[Wikimania-l] thank you

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org> wrote:
> Dear organizers (hopefully someone can forward it to those not on this list)
>
> thank you so much for putting the time and dedication into this years
> wikimania. Organizing a conference of this size with attendees who have such
> high demands and expectations is as always hard, and I think it deserves an
> applause no matter whether some things did not go as planned.

Well said! and a slightly belated thank-you of my own to everyone who
worked super hard on this year's Wikimania. There were several people,
and groups of people, who stepped in at various points during the last
year to push forward different parts of the conference - sometimes, in
true wiki fashion, taking over jobs left by someone else. I'd
especially like to recognize:

* the local team who worked on logistics near the end, especially
Marek, Anna & Lukasz
* the non-local team who worked on logistics near the end, especially
Austin, Finne & SJ
* Manuel, for organizing streaming that worked!
* James, for helping a great deal from the WMF side; and Sara, for
managing the WMF's scholarships program
* Jacek, for organizing a great program under chaotic circumstances,
and the whole program reviewing team
* Juliana for all her work getting the team organized and managing
events, especially the concert
* Marcin, for leading the whole thing from start to finish

Every Wikimania has a ton of people who help with some discrete aspect
of making the conference happen. Whether their tasks are small or
large, these people rarely get publicly thanked simply because there
are so many of them. I am thinking of people like Lukasz's friend, who
made a last-minute trip to Ikea that resulted in us having couches. Or
the group of volunteers working on translation and the registration
desk, many of whom were not Wikimedians but simply interested people
from the local area who were recruited through a city volunteering
program. And there are many who had a more profound (but still mostly
invisible at the conference itself) role: for instance, the staff of
the Baltic Philharmonic, who went out of their way to make the space
awesome; the members of Wikimedia Polska who organized their
scholarship effort; and many of the Wikimedians who helped work on the
bid in the first place, believing in Gdansk as a lovely city for
Wikimania. I cannot thank everyone in these groups by name; but I
would like to recognize Wikimania as a true team effort, a hugely
complex task that is one of the most difficult things community
members do from year to year. And I can say from experience that
people involved in conference organization tend to focus on the
mistakes and bad parts afterwards -- so thanks to attendees for
showing your appreciation, and to everyone involved in organizing
Wikimania for doing your part to make this crazy event happen.

best,
Phoebe

p.s. I did take notes during the 'future of Wikimania' session on
Sunday; but they are currently locked away on a computer that has a
burnt-out power supply. I'll post these notes when I can, and will
also write about our ideas for conference documentation for the
future: as Juliana notes, communication is key, not just between
members of any given Wikimania team, but from year to year as well.

-- 
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