[Wikimania-l] What to do about 2012, and the future

[Thomas Dalton]

I agree that this is an issue we need to deal with, and I'm glad this
discussion is happening. I'm not sure switching to a biennial
conference is the right solution, though. The usual rule-of-thumb is
that people participate in online communities for about 18 months (I'm
not sure how accurate that actually is, but it seems plausible to me).
Having Wikimania only every two years would mean a lot of people never
get a chance to attend one. Having a mathematics conference only every
4 years is fine because the typical working life of a professional
mathematician is about 35-40 years, far great than the typical working
life of a Wikipedian.

One alternative solution might be to make more use of chapters. We
have a lot of chapters that are rapidly growing and professionalising.
Give it a couple of years and we'll have a significant number of
chapters that could organise a half-decent Wikimania without much
difficulty at all (organising a fully decent one would take a bit of
effort, but you could get away with a Wikimania that was no bigger
than the national events that chapters hold on a regular basis anyway,
you just have to add on the complication that comes from it being an
international event).

Wikimedia UK, for instance, is planning to hire an event manager in
the near future to organise our national events. Once we've got them,
we can just tell them "organise a Wikimania" and a large amount of the
more routine work would just get done. The volunteer team could then
concentrate on the interesting stuff.

We may want to consider a rule that only chapters can organise
Wikimanias (I'm only proposing we consider it at this point, I'm not
sure I'm in favour of it). It would increase the liklihood of good
quality Wikimanias. The biggest downside is that organising a
Wikimania can be a good kickstart towards founding a chapter (I think
there are some precedents for that, although I can't remember which
chapters they are) and we would lose that. I don't think the limited
number of venues would be an issue, since chapters are being formed at
a pretty impressive rate and there are plenty of existing chapters in
countries that have never hosted Wikimania.