[Wikimediaau-l] Bidding for Wikimania 2012

[Delphine Ménard]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 11:57, Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:
> Angela,
>
> Have you got any official support from the chapter for this bid?  Having
> been the bid leader for the last time an Australian city took a tilt at
> this, I'd say that it's necessary to have committed support from the chapter
> to have any hope at all of success.  I see that supporting the bid is a part
> of Liam's election platform, but I really think it's not appropriate to
> count on the chapter's enthusiastic support for a Sydney '12 bid without
> some sort of chapter-wide discussion on whether that's the best location and
> the best time to bid.  I'm not saying that the idea of bidding is without
> merit, but I do think that this might not be the best time to proceed.  In
> fact, when the chapter membership was polled in March, there seemed to very
> little to no support for bidding in 2011
> (http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/2009_member_goals_survey), and I'm not
> sure that opinions on the topic have changed wildly since then.


For what it's worth, chapter support for other bids (Gdansk, for
example), were not always acquired from the start. I do not see how
putting up a bid is in any way presumptuous of having the national
chapter's support, no more than I believe that chapter support is
absolutely necessary to lead a bid to success. What makes the success
of a bid is a dedicated organizing team, who can mobilize the right
resources (and those might include mobilizing the chapter's resources)
at the right time.

Wikimedia Germany never really supported the Frankfurt Wikimania more
than saying "ah cool", there was no chapter backing Wikimania in
Cambridge, the chapter was created in Taiwan just for Wikimania and
did not survive the event, Wikimania in Alexandria was backed up by no
chapter. Only Wikimania in Buenos Aires and Wikimedia Argentina had
really strong ties. Wikimedia Polska was one of many supporters of the
Gdansk bid, but as far as I am aware, not the organisation "carrying"
the bid to start with.

Finally, if Wikimania is _ever_ going to get to Australia, I think
that thinking about it 2 years in advance is the least that should be
done.


Cheers,

Delphine
(organizer of 3 Wikimanias out of 5).

-- 
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