[Wikimediaau-l] Bidding for Wikimania 2012

[Delphine Ménard]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 21:51, Virtual Steve <virtual-steve at hotmail.com> wrote:

> In relation to the bid itself, whilst I can understand action to get bids in
> early, suggesting support (real or tacit) by the chapter for the current
> early bid will make us look disjointed, if we as a chapter agree later to
> support a bid in another part of the country.  Indeed there are many reasons
> why Sydney may not be the best suggested location of a chapter supported bid
> and that point alone is worth discussion, by the community and the
> committee.


For what it's worth, and as a past organizer of Wikimania (both as a
volunteer and as staff of the Wikimedia Foundation), as well as a
member of the jury for the past 3 years, there is one thing that I am
pretty sure of. That is that if Wikimania is going to happen in
Australia, whoever is organizing it will have to make sure that it
stays reachable for as many people as possible.

This means the following:
1- that the airport that will be used as a landing point for Wikimania
is an international airport and easily reachable from pretty much
everywhere in the world (we've done one Wikimania 100 km away from the
closest international airport, I don't think we should do that ever
again). If transfers can be kept to one in the course of the travel,
then it should be done.
2- that the international flights should yield the best possible price
from pretty much everywhere on the world.
3- if we want to minimize the impact of 2-, then we need a heck of a
lot of sponsors for travel. 1- stays true in all circumstances.

A quick raw search on flight prices from Frankfurt, Germany, San
Francisco, USA and even Taipei, Taiwan, seem to suggest that the two
most plausible cities for an Australian bid would be Sydney and
Melbourne (I also plugged in Canberra and Perth, for comparison's
sake).


Delphine

Disclaimer: My sister lives in Melbourne, so I can't be accused of
pushing Sydney ;-)



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