Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-07-09/Special report



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We are attending 2014 Wikimania, our first Wikimania ever. We took the decision because it is in London, to where we can go for a reasonable budget. So when we learned that it would take place in the Barbican -my wife is the only person I know that loves that place, and that's one of the pluses of WM14- we started preparations. First of all I needed to secure that I could take holidays in August, what means negotiations with my work colleagues (that was last December). That secured, I tried to find the official hotel, but none was listed (as of February/March). We wouldn't take risks so we made our own reservations (which proved to be a wise step, as things have gone). Then we tried to register and pay. We tried to guess how, and as no information about 2014's procedure was available, we took Hong Kong as a proxy: so we would probably need to pay by Paypal and guessed that the price would be twice Hong Kong's (just in case). We put money on Paypal (remmember that it can take up to a month for Paypal to collect money from our accounts). Then we found that payment would be by credit card (that's much more convinient for us!). We ended up with some hundreds of euros on a paypal account we didn't need (the money was well spent later, that's another story). At this point I calculated that WM14 was some six weeks late compared with WM13. I was almost right, as the article says it's two months. I still have my oldest son asking me if the programme has been completed.

All those may seem just little problems, but I when I go to an event like Wikimania, I have to organize carefully. I need to know things in advance. I need to coordinate my work, my family, my transportation, my payments, my accomodation. We are four people travelling. We need to know times, amounts, places, etc. I have no doubts that WM14 will be very successfull.

B25es (talk) 06:11, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

>'... "core", "basic", and "luxury". They were awarded the conference on the basis of the former...'
"Former" means "previous (of two options)". So which was it? Core or basic? The statement is ambiguous. Kaldari (talk) 06:46, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This edit is correct. Thanks, Kaldari. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:10, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
£38.5 spent by WMUK from their reserves for "printed materials, merchandising, and to pay for three temporary members of staff to help with the conference"? That's value for money ;) Surely a typo. - Sitush (talk) 07:46, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Caught the same - I guess a K is missing? effeietsanders 09:09, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I do think that the three staff members would object to that amount of pay. ;-) Corrected to £38,500. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:10, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
B25es, much the same here. I was also under the mistaken assumption that the Wikimania would offer a good bit of scientific papers about Wiki-projects. Instead there are all sorts of How-To sessions for beginners, it seems to me. Seeing the program now, I probably would not have gone, but I had to book the hotel and my flight before the program was available. If I would have wanted to have my university pay for my attendance, I would have needed all this information much, much earlier. I understand many people had trouble with getting visas in time, as there was no clear information. I personally do not agree that it is a good idea to combine an internal conference and an outreach action. Separation of concerns is an important precept, not only in computing. WiseWoman (talk) 20:48, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I won't comment on the article iself, but I'll just say to anyone thinking of coming to Wikimania: don't let concerns over budgets or politics get in the way—we are assembling an excellent team of volunteers, who will make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. You won't notice anything amiss. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:03, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting piece; I also won't comment beyond agreeing with Harry above, but "...how have this year's monetary costs come to be?" is jarringly unidiomatic. Don't make us miss Tony1 too much. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:52, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • While Haifa's headline figure (2011) may have been about 650, by the end of WikiMania I believe that the total registration was almost exactly 1000. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:18, 14 July 2014 (UTC).
  • Why focus just on the budget, yet not on the organising team? I'm sure this group of former City financial workers with zero editing experience are well placed to cater for the interests of the volunteer community. SFB 21:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will be going. Meeting those you work with on Wikipedia in real life is a great experience. London is a great location as it is 1) easy to get to 2) doesn't require visa's for much of the world. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:28, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • From my recent experiences in organising international conferences, $500,000 is really cheap for a three day event for 3,000 people ($166 each!), and especially one being held in the middle of a major city. Great work to the organisers! Even modest conferences can be really expensive, and I don't think that it's at all fair to describe a budget of of £804,500 as being "extremely large": it's less than what a similar-sized and not lavish academic or government conference would cost - I expect to pay much more than $US 166 to register for an academic conference, and have actually paid more to attend lunches! Obviously costs should be kept down to the sensible minimum, but conferences are intrinsically costly and if the figures quoted here are correct the organisers have done a great job. Nick-D (talk) 08:34, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
or by adding the Category:Wikipedians attending Wikimania manually. :) --user.js (talk) 00:27, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]