Talk:Wikimania 2006/archive1

Archived from Wikimania 2006 and related subpages.

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Wikimania is a conference for all users of Wikimedia projects. The wikimania sites on Meta-wiki are for the community, to organize their travel to publish announcements, arrange meetings, sign-up for social events etc. Following the success of Wikimania 2005 (official site), we are already planning Wikimania 2006.

Agenda

• September 1st: City contest opens
• September 30th: deadline for city applications
• October 2nd: Shortlist of three potential cities for Wikimania 2006
• October 2nd-October 14th: last round of questions to shortlisted cities
• October 15th-18th: Winning city not anounced, decision postponed to 22-23rd October.
• October 22nd: Boston is chosen as host city for Wikimania 2006.

the following is a tentative planning for Wikimania 2006, subject to changes

• October 2005: Confirmation of location
• October 2005: budget planning
• October 2005-Wikimania 2006: looking for sponsors
• February 2006: Call for papers
• May 2006: First tentative programme
• Summer(Northern hemisphere)/Winter(Southern hemisphere) 2006: Event

See also:

• suggestions and ideas taken from Wikimania 2005.
• Planning
• Host Cities official requirements
• Official bids: Wikimania 2006/Toronto and Wikimania 2006/Boston
• Why and why not go to Toronto or Boston - give your reasons for going to one or the other of the cities.

The history and composition of the jury

Jury

Shortlist
Original jury comprised of the members of the board: Angela, Anthere, Jimmy Wales, Michael Davis, Tim Shell and the core organisation team of Wikimania 2005: Akl, Austin, Elian, JeLuf, notafish and Sj.

Since Sj is now presenting a bid, he was not part of the jury and the discussions.

Second round
Jury is the same as above (Board+core organisation team Wikimania 2005). Sj has been replaced by Fuzheado.

There is lots of new interest in planning the next conference; which is great. As a result, however, note that some of the declarations on this page about what "will" or "will not" happen are the private opinions of individuals, and not the conclusions of any on-wiki group discussion, nor those of the Wikimania 2005 organizers.

Please reserve the planning page itself for gathering information and suggesting requirements; and keep conversations and debates [e.g., about which countries or continents are 'out of the question'] on this talk page.

For the time being, the list of potential cities has been moved to this talk page, until there is more detail about requirements for an acceptable city/venue combination. --Sj

Planning

Content moved from old Wikimania 2006/Planning

Location

Travel

• preferably within a close distance to a major international airport
• Round-trips should be available for under 1000 USD from most of the world.
• Visa requirements should be easy to fulfill

Conference facility

• 1 x main hall (400-600 people)
• 1 x small hall (100+ people)
• 3 x seminar rooms (40-60 people)
• pre-existing wired or wireless internet would be grand (10 Mbit). If not, beware of construction materials that impede good wireless connections. Conference grounds layout should allow building of needed network.
• 2 or 3 public computers for attendees who don't bring their own laptops (free of charge, with useable keyboards)
• 1 x Organisation room
• 1 x Staff room
• 1 x Interview/press room
• Storage facilities (locked)
• 1 x NOC room (air conditionned, near organisation room)
• Air conditioning if important depending on country/weather

Accommodation

• depending on location (country, city) needs to be able to accomodate at least 250 people
• Has to be cheap (20 euros/night)
• Has to be able to deal with last minute drop outs/additions
• Has to be within a short commute (15 min by walking/public transport?) of conference grounds

This could be termed "wanting the moon on a stick" ... or "Haus der Jugend, Frankfurt, Germany" ;)

... and Lounging

A place where people (even those not staying there) can stay up late and hang out, like a hotel, would be best. Failing this, a place where people can gather and hang out, close to either accomodation or venue, is important.

Audiovisual equipment

• Needs have to be well defined according to presentations, speaker wishes, within of course, budget limitations.
• Minimum requirements are:
  • 1 projector/1 computer for each room
  • microphones for big rooms (40+ people): wireless hand microphones for audience questions, tie microphones for speakers, table microphones for panel discussion
  • speaker stands
  • proper lighting in main conference rooms, ie. so that both the speaker can be filmed and the projection screen is clearly visible.

Communications

• Walkie talkies are a must have

  I have 4 walkie talkies and am willing to buy more. Ed Poor 13:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• 2 phone lines and 1 fax in organisation room
• 1 phone line in press office

Staff

• dedicated staff is a must
• plurilingual staff helps (English and local language are musts)
• program staff: numbers to be defined according to needs
• technical staff: numbers to be defined according to needs
• run-around staff
• drivers

Special needs

• Technical ways to stay in touch : an organizer's blog, an attendee mailing list
• A real website, and a webmaster
  • Someone in charge of website and handout translations (better fewer languages, kept in synch, than more languages which are out of date)

Policies

• What kind of presentations do we want? (CfP)
• Etiquette for the press (should press be allowed everwhere? Sometimes it was really peeving)

Catering

• on location for one meal a day, preferably lunch during conference days
• must be adaptable and ready to deal with changes

Potential host cities for Wikimania 2006

Please see: Wikimania 2006/Official requirements for potential host cities and copy/paste the "application" form on that page to structure your bids.

Potential bids (non-official) include:

• Wikimania 2006/UK bid
• Wikimania 2006/Canadian bid
• Wikimania 2006/Romanian bid

Conference planning software

See also DMOZ-Category and del.icio.us-tag

setup one until middle of Januar 2006, so that the programm comitee can have a look at it before the call of paper starts --PatrickD 07:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• Pentabarf (related to Chaos Communication Club, Germany)
• VSIS ConfTool (GPL-like?)
• OpenConf (Open source)
• Open Conference System (OCS) (GPL)
• MyReview (GPL?)
• Comas (GPL) (Used for the Debian project’s DebConf)

See also

• Improving on Wikimania 2005

Planning talk

Content moved from Talk:Wikimania 2006/Planning

Talk moved from main page

Introduction

I'm starting this early! As we did have some hickups here and there that kind of got on my nerves I decided to start now before I forgot too much.

before I do though thank you to all event organizers of the 2005 wikimania conference! Some of the big players include Elian, Delphine, Jenz, Sam, Jimbo, JeluF and (add yourself here, I don't remember all of the names :( ).

Now, on to the next conference! --AppleBoy 00:19, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

On feedback from 2005

Thanks AppleBoy, I've also asked Delphine to feed back some of her reflections on the organising process so that Wikimania 2006 will be even better :) I suggested Wikimania:Lessons learned but maybe that should be Wikimania 2005 - lessons learned? Cormaggio 16:51, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, but possibly something more along the lines of for future events, so from year to year it's all kept on the same page. Otherwise I like the second link better :) --AppleBoy 05:30, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm just going to go with my idea and if in the future we want to merge pages then so be it. And with that, the second link turns blue ;) Cormaggio 15:17, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Note: this is all now at Improving on Wikimania 2005 - "lessons learned" redirects there. Cormaggio 09:53, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Venue discussion

much of this moved from the main page

• Note: the selection process will most likely be a bidding system, a la the Olympics (which is how it worked last time, too). It's isn't a case of coming up with places and discussing them, the only way a conference will actually happen is if a committed local team organise it. Therefore, it's really a case of interested groups putting together bids, one of which will be picked by a selection panel (probably the Foundation board). Dan100

Well that's kind of cheezy. I would have no problems taking a flight up to canada to check things out and make sure it'll work and then driving up a week or two early for preparations, and I'm sure I'm not the only one willing to do so. --AppleBoy 14:44, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

clarification: the location was not selected by the Foundation board in 2005; and the bidding system was not really like that of the Olympics. It was important for a group of local Wikipedians to express interest and put together a concrete proposal covering venue, accomodation, and international transportation. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+

(I added below in because I still think it would be good for people to throw out ideas, and from there we can find local groups if that's how you want to do it) --AppleBoy 23:25, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Do Not include any more cities! list venues that would be viable for us to host at! cities do us no good except give us more work to do the looking up which we don't have time for! Thank you

suggested places - please include some nearby conference areas to help give us an idea as to what's availible:

• vanconex, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - exceeds our demands ten fold at least
• Barrow, Alaska
• w:Frankfurt, why not permanent host city?
  • where's the fun in that? plus, we found that the HdJ doesn't quite suit our needs --AppleBoy 05:43, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
    • Allow me to differ on that. The HdJ was probably the best location we could ever have had for this kind of conference. notafish }<';> 01:00, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
    • best location, yes, did it suit our needs, no AppleBoy 04:04, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• w:Zurich, pretty in the centre of Europe and Switzerland is the most international country with three big languages represented
• w:San Francisco, California
• w:Washington D.C. (many Wikipedians are within driving distance of D.C.)
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• w:Ljubljana to push one of the small languages.
• w:Marseille/w:Bordeaux or somewhere else in France (preferably southern) to connect more people from various Mediterranean communities plus the whole Europe and others that came to this year's WikiMania --Dungodung 01:30, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
• w:Thailand, see: here Waerth 11:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

• • and a place that meets the above requirements would be where?

let me repeat... Do Not include any more cities! list venues that would be viable for us to host at! cities do us no good except give us more work to do the looking up which we don't have time for! Thank you

thoughts and opinions on the location

What locations have been suggested at the 2005 Wikimania? Zscout370 03:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Frankfurt was chosen because three of the organizers lived there, but we would like to host this one elsewhere, and probably rotate around the world for each one :) AppleBoy 03:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

No. Frankfurt was chosen because it was the city that came up with the best plan for Wikimania. There was a shortlist of three cities and Freankfurt won. notafish }<';> 11:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

• • And they just had it in Berlin. We can't travel to Germany all of the time. Canada sounds nice, since I need to get out of the States. Zscout370 03:38, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
    • What's wrong with Germany? I like Germany. There are so many beautiful and diverse cities there to explore. AFAIK, the happening in Berlin was not an international conference but an event of the German Wikimedia chapter.

What? Why 'no usa'? There are also no plans I know of about having a chapter in Canada by then. So who is going to host the event? Wikimedia U.S. should be set up well before then and would be a logical host of Wikimania 2006. --Daniel Mayer 04:06, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

USA has an extremely bad reputation in most of the world, and additionally, entering the country may be difficult for some people.

But I still think just having it in one city and one country is a bad idea, since it feels like we, across the pond, are going to get shafted every year. I wish it rorated around the world. Zscout370 05:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Getting into the U.S. isn't much harder than before so long as you don't have a criminal background or are on a terrorist watchlist. Punishing Americans for what their government does is absurd. Those who would boycott Wikimania in the U.S. over the war are just bigoted Anti-Americans I wouldn't want to attend any Wikimania. --Daniel Mayer 00:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Many well-known European intellectuals are on such "watchlists" and it is well known that if you are somewhat left-wing (which I presume many Wikipedians, especially those from Europe, are), you are running the risk of being stopped at the airport and returned. I think chosing the USA would be a bad idea for a wide range of reasons and send a wrong signal. Government: It's not about punishing, but about what is most practical for the community. Anyway, check out what User:WiseWoman says about this.

I think South America, maybe Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, because attract the spanish, portuguese and South American aborigin wikipedians and is very easy for the europeans. I say for more variety in the locations. --Taichi - (^_^) 04:46, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Frankfurt permanent host city?

Why not make Frankfurt the permanent host city? There's no better city when it comes to location. After all, the vast majority of Wikipedians live in Europe and Frankfurt is the city the largest number of Wikipedians can reach easy. I think it's a bad idea to have the conference in America; it is very expensive to travel there from Europe and thus very few can attend, and America isn't very international in terms of languages spoken. Contrary to Europe, where most of the big languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian etc.) are represented.

A permanent host city is an absolutely horrible idea. It should be moved around each year to give as many people a chance to attend as possible. Flying to Europe from the USA is also very expensive (time and money-wise) and is one reason why I didn't go. --Daniel Mayer 04:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is expensive the other way round as well, but since more Wikipedians live in Europe, it is even more expensive that they have to fly to America than a smaller number flying to Europe. Also, a conference where most of the attendees are English speakers is not particularly international. Frankfurt is in the centre of Europe and very close to other countries. But from a city like Washington it is a very long distance to a neighbouring country, and generally, only two or three languages are spoken on that continent. For these reasons America should not be an option. But perhaps other cities in Europe, preferably with a central location (along the French-German border or in the Benelux countries at best; Switzerland (Zurich?) or Northern Italy (Milan?) could also be a good choice) should be considered.

One should also consider that just as many Europeans may never be able to make it to a Wikimania in North American, many North Americans may never be able to make it a Wikimania in Europe. Not every location will be equally accessible to all people, but we can make Wikimanias in general more accessible to a greater range of people by rotating them through different geographic regions of the world. I like Vancouver or Montreal as options for Wikimania '06. -- Seth Ilys 05:23, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, to keep it in frankfurt you're going to need to find another place, using the HdJ again isn't going to work, and either way, we would still like to rotate around the world, no matter what, not everybody is going to be able to fly to every WM, but if we rotate around the world, it will at least be able to give local Wikimedians who can't afford the travel the chance to attend one --AppleBoy 06:02, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Why do you say "using the HdJ isn't goint to work", Apple? Dan100 07:40, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

There wasn't any good lighting, very little room for expansion, hard to get a proper internet connection going, and VERY expensive. broken down, Grosser and Kleiner cost us $3000 per room per day. --AppleBoy 14:43, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

I wonder where you found this number. It's terribly wrong. -- Arne (akl) 16:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, take a 0 off this number and you're closer to reality as a per day cost of the rooms. For lighting, we only have to blame ourselves for not getting any in advance. Apple, please, stop spreading false information about the Haus der Jugend, which was really one of the best locations we could have dreamed of for this first conference. notafish }<';> 01:05, 16 August 2005 (UTC) Oh, and I'll add...we only rented the rooms we thought we needed, there are more rooms available for use there etc. Well, all in all, I'll add again, a perfect location, just not a perfect organisation ;-) notafish }<';> 01:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

We should also look for an asien country. Or maybe Vancouver in Kanada? --80.135.34.196 15:09, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Where does the statement that "the vast majority of Wikipedians live in Europe" come from? According to this, admitedly rough set of figures, 35.10% of page views come from Europe and 37.20% from North America, with another 16.10% coming from East Asia. - SimonP 22:48, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedians" refer to those active in the community, not readers. Also, if you count people who write on the mailing lists and take part in Wikimedia discussions, you will find that the vast majority are Europeans. Also counting active Wikipedia contributors, the Europeans will be in a clear majority. Additionally, in North America only one language (roughly) is represented, while in Europe most of the big Wikipedia languages are represented. The conferences should be held as near the international communities as possible. Making this into just another US thing would be a terribly bad idea.

The vast majority aren't Europeans there either; of frequent mailing-list posters, I know for certain that Jimbo, SJ, Brion Vibber, mav, Tim Starling, Mark Williamson, Fred Bauder, and myself are all Americans, and there are doubtless quite a few more. In addition, North America represents English, Spanish, and French in large numbers, and even a substantial proportion of the Chinese-language contributors. --Delirium 00:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

And I know for certain Tim is Australian, not American. My point was that English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and most other big project languages with only one notable exception are represented in Europe. If the conference is held in America, few Europeans and hence few Wikipedians from projects other than en: will be able to travel so far, and thus it will be a mainly English-American conference. Wikipedia should emphasize its internationality, and the English community don't need this international conference being held in the US. France, Italy or any other European country would be better, and would give more publicity in Europe. The English project could hold an additional en: conference in the US. In many ways en: is different from the other projects.

IMO Wikipedia is already too Europe-driven in comparison to how important the European-language Wikipedias are, and there has already been a conference in Europe. The major dialects not yet represented with a conference near them are the majority of en: users, jp:, and zh:. North America wins for all three. Somewhere in Asia would also be a good option. If (as seems likely) WM 2006 is in North America, I would support WM 2007 being in Asia before having a repeat in Europe. --Delirium 05:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Britain

Please see the Wikimedia UK mailing list for discussions of potential locations in Britain. Angela 13:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Also, discussion on the UK Wikipedians' notice board. I personally like the University of Manchester, mainly because I'm studying there. Cormaggio 16:41, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Hold your horses :-). I'm still in the process of searching out venues and getting quotes! I don't think we're any where near making a firm bid at the moment. I'll put an update on the list tomorrow. Dan100 21:43, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

holy cow, bids already? damn dude! but hey, I can dig it :P if you do get bids, could you please make a seperate page and give the full information on the bid, what it covers, room rates, information about the surrounding area, etc? Thanks, --AppleBoy 23:29, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikimania 2006/UK bid. Cormaggio 09:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Canada Problem

This was pointed out to me at IRC, and confirmed by the Canadians that if anyone has been convicted of an offense, including DUI, they cannot enter Canada. That could leave many folks out, unfairly. Zscout370 06:58, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Mexico doesn't have the infrastructure, people, or, well, anything. If Canada is unsuitable on that basis, well, all of North America is unsuitable (the US being entirely unsuitable for the obvious reasons). Where would that leave us? Europe again?

James F. (talk) 02:07, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Mexico is definitely out of the list, but either way, does Canada really check on that? --AppleBoy 00:25, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Unless we all head to AU or NZ. Japan could do it easily. Zscout370 05:46, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Except that the expected-value costs of holding outside of North America or Europe are... unhelpfully high.

James F. (talk) 11:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the conference should be held as close as possible to as many people as possible. If you look at List of Wikipedias, all major projects except Japanese are European. I think Europe should be the obvious choice because it offer the highest number of people an opportunity to attend the conference. Switzerland would be a very good choice IMHO, but if the Germans wanted to arrange it again it would be great as well. Perhaps Germans and French could cooperate on arranging it in w:Strasbourg or somewhere else as central as possible in Europe?

Chanches to attend wikimedia decrease proportionally as the distance of the location from your home increase (in the end in Frankfurt the vast majority of attendants was obviously german). Sad but true. Still I don't think that wikimania should be held everytime "as close as possible to as many people as possible". I think that this should be achieved over time moving the location on wikimania every year. The Wikimedia projects are "everywere", Wikimania can be only in one place at a time. Even if the bulk of users are in Europe, I don't believe this means that we shouldn't give a fair chance to attend to people from other continents. I will start saving my eurocents for the next year, be it Canada or wherever. --Snowdog 09:18, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure that the problem you pointed out does not belong only for temporany or permanent resident visa? Does it applied also to tourism visa? Form many country a visa to enter in Canada is neither required. AnyFile 09:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

What's a DUI anyway? --Snowdog 00:09, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Driving Under the Influence, usually alcohol --AppleBoy

Thailand

Many cities in Thailand boast conference places. There is a wide choice. w:Bangkok for example has Bitec and Muang Tong Thani as huge centers. Apart from this many hotels have enough small and big meeting rooms to hold conferences. Bangkok also boasts a couple of huge universities where conferences like this could be held.

The cost of hotels for people to stay would be relatively cheap. already for 12 euro you can sleep in a good hotel with aircon and hot water and tv. And the nice thing is, you pay per room! not per person. So if you sleep with 3 persons in a 2 person bed no extra charge! Food is cheap. As good as no visa troubles for anyone from anywhere in the world. Direct flights to all parts of the earth even a nonstop flight to NY. Prices are relatively cheap for flying to a destination this far away. Thailand wants to promote itself as a happening IT hub and the internetconnections although not 100% superb are definately good. Apart from Bangkok, other even better cities which promote themselves on the international conference scene are: w:Pattaya, w:Chiang Mai, w:Phuket and Cha-Am/Hua Hin. Of these Pattaya is about the cheapest one because of the huge number of venues and hotels competing eachother to death. Phuket is the topend as it is being promotes as a "high-end" destination. Downsides are, it is far away for many, at this moment maybe only 2 or 3 available to help planning. Waerth 11:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

General location considerations

As an aside to the discussions above about the merits (or otherwise) of particular cities/countries it is probably sensible to consider what is actually best for Wikimania/Wikimedia in selecting a host location. Cost is a major issue: it is probably a fact of WP editors that we are generally time-rich/cash-poor to some extent, thus the cost of transport to the venue is a very major limiting factor. Few, if any, of us will be being sponsored by companies to attend as we might a commercial conference thus flitting half-way around the world is a non-starter. This would suggest that rather than the absolute number of wikipedians in the (possible) host country the deciding factor should be that of number of *current* wikipedians withing, say, a six-hour travel time, or under US$500/£300/€500 total travel cost. It is nice to suggest NZ, or Japan, but in neither case *at the present time* is it realistic to expect many people to attend from outwith those countries. If the purpose of Wikimania is to expand and build upon Wikimedia operations then numbers are what will matter. --VampWillow 13:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Along these lines, we should also vary the locations. If, as some people are suggesting, we have it in Europe all the time, that will bias it hugely towards the Europeans, who make up only about a third of Wikipedians. If we rotate between continents, we'll get a wider range of people who can come to at least one. --Delirium 09:10, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I've been watching the various threads in different places about Wikimania cons and am wondering whether we are going the wrong way in trying to create *one* con. Although it would be very nice to mix together editors from all over the world in a single location it seems clear to me that finance and cost implications will present real difficulties in enabling that ability. Given that the experience of Wm1 was that most attendees were local to that country, then maybe there should be a "north americas wikimania" and a "european wikimania" and a "east pacific rim wikimania", in each case targeting that area of the globe. One could either have them in different months (so that someone could travel if they have the finance / time off work) or - and this one interests me greatly - at the same time and link them via webcasting so that, eg., the American morning session could be used as the Europe evening session, etc. This would reduce the costs on the individual substantially and enable (possibly) smaller venues to be used rather than needing to locate venues with large lecture halls/theatres. Thoughts? --VampWillow 10:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

half of the participants from 50 countries from five continents is not what I'd call "local to that country" ;-) --Elian 17:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Scheduling

I'm looking at the comments here and on the mailing list re scheduling and something that is probably gonig to cause us problems is that we are trying to schedule a Wikimania2006 at far too short notice. Most cons I know of start researching possible locations about three years ahead, and award the con to the location two years' ahead (ie we should have just awarded Wikimania 2007) so that facility and accommodation arrangements can be made in good time. If there is to be a Wikimania2006 then decisions need to be made far earlier than November as places will not hold bookings without guarantees. At the very least we should start working on Wikimania 2007 now. Moving on from that, I'd just like to throw out the question of should Wikimania actually be held annualy? Would holding it every two years instead make it more effective? --VampWillow 16:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Due to this, it would be a nice thing that every request of information or quotation be done for both 2006 and 2007. More over, a spare location for the 2006 should be avaible in short. AnyFile 17:26, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Sponsorship

What about trying to have the conference inside an univerity or a foundation, with its sponsorship? This will grant an organized conference room (full or partially) out of charge. AnyFile 10:05, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

That is a great idea. --Daniel Mayer 00:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, this is definitely one of the easier ways for us to get grounds/accomodation in the price range we are looking at. A campus might be one of our best shots aside from youth hostels ;-). notafish }<';> 01:08, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

travel

It should be easy to arrive from international destinations; either by being reasonably close to a major international airport or by arranging some kind of travel arrangement with a major carrier to the venue city. Round-trips should be available for under 1000 USD from most of the world.

NB: This was a fairly strong requirement last year, but there were still very few cheap tickets available during the days of the conference, and it is not clear that flights to a less central destination city would have been significantly cheaper. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+

I am not very expert, but I can say that for long journey (i.e. between diffenrent continent) the cost would not be cheaper. Usually to go to a small airport/city you have to fligh to the big one, so the small city is usaully more expensive and there is less flight too, so offerts and low fares are more difficult to be found. On the other hands there is a very big discount (well .. I should say sometime) if the route you need is serviced by a low-cost airline with a direct service compared to expensive airline with many connetions. For instance from Italy is relatively cheap to go to London but is muche more expensive to go to other cities (unless the uncommon case there is a direct low-cost connection). Saying that the best choice for the airport (but this should be balance with the cost of the accomodation and the cost of the conference venue) is a big city, well connected with many flight to many other cities and with a good presence of both low-cost airline and long-range airline. As far as I know London meets this condiction, and no cities in Italy meet them (the only exception could be Rome and Milan, but there certanly better cities in Europe on this point) AnyFile 18:00, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Just to have an idea of the flight fares. I searched for prices of 1 round-trip ticket, period 6/28/2006 - 7/4/2006. Start cities in rows, destination cities in columns. --Snowdog 15:35, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Start\Dest.	London	Paris	Frankfurt	Toronto	New York	Los Angeles	Rio de Janeiro	Buenos Aires	Sydney	Tokyo
London	-	100/150€	180/200€	530/770€	650/730€	730/870€	790/1500€	800/1100€	1000/1400€	730/1300€
Paris	90/140€	-	200/280€	570/830€	440/830€	920/1250€	750/1750€	800/2000€	1200/2400€	770/1900€
Frankfurt	190/300€	150/280€	-	900/980€	550/710€	730/1100€	1080/2450€	1000/1300€	1100/5900€	1000/1900€
Toronto	740/830€	880/1150€	940/1150€	-	250/370€	360/550€	1200/1450€	920/1700€	1600/5600€	1250/1700€
New York	600/680€	750/880€	730/840€	230/340€	-	270/350€	900/1250€	700/1800€	1280/3150€	930/1600€
Los Angeles	800/870€	950/1100€	1000/1900€	310/520€	270/280€	-	980/1150€	680/830€	1040/2500€	700/900€
Rio de Janeiro	1100/2000€	1300/2800€	1250/2800€	980/1800€	900/1250€	1050/1300€	-	370/430€	1500/4000€	1700/2300€
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Sydney	1650/2200€	1400/3300€	1400/3000€	1900/2500€	2100/2400€	1600/2000€	1700/2500€	6000€	-	1650/2000€
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Whos's going to do it?

I'm hearing conflicting noises. Who will organise the next Wikimania conference: the same people who did WM05, or new people (presumeably the team behind the winning host bid)? Dan100 11:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I doubt anything has been decided - alot of what you read here is personal opinion. For a good start, there's a fresh mailing list set up which is supplementing the old wikimania-planning-l one. I suppose though it will be a mixture of the two groups you mention - on the ground volunteers and those of experience who are willing to help out again. Cormaggio 12:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Keynote speakers

Moved to Talk:Wikimania 2006:Program.

Tutorials?

Moved to Talk:Wikimania 2006:Program.