Hi Victoria,
Thank you very much for the explanations.
I am glad to hear that the net effect of these changes will be that travel
costs remain flat. Does that include lodging and per diem costs?
I would suggest collaborating with the WikiConference North America
organizers to try to arrange for there to be no overlap between the two
conferences. That may be impossible, but I think that it is desirable. To
the best of my knowledge, the exact WMCONNA dates have been finalized
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WCNA/WikiConference_North_America_2018>
while the WMTCON dates have not
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018>. Both
conferences could be in October but on different weekends so that there
would be no overlap.
The WMF Board has not yet adopted the 2018-2019 WMF Annual Plan, which I
believe means that the plans for the WMTCON and for the next WMF All Hands
Conference are contingent on WMF Board approval of that annual plan. Is
that correct?
I would like there to be a policy that every conference which receives WMF
funding, including the Wikimedia Conference and All Hands, should go
through a WMF Conference and Event Grants process
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference>, perhaps with levels of
detail and scrutiny that are scaled according to the sizes of budgets and
the number of anticipated participants. Even if funding is a foregone
conclusion, I think that compelling all conference organizers to do this
will help with transparency and to strengthen the planning and evaluation
of conferences.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )