There may be a risk, but it's not happened yet, and we have past experience
to go on. There were local conferences held in both the Netherlands and in
Hong Kong after Wikimania 2006, not to mention the German wiki Academy, the
(unaffiliated) Recent Changes Camps in Portland and Montreal, and WikiSym
(also unaffiliated) in Denmark, and yet just as many people as we expected (
i.e. more than ever) came to Wikimania 2007 in Taiwan.

The effort to make Wikimania a truly global thing adds an enormous
> overhead but it can provide some good value.


Indeed!

-- phoebe