James, I completely agree with you. In fact, Ed Saperia is probably sick of
hearing me say exactly that.
I disagree with assertions that the UK bid team doesn't have that, and with
suggestions that WMUK is trying to substitute for this by throwing money around.
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
Phone: 024 7698 0977
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
________________________________
From: James Hare <[email protected]>
To: Wikimania general list (open subscription)
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, 26 August 2012, 17:00
Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] UK budget plan for 2014 Wikimania bid
On Aug 26, 2012, at 11:46 AM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
>
> If I may suggest a practical resolution here, perhaps the jury for 2013 could
> clarify what they meant when they criticised the London bid for not having
> strong support from the UK chapter. If they thought that there was something
> non-financial that was missing in the UK chapter's support for the London
> 2013 bid then now would be a good time to tell us all. Otherwise please can
> those who don't want chapters spending lots of money on Wikimania bids please
> communicate that publicly to the jury. There is little point criticising the
> UK chapter for responding so positively to feedback from the 2013 jury.
Indeed. The winning bid for Wikimania 2012 had no financial support. It wasn't
even backed by a chapter; the chapter came later. What it did have though was
the kind of people power necessary to execute a bid.
And even with people power, it's always good to hire some outside help to fill
in the gaps. Many of us find it silly, though, to make that level of investment
at the *bid* stage.
As for paying the Wikimania host committee... I will say I personally would
have appreciated some kind of income because Wikimania, in its last couple of
months, was literally a full time job, but I feel like my relationship with
Wikimania would've changed if it had become a job and not this thing I was
building from the ground up as a labor of love. When you pay people, their work
is different than if they volunteer.
This gets back to the people power of Wikimania. You can hire all the
professionals in the world. Over the past two days I checked the financial math
on Wikimania and we spent $61,430 on conference staffing. The lady with the
silly wig? We would've died without her. The two assistants she brought on who
were even more experienced than she was? We needed them too. The registration
company who helped us order the name badges and run the on-site registration?
The hired hands who helped direct the flow of traffic and run the store? The
sign language interpreters? (Our volunteer who knew sign language was not
enough.) These are all people who help take a conference that was attended by
over a thousand Wikimaniacs and 300 Tech@Staters and make it work.
But these professionals all take orders from the core team of Wikimedia
volunteers, who are doing this not because they are paid to, but because they
love Wikimania. And you have to love Wikimania, or the energy is just not
there. I don't see it working any other way.
>
> Ideally I'd like to see a level playing field for all serious bids, including
> giving active Wikimedians who are potential bidders grants to attend
> Wikimania. It might even be worth the WMF giving each shortlisted bid a few
> hundred dollars for incidental expenses. At the same time it would be best if
> we had a clear ruling from the Wikimania team that despite what they said re
> London 2013, where chapters have professional staff and their own budgets
> they should stand back, leave the bidding to volunteers and only involve
> themselves after a bid succeeds.
I mean the whole bidding process is broken, but I'm not getting into that just
yet.
>
> WSC
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