[Wikimediaau-l] Bidding for Wikimania 2012

[Andrew]

I wouldn't doubt that other places have managed to get off the ground
without active chapter support, but the fact is that the Australian
Wikimedian community is actually fairly small and the great majority of
those (including the membership of any likely bid team) who would support
such an event are involved in the chapter.

We have around 45 financial members at present. From what I heard, huge
numbers of local people were involved in getting Taipei off the ground - our
distributed and relatively small population means we don't have that at our
disposal here. Taiwan is 1/3 the area of Tasmania with a population greater
than Australia's. Getting people in from other parts of Australia, as
GLAM-WIKI proved, can be quite a challenge as we got I think 15-18
Wikimedians along to that.

I think some discussion would need to be entered as to which city would be
best. The city with our greatest number of volunteers - and certainly the
most accessible city from a national/international point of view - is
Melbourne. I don't know what venues are available in that city, though.
Sydney and Brisbane have both made enquiries from bid promoters and venues,
and the Brisbane Wikimania bid was a strong one (and I believe its sponsors
are still on side). If we're all focusing in different directions then
people get territorial over cities, the Wikimedian group doesn't get united
behind one bid and it will necessarily fail.

All just my own opinion of course. I do agree with Delphine that in order to
make an event successful, planning well in advance of time is essential - as
they say if one fails to plan, one plans to fail.

cheers
Andrew

2009/11/26 Angela <beesley at gmail.com>

> > Have you got any official support from the chapter for this bid?
>
> As far as I'm aware, the chapter board has not said anything yet. My
> hope is that making the first step of putting up a bid page will
> generate some discussion amongst both the committee and members of
> Wikimedia Australia and of the wider community in order to work out
> whether this is the right thing to do and whether 2012 is the right
> time.
>
> Hosting Wikimania in Australia been discussed for many years now, and
> for me 2012 seems the ideal time for a bid. We've recently had a
> successful GLAM-WIKI conference, proving there are enough people here
> to make such an event work. It leaves us with all of 2010 and 2011 to
> make preparations and to host other smaller events to help build up
> the team prior to Wikimania in 2012.
>
> This is just the very first stage, and deliberately started early
> (most 2011 bids aren't up yet) in order to allow a lot of discussion
> and decision making. There's lots of time before anything needs to be
> finalised for the chapter and its members to put forward their views
> and to decide whether or not to support this.
>
> Angela
>
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