Wikimania 2012/Bids/Stanford

The Stanford University campus from space

Wikimania 2012 candidate cities:

Washington, D.C. (Q&A) - Stellenbosch (Q&A)

City details

from the air

Stanford University is located in the South San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. Stanford libraries house more than 8,000,000 volumes, most of which are in open stacks.

• Proposed dates (e.g., Friday to Sunday, with possibility of arriving on the Thursday night and leaving on Monday morning): August 9-13, 2012
  • TBD pending maximum strictly on-campus housing availability (i.e., minimum total shuttle distance) selection

• Tentative host contact:

Todd Davies                 email: davies at csli.stanford.edu
Symbolic Systems Program    phone: 1-650-723-4091
Stanford University         fax: 1-650-723-5666
Stanford, CA, 94305-2150    web: http://www.stanford.edu/~davies
USA                         office: 460-040C

FYI -- Todd is the contact for a Stanford program, who offered to host (pending approval from his program director and administrative staff). He is not the contact person for this bid. "Contact person" refers to the bid leader. Who is that? -- phoebe 20:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC), amended by Todd Davies, 21:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC).

let's get an experienced Wikimania attendee

Conference venue

from above

• brief description of venue (room sizes, number of rooms etc.) venues TBD

1. Main hall: Memorial Auditorium with several possibilities for open-air amphitheater if no rain (rain very unlikely in July-August)
   • make sure the Drama Department has the reservation, they control the Auditorium, and probably the Amphitheater too
2. Seminar rooms: (6 @ 50-100 people each)
3. Lounge facilities:
   • unofficial (student union) guide
   • Stanford Medical Center cafeteria and lounge areas are open all night, are on the shuttle routes, and have a wide assortment of vending machines, usually with fresh fruit, etc. ("...open 24 hours a day..." -- Wikimania 2011/Judging criteria)
4. Other rooms (organisation, staff, speakers, interviews/press, storage):

• Socializing areas (Garden, lounge etc.), their capacity and the hours at which they are opened/closed:
  • on campus
  • unofficial guide

• Contacts with conference venue (emails, price quotes etc.)
  • Stanford Meeting Planning Department
  • "Things to Know"

• Technical facilities
  • Official campus-wide wireless network instructions
  • Many venues have unrestricted guest wireless access, depending on department policies

the Oval

Accommodation

• Location of main accommodation facilities
  • Dorm accommodations TBD -- need sponsors (see below)

(where can the attendees be hosted. On site, off site, how far from conference venue? For attendees? For VIPs?)

• Room details and price range

(What's the accommodation like? Dorms, B&B, Hotel? Singles, doubles? How much does it cost per person and per day?)

• on campus
• off campus
• unofficial (Student Union) guide

• Catering (one meal a day, breakfast is a plus)

(Where do we eat, how much it costs)

• on campus
• unofficial guide

• Contacts with accommodation partner(s)

(Have you contacted the proposed locations, exchange of emails, price quotes etc.)

Room and board quotes totaling $582K from Suzanne in Conference Services, srose at stanford dot edu and Phil Gin, pgin at stanford dot edu, and is on talk, but the primary date is outside the range specified and it's not clear which venues are included yet

Party opportunities

Wikimania traditionally hosts two parties, one for attendees (capacity of 250-350) and one for sponsors and VIPs (capacity 40-60). (Stanford locals, please add to this list!)

• Attendees party(ies) propositions

(location, how to get there, what's cool and relaxed about it)

• Computer History Museum in nearby Mountain View this museum has some of the coolest computer equipment ever (for its time) and is very relaxed, perhaps because young kids don't like it (not as many interactive exhibits as you would expect, but no possibility for the germ contamination that entails)
• Campus and museum tours

• Sponsor party(ies) proposals

(location, how to get there, what's chic and high profile about it)

• Wikimedia Foundation office
• Angel Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, accessible by train, streetcar, and ferry (in that order, from Stanford; "California's Ellis Island")[1]
  • Meetup at Angel Island and subsequent investigation suggested their catered "parade grounds wood stove" party would be appropriate; about $100/head
• HackerDojo also in nearby Mountain View

• Might work for either attendees or sponsor party

• NASA Ames Research Center also in nearby Mountain View; visitor approval and badging from nationals of some countries may be a problem but Pete Worden may be able to approve exceptions for certain areas.

Travel and transportation

• Estimation of travel costs from all continents:

the James H. Clark Center at night

Round trip to San Jose; best price on Travelocity for August 6 to 9, 2010

From	Airline	Price (USD)
Beijing	Hainan	$1,470
Boston	Continental	$373
Cape Town	United	$1,735
London	British Airways	$882
Melbourne	American	$1,833
Moscow	Aeroflot	$1,118
Rio de Janeiro	United	$1,390

see also: Wikimania 2010/Bids/Gdańsk#By air, Wikimania 2011/Bids/Montréal#Getting to Montréal, and/or Wikimania 2008/Bids/Atlanta/Airfares

The free Marguerite shuttle travels regularly across campus, to the Palo Alto Transit Center, and to downtown Palo Alto.

• Distance from international airports and how do we get to the location:
  • Stanford recommends obtaining airline quotations to each of the three local international airports. Ordered by distance:
    • San Jose (SJC)
    • San Fransisco (SFO)
    • Oakland (OAK)
  • maps

• Local transportation and local social opportunities

(Wikimania usually does not offer dinner. What are the surroundings of the location like? Lots of restaurants and places to hang out? What is the local transportation like?)

• Google map of local restaurants and public transportation

• Visa issues

(who needs a visa, how easy is it to obtain it)

U.S. State Department visa waivers are available for people from: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and New Zealand (list of January, 2010.)

Tourist visas may be obtained for people from most other countries.

• Tourism opportunities

(when people travel from far away, they like to come for more than just the conference. What are the tourism opportunities around the location?)

Abundant, e.g. w:San Francisco Bay Area#Music et seq.

Les Bourgeois de Calais by Auguste Rodin at the Main Quad Memorial Court

Local sponsorship opportunities

Possibility of local sponsorships

• Contacts

(no name needed, just "company X, 4000 USD or will provide 300 beds)

Let's make sure we can get enough sponsorships to be as free as practical for low income attendees, active admins, and active senior editors. The usual prospective donors: large local companies, startups, VCs et alli.

Local team

• Todd Davies, sponsoring contact
• James Salsman, off-campus volunteer

Miscellaneous

Anything you feel should be brought to the attention of the jury.

need to go over everything in User:Phoebe/Wikimania e.g., registration software already written, etc.

Self-evaluation

Meyer Library houses Stanford's public domain government documents.

• Weaknesses of the proposed location ...and how to overcome those weaknesses

1. Expensive housing

   Sponsored dorms

2. Parking

   Public transportation

• Strengths of the proposed location

1. Libraries and digital resources
   1. http://library.stanford.edu/
   2. digital image collections
2. Meeting venues
3. local attractions
   1. Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco
   2. other area libraries and museums
   3. Silicon Valley