Hi Victoria, Thank you very much for the explanations.
I am glad to hear that the net effect of these changes will be that travel costs remain flat. Does that include lodging and per diem costs? I would suggest collaborating with the WikiConference North America organizers to try to arrange for there to be no overlap between the two conferences. That may be impossible, but I think that it is desirable. To the best of my knowledge, the exact WMCONNA dates have been finalized <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WCNA/WikiConference_North_America_2018> while the WMTCON dates have not <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018>. Both conferences could be in October but on different weekends so that there would be no overlap. The WMF Board has not yet adopted the 2018-2019 WMF Annual Plan, which I believe means that the plans for the WMTCON and for the next WMF All Hands Conference are contingent on WMF Board approval of that annual plan. Is that correct? I would like there to be a policy that every conference which receives WMF funding, including the Wikimedia Conference and All Hands, should go through a WMF Conference and Event Grants process <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference>, perhaps with levels of detail and scrutiny that are scaled according to the sizes of budgets and the number of anticipated participants. Even if funding is a foregone conclusion, I think that compelling all conference organizers to do this will help with transparency and to strengthen the planning and evaluation of conferences. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
