Just throwing my two cents in as someone relatively new to Wikimania but not unexperienced in conferences, I would make three points. Forgive me if someone said these before in a better way.
1. Wikimania isn't actually that big. I agree with Harel when he points out that the level of overhead involved in organizing is a barrier to strong bids, but still, my understanding is that Wikimania tends to draw less than a thousand people. That's about the size of a municipal or regional technical conference in my experience. 2. Even if Wikimania is not relatively big when it comes to technology conferences, the problem is growing a strong local team of volunteers in a new place every year. That's very, very hard. We're not unique in having that difficulty as a movement, but I don't think it means we should abandon volunteer-based organization for the event. 3. Making Wikimania biannual will only serve to create more pressure on a new local team to create a huge, unique event, not lessen it. If we think Wikimania is too much to have as a rotating single yearly conference, I would suggest (and this isn't a new idea or mine alone) that we pick one or two semi-permanent locations on different continents and hold them regularly in those places. Say, one in Bangalore, one in Berlin, one in San Francisco, as examples, and hold them on a rotating basis. However you do it, a greater number of smaller, distributed events is the solution for easing the pressure of a single monolithic conference. On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 7:02 AM, theo10011 <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Casey Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 9:48 AM, theo10011 <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Also, about what Dalton said above, about hiring a single event >> > planner/manager in the chapter, I think it's still far from being able >> to >> > manage a Wikimania style event professionally. Unless they are >> experienced >> > with International event planning, its still going to be a very large >> task >> > for any single chapter. >> >> It's a large task for a single chapter to plan Wikimania with the help >> of a paid event professional? Our Wikimanias have been planned by a >> lot less -- usually just a group of hard-working Wikimedians, some >> with the help of a chapter, some not. :-) >> > > Allow me to reiterate, I meant its a demanding task for any group, let > alone an individual planner. :-) > > Our Wikimanias have also been getting larger and more complicated, I think > thats one of the central issues. I only suggested, maybe its time to > consider outside/professional help? > > > Theo > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l > >
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