We used to regularly raise the issue of a lack of active
videoconferencing at Wikimania. Though we (Wikimedians) are highly
technically literate, we still do not host virtual attendees, such as
3D virtual conferencing and claim it a win if we release video streams
of some of the presentations.
Both to reduce our community's carbon footprint, and to encourage
access for those that find air travel challenging or impossible, it
would be great to see the Wikimedia Foundation being active in
trialing and funding virtual environments for our events. 25 years ago
I worked for a global bank and had regular virtual meetings in a video
room where you physically sat at a conference table where the other
half telemagically was in other headquarters in other cities with
shared (physical) whiteboards to help workshopping. These days it's
relatively easy to videoconference, but we should do more to
experiment with whether booking video suites in different cities might
also be a good way of encouraging Wikimedians to default to local
travel and still be active in our multi-national or global events and
workshops. At the end of the day, paying a few hundred dollars for
several conference suites or higher end conference kit hire hosted by
local Wikimedia Chapters, is a fraction the cost of paying for a far
smaller number of lucky applicants to get their flights and
accommodation paid for.
This type of high quality conferencing initiative would perfectly fit
the non-specific high level aims mentioned in the WMF sustainability
documents. It's weird to me that this is still a debate, and folks are
defending continued air travel at the current consumption levels,
rather than even trialling all the virtual alternatives.
Fae
On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 12:14, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Anyways this is perceived by the community.
In Wikimedia CH we cannot give scholarships for Wikimania because people
would not do long trips.
IMHO the problem is these big events.
For this reason we prefer to give more scholarships for regional wikicon
than to Wikimania.
This is the reason why you dont see more Swiss people at Wikimania.
Kind regards