On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:21:25 +0300, "Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: > But all of the above are nice dreams about the future. Is there any > proven experience from the past that demonstrates why personal > meetings between Wikimedians are not just fun for them, but actually > beneficial to the Wikimedia community, the Internet, the Humanity? Can > anyone here give me solid examples of successful projects that were > born thanks to past Wikimanias? >
Well, it is just more efficient to discuss ideas in person. For instance, if one wants to propose a new project or a new innovation, submitting a Meta proposal will most probably lead to nowhere and even if it does not it may takes years of discussions, especially if trolls are involved. Having first a closed-circle discussion to make a reasonable proposal is much more efficient, and having it in person is a good investment of time. On the other hand, I am very sceptical about Wikimania. I am possibly the only organizer who actually did not attend in 2010, and one of the reasons is that whereas it could be beneficial to discuss problems which interest me, for instance, strategy, I was not looking forward to going there just to make appointments with people whose first priority is to make appointments with somebody else etc. I know this pretty well from my experience as a scientist and a participant of scientific conferences: On a rather small meeting, say 50 participants, one can freely discuss with whowever he/she wants, including big shots, whereas on events which are more oriented to public relations, as for instance an annual meeting of American Physical Society (5000 participants) chances to discuss smth reasonable without having a pre-appointment are close to zero. Cheers Yaroslav _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l