[Wikimania-l] Selection of winning bid for Wikimania 2013: Hong Kong

On behalf of the Wikimania 2013[0] selection Jury[1], I can announce that we have awarded the conference to Hong Kong. Congratulations to the bidding team, and to the London team who also did a particularly excellent job. There were five official bids: Bristol, Naples and Surakarta, as well as the two finalists of Hong Kong and London[2]. The Jury and the bidding teams discussed them in three public IRC meetings in April. We determined that Hong Kong and London were the strongest contenders, and decided to focus on these two as the finalists. After further e-mail enquiries, and considering evaluation by Wikimedia Foundation staff, a final, private meeting was held to reach a final decision. The Jury was pleased by the high quality in both the final bids, and required over three hours' discussion to reach the final verdict. We considered each bid according to the criteria[3], focussing on following factors: Venue, Program, Geo-location & Logistics, Local Opportunities, Accommodations, Team & Chapter, and Budget & Finances. We found consensus that the Hong Kong bid was the stronger, especially because of their strong advance planning; solid support by the local Wikimedia Chapter, the community, local government, and a partner organisation that is experienced in planning conferences; and their good combination of venue and accommodation. The Jury has confidence that the Hong Kong bidding team will pull off a magnificent Wikimania, and we are pleased for our global community to return to Asia once again. With a motivated group of volunteers who have experience in organizing smaller Wikimedia activities, and a partner with experience in organizing larger-scale events, they have found a good mix to create a successful conference. The Jury did also identify some weaker points in each the bids, and will be happy to share those privately with the teams so that the Hong Kong team can use that to their advantage in organizing Wikimania 2013, and the other teams can use the feedback to improve their bids for a future year. We thank all candidate teams - the process is gruelling and requires a very substantial time investment. They are all to be commended for their submissions. To use this soap-box for a moment, as Moderator I would like to remind the community that we hope that this time was the last that we use this ad-hoc process to decide on the Wikimania venue, and encourage everyone to engage with the discussion on Meta[4] about how we might select Wikimania 2014 and beyond in a more open, community-led way. Please, do join in the discussions. Yours, James Forrester Moderator, Wikimania 2013 Jury For the Wikimania 2013 Jury [0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013 [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_jury [2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_bids [3] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_judging_criteria [4] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Advisory_Group -- James D. Forrester jdforrester(a)wikimedia.org | jdforrester(a)gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]