I mostly agree with a lot of the thoughts here about whether or not it
would be more cost effective to do one event or multiple events, at least
organizationally.
There are two things that cross my mind when we talk about this:
First, maybe one of the bigger drivers of cost is the time of year when we
are holding these events. June-July-August is the most expensive period
for just about everywhere in the world; March, April, September and October
tend to be much less expensive in lodging, travel and direct conference
costs. Maybe we need to rethink *when* we are holding Wikimania as much as
anything else.
Secondly, while there are some pretty well articulated disadvantages to
holding separate conferences, it is far more likely that Wikimedians who
have to pay their own way (the majority of attendees, incidentally - and
almost all from "Western" countries) will be able to attend a regional
conference than an international one. The same scholarship dollars go much
further, and so on. In a lot of cases, governmental travel restrictions are
significantly lessened as well. This is something that those of us in
Europe and North America easily forget - we rarely have to obtain visas and
we generally have far more disposable income to attend these events.
Risker/Anne
On 18 February 2016 at 19:04, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The first thing that happens when you split up
something like Wikimania in
multiple events is you multiple the cost of WMF attendance because they
need to deliver the same messages multiple times, an alternative decision
to restrict who goes where you run into the issue of regions being treated
differently or even getting a different message. Add to that the BoT would
need to also attend multiple events in some form and other committees will
still need to meet somewhere as well as have a presence at each event.
So what happens do we then say well since it'll be divisive to attend only
some of the meetings WMF and BoT dont attend any that makes them more
isolated from the wider community than they already are. Wkikmania may be
expensive exercise and draw on a lot of resources but going smaller wont
logically create combined cheaper outcomes.
On 19 February 2016 at 07:19, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
Thanks, it is a step in the right direction
indeed. Although a bit more
breakdown would be helpful, I'm guessing this also highly fluctuates year
by year. Some observations:
A huge amount of money goes into flying WMF around the world (321k resp.
383k), which doesn't even take into account (I'm assuming) all the hours
invested into it.
I'm assuming 'donations' includes sponsorships. That amount is less than
I
would have expected/hoped. Registration income is
low, as expected (the
burden would just be moved to a different part of our movement: the
community)
'wikimania direct' is quite expensive, to be honest, and much more than I
would have expected. However, it does include catering, which is always
an
expensive chunk (5days * 1000 people will even at
a quite low 30 dollar
per
day easily give 150k, not even counting the
parties etc).
Many of these costs would still exist if you split the event up in
multiple
events spread out. WMF would still want to fly
everywhere (board has to
meet anyway, WMF staff wants to engage anyway, committees have to meet
somewhere), catering won't be much cheaper if spread over multiple
events,
and don't underestimate the manpower it would
take to organise all those
events - relatively it may be even more.
So looking at these figures, I can agree that it should be possible to do
it for less, I'm less certain though whether the proposed splitting up
would significantly reduce the total costs for everything that is
included
here.
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Sam Klein <sjklein(a)hcs.harvard.edu>
wrote:
That's most helpful, thank you both.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Thanks, Ellie and Chris, this historical
experience should be very
helpful
for future discussions!
Best,
Pharos
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Chris Schilling <
cschilling(a)wikimedia.org
>
wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Ellie has put together a summarized budget including revenue and
expenses
> > from Wikimania 2014 in London[1] and Wikimania 2015[2], which I've
gone
>
ahead and posted to the summary pages of these conferences on meta.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
> [1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014>
> [2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> >
> > > Itzik writes:
> > >
> > > > If we want to talk about the cost of Wikimania it will be great
if
the
> > WMF and the local team will share the costs.
> > >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2014/Budget
> > >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2015/Budget
> > > Maybe I missed something, but it's strange that such discussion
takes
> > > place without a real budget breakdown.
> > > > To summarize 2 huge event to "1$ million USD" does not make
sense.
> > >
> > > Agreed 1million%. It would be important to see a rough cost
> breakdown, &
> > > compare that to the best-budgeted Wikimanias.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <
polimerek(a)gmail.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > 2016-02-10 6:06 GMT+01:00 Samuel Klein
<meta.sj(a)gmail.com>om>:
> > > > >
> > > > > > FUDCons
> > > > >
> > > > > Also it is hard to compare Wikimanias with FUDCons as it is
> > > > > a) much smaller (usually bo more than 200 attendees)
> > > > > b) divided by regions - for example in 2015 there were 3
FUDCons
> > > > > (Argentina, India,
Spain) and 2 Flocks (NY and Kraków) - so
they
> are
> > > > > rather like our Iberecop or CEE meetings than the global
> conferences.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks. Similar to regional events perhaps, not Wikimania.
Still
worth
> > comparing budgets perhaps, if available.
> >
> > But I was wondering about the trend over time: whether extensive
funding
> > during the RedHat days made the events less useful, in the years
after
> > that
> > > funding was reduced.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > And also Fedora developers have many potential sources of
external
> > > > funding
> > > > > - mainly from IT companies which uses free software and want to
> apply
> > > for
> > > > > their specific needs and for whom they quite often work.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > True. But attendees to GLAM or education conferences also tend
to
have
> > many potential sources of funding -
mainly from archives or
educational
> > or
> > > technical companies who curate knowledge or develop education
tools.
And
> we
> > have IT industry partners who are similarly willing to support
> Wikimanias.
> > Not entirely dissimilar.
> >
> >
> > > But anyway, Fedora offers scholarships for attendees, see:
> > >
> >
> > Yes, wiki conferences should as well - that part of conference
funding
is
> > important. Even early Wikimanias with almost no WMF support had
> > significant scholarship pools.
> >
> > S
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Chris "Jethro" Schilling
> I JethroBT (WMF) <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF)>
> > Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation
> > <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>
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>
> --
> Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529
4266
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