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

[Andrew Gray]

On 10/10/2007, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:

> > So you don't think that if we held the next one in Antarctica that it
> > would be less useful?   .... This should be a question of degree.
> >
> But...NO ONE lives in Antarctica (permanently, anyway).  There likely
> wouldn't be any "locals" attending at all.  Location would be one of
> many problems, and there'd be virtually no benefit.

I suppose Antarctica - being in no small degree a self-selecting
population of educated bored people - might have one of the highest
proportions of the local population predisposed to like us ;-)

> > There is also the question of who would front the money for a large
> > regional event... though that could be resolved.
> >
> I thought Wikimania paid for itself.  If the Foundation gave the
> Atlanta bid team, for instance, permission to hold the conference
> anyway, at the same time as Wikimania, wouldn't there be enough
> interested people to make it happen?

Almost certainly. You would probably get less interest from outside
the WMF community - due to the lack of high-profile big-name speakers
- and many more dedicated or more affluent people would travel to the
"big event", but I don't see any real reason you wouldn't be able to
pull a couple of hundred people together.

I would be less convinced that it would work for Cape Town - there,
the proportion of local attendees was always going to be lower than
Atlanta, and if you're flying abroad you may as well pay a bit more
and go to the main event* - but for Atlanta, or for Turin last year,
sure.

(The same could be said of any sizable regional bid a continent or so
away from the chosen location)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

* Discussing this last night I commented that, for many people,
"travelling overseas" is the single big point. Once you've accepted
taking the step of this being what you spend money on that summer,
organising time off, etc etc... well, it being $800 or $400 plane fare
is not automatically going to be the biggest deciding factor in
whether you go or not.