Did you also consider the hotel costs etc in this calculation? I recall that catering and hotel costs in India were so much cheaper that it balanced out the additional flight costs for the chapters meeting - not sur ehow that would work oout on this scale though.
Either way, it would be interesting to do this calculation somewhere on meta, some day - and help people be aware of what we're talking about, It's not an unimportant assumption/argument we work from :) as a side note, of course I strongly support the regional conferences, and I am thrilled to see that the WikiArabia conference is seeing a second edition! Lodewijk On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 4:35 PM, James Forrester <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 at 01:59 Lodewijk <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Did anyone do a calculation whether holding it in an expensive city (say, >> London) with cheaper flights actually /is/ cheaper than holding it in a >> cheap city in Asia (say, Delhi or Mumbai)? And then I don't mean WMF-budget >> wise, but total costs: including the costs by all affiliates, and the costs >> privately paid for by the volunteers. I recall being positively surprised >> that there was very little difference between India and Berlin for the >> chapters meeting... >> > > I've been doing this regularly for years in an *ad hoc* way. It informed > the pick of areas. For example, the additional cost to the community of > hosting Wikimania in Australia is (very roughly) US$1k extra per person > from outside Oceania compared to the base cost, and US$1k less for each > person in Oceania. At typical levels of 800 non-local self-funded > attendees, of whom we have around 10 from Oceania, and 400 local people who > wouldn't otherwise come at all, This means an additional community cost of > ~US$750k (and a bunch more for Wikimedia organisational funds, paid > directly from WMF or via the chapters) in return for the opportunity for > 400 local Oceanians to attend who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity. > > This is, clearly, not a completely unacceptable additional burden, but it > is one we should take on carefully. By picking the venue for Wikimania we > are not just 'awarding' some locals, but demanding a great many community > people reach even deeper to try to attend, and for a great many, put it > beyond their financial reach. Though Wikimedia organisational funds pay a > huge amount for scholarships, almost entirely focussed on the > less-represented countries in our community, but this does not (and cannot > reasonably) cover the majority of attendees. > > Off the top of my head, the numbers are roughly comparable for Latin > America (slightly less for Mexico), a bit lower for South Asia, Sub-Saharan > Africa, and Eastern Europe/Russia/Central Asia, and lower still for Asia > Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa. The numbers drift from year > to year a bit, but sadly there's not much impact on the overall headline > whilst the editing community is so unequally geographically distributed. > > This is why we included the call to area to get into the practice of > having annual regional or sub-regional conferences. These would let a much > larger portion of our community more easily afford to come to an in-person > community event to share their passion, talk about what we can do to > improve the projects, and learn new things. This is what the Wikimedia > conferences, be they the global Wikimania or the regional "Wikimeetings" > (people should suggest a great name!), should be about. > > J. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l > >
_______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
