Wikimania 2016 bids/Esino Lario/Participants

Expected number of participants

We expect 700 participants at Wikimania Esino Lario and the event is designed for 1'000. At the moment, the events which have reached a larger number of participants have been Wikimania in English-speaking cities, including also daily registrations and occasional attendees. Having an event in English in a non English speaking countries has a specific impact on daily registrations and occasional attendees; we expect some people to pass-by (around 100 people who have a house in Esino Lario and 100 people for Milan area coming for the day), but Esino Lario is not a large city and – for how our event is conceived – the emphasis is on the people staying for the entire event and we are not focusing on occasional pass-by attendees.

Group photo at Wikimania Haifa.

Group photo at Wikimania Hong Kong.

A larger outreach program is designed through communication and with a specific series of presentations, meetings and training in Italian before and after the event; Wikimania is a great chance to provide visibility to the Wikimedia projects, but not all events and initaitves needs to take place during the conference week. Our plan is to take advantage of the Wikimania momentum to involve the territory and to reinforce the activities of Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH.

It can be relevant to note that the planning of Wikimania Esino Lario has already allowed to establish links with Expo Milan 2015 (in the first months of planning we were considering organizing the event in 2015), and we had already meetings with provincial and regional public administrators, and with institutions and companies. We expect the implementation of the event to take full advantage of these contacts to foster communication of the Wikimedia projects and the implementation of the "before and after the event" program.

Hypothesis participants

See also Wikimania/Target.

Hypothesis number of participants

Estimated participants	Number	Lunch	Accommodation in Esino Lario	Accommodation Varenna (higher level 4 and 5 stars)	Pendular	Number of rides by bus if nobody among the pendular has a car	Possible car (and parking spots)
Organizers Wikimedia	100	100	100			Possible car	20
Organizers Esino Lario	100	50	House in Esino			Possible car	20
Organizers Extra	30	30	30			Possible car	6
Organizers from the territory	50	50	House in the area		50	Possible car	10
Attendees from Italy	50	50	40	10	10	Possible car	10
Wikimedia Chapters (board and staff)	100	100	100
Wikimedia Foundation (board, committee and staff)	100	100	77	23	23
Scholarships	250	250	250
Attendees from abroad (Europe + North America and Oceania). Including journalists.	80	80	70	10	10	Possible car
Researchers from Europe and US	40	40	30	10	10
Occasional visitors from Esino (conference days)	100		House in Esino			Possible car	20
Occasional visitors (conference days) - Including journalists from Milan and the territory, stakeholders	150	150	For the day		150	Possible car	30
Total	1.150	1.000	697	53	253	7	116

Hypothesis main interest of the participants

This hypothesis is only meant to have some references to plan flows (in participants possible numbers for pre-conference, conference and post-conference).

Estimated interests	Description	Number	Percentage
Organizers (not included international)	Wikimedia, Esino Lario, Extra and from the territory	280	24%
Politics (board, staff, commitee)	Wikimedia Foundation, chapters and 30% of the scholarships	275	24%
Active contributors	Half of the attendees from Italy and from Europe and US; half of the scholarships	190	17%
General - potential newbies	Half of the attendees from Italy and from Europe and US; 20% of the scholarships; occasional visitors	365	32%
Researchers		40	3%
Total		1.150	100%

Hypothesis provenance of the participants

This hypothesis is only meant to have some references to plan transport, visa and flows (in participants possible numbers for pre-conference, conference and post-conference). This hypothesis is based on the numbers above (with the assumption that participants in an event in Italy might be more numerous from Italy and Europe) and it is based on the estimates below (related to Wikimedia Chapters and scholarships).

Estimated location of arrival and departure	Number	Percentage
Varenna (probably trains from CH, DE)	61	11%
Airport Orio al Serio	61	11%
Airport Linate	61	11%
Airport Malpensa	388	68%
Total	570	100%

Estimated provenance (necessary to plan transport)	Number	Percentage	Total of non local	Percentage of non local
Local	580	50%
Europe	242,5	21%	242,5	43%
North America and Oceania	190	17%	190	33%
South America	47,5	4%	47,5	8%
Africa	30	3%	30	5%
Asia	60	5%	60	11%
Total	1150	100%	570	100%
Visa requirements	137,5	11,96%

Wikimedia Chapters (board, staff, further scholarships) - Excluding Italy	Number	Percentage
Europe	70	70%
North America and Oceania	5	5%
South America	10	10%
Africa	5	5%
Asia	10	10%
Total	100	100%

Scholarships	Number	Percentage
Europe	112,5	45%
North America	25	10%
South America	37,5	15%
Africa	25	10%
Asia	50	20%
Total	250	100%

Registration

All participants have been to be registered. Registrations allowed us to collect information about the participants before the event, to manage special needs (food, accommodation), to provide all participants with a personal insurance and to count the participants.
We organized registration in a series of tickets including lunches, dinner and accommodation.

For the on-site registration was managed at the Ex-Albergo Italia in Piazza Italia.

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  The entrance to Ex-Albergo Italia (on the left); the square in front of it can be closed to the traffic.
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  The terrace of Ex-Albergo Italia which can be equipped with small tensile structures.
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  The terrace in the evening.
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The on site registration process

On site registration for Wikimania Esino Lario was specifically challenging since it included for 440 beds also the check in for the accommodation and the copy of documents requested by the Italian law for all accommodation.

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  Organization of the badges in personal folders before the opening of the on site registration.
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  Management of the keys necessary for the check in for the accommodation in apartments.
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  Each registation pack included the tickets for breakfast, lunch and dinner according to the package acquired.
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  Organization of the registration space.
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  Entrance to the on site registration.
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  The registration process.
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  Ribbons and t-shirts.
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  Lombardy Region welcome bags.
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  Management of the apartments - Contacts with the landlords and arranging transport to the flats.
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  Managing all the registration problems.
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  Check out

Visa

dark blue - no visa required, Schengen area; light blue - no visa required, special territories of Schengen member states; dark green - no visa required (annex II), red - visa required (annex I); brown - visa required (annex I), transit visa required; pink - passport not recognized; gray - no information.

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See also the official visa map

Italy is part of the Schengen area, which has a uniform visa policy: requirements can be strict but most Wikimania attendees will need no visa, or enjoy visa facilitation. Rejection rate for Schengen short-stay visa is is less than 5 % and as little as 1 % for many countries: EU and Italy have good relations with almost all the countries in the world; in particular for Italy Middle East, Northern Africa and the Balkans, all countries quite poorly "served" by Wikimanias after Alexandria 2008.

Citizens of 73 countries will not need to worry about visa, making Wikimania Esino Lario the second most internationals-friendly Wikimania ever! You can easily check the requirements for your country, if any, with the Ministry's Do you need a visa? tool.

Free access (Schengen area)

1. Austria
2. Belgium
3. Czech republic
4. Denmark
5. Estonia
6. Finland
7. France
8. Germany
9. Greece
10. Hungary
11. Iceland
12. Italy
13. Latvia
14. Lithuania
15. Luxembourg
16. Malta
17. Netherlands
18. Norway
19. Poland
20. Portugal
21. Slovakia
22. Slovenia
23. Spain
24. Sweden
25. Switzerland
26. Liechtenstein

European Union free movement (non-Schengen countries)

1. Bulgaria
2. Croatia
3. Cyprus
4. French territories of French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, Mayotte, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin
5. Ireland
6. Romania
7. United Kingdom

Visa free

1. Albania (+visa facilitations)
2. Argentina
3. Australia
4. Bahamas
5. Barbados
6. Bosnia and Herzegovina (+visa facilitations)
7. Brazil
8. Brunei Darussalam
9. Canada
10. Chile
11. Costa Rica
12. Colombia
13. El Salvador
14. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (+visa facilitations)
15. Guatemala
16. Honduras
17. Hong Kong SAR
18. Israel
19. Japan
20. Mexico
21. Macao SAR
22. Malaysia
23. Nicaragua
24. New Zealand
25. Panama
26. Paraguay
27. Republic of Korea (South Korea)
28. Saint Kitts and Nevis
29. Serbia (+visa facilitations)
30. Seychelles
31. Singapore
32. Taiwan
33. United Arab Emirates
34. United States of America
35. Venezuela

Visa facilitations

1. Armenia
2. Cape Verde
3. Georgia
4. Moldova
5. Montenegro
6. Russia
7. Ukraine

Managing visa

Visa is managed in Italy, and/or in Switzerland where needed.

Visa procedures for Wikimania Esino Lario attendees will be managed by the staff of Wikimedia Italia. The staff has previous experience in managing visa requests for the Wikimedia Conference organized in 2013 in Milan; for this event the majority of the visa procedures were successfully managed; difficulties emerged for participants coming from the Philippines and Indonesia. To make sure all participants can apply for visa with the necessary support we set a proper timeline and the partnerships with Wikimedia CH will allow us to relay also on another country' procedures for visa requests, in case Italy presents a more difficult situation.

Excursions in Switzerland

For participants coming from outside the Schengen area, to be able to make an excursion in Switzerland it is necessary that the visa is "Valid for Schengen area" (not a visa valid only for Italy). Please make sure to specify it when you make the visa request.

Cost for participants

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The concept of Wikimania Esino Lario is that attending the talks, the discussions and all the events is free of charge. Nevertheless we had to create a cheap flat rate (we set 20 euro for 1-3 days and 35 euro for 5 days) necessary to register the participants in order to manage issues related to insurance for civil liability, connectivity and safety and security; we included in the rate the t-shirt, the programme and for the 5 days the welcome bag.

Compared to the initial estimated costs, we decided to increase the quota for the accommodation to allow us to manage all together the beds available in Esino Lario (in apartments, dorms and hotel). Differently from other Wikimania, we created a registration cost which also includes dinner, to allow scholarship recipients to have all costs covered; the cost of dinner and such was increased in May 2015 according to the suggestions provided by Ellie Young and Garfield Byrd during the Wikimedia Foundation site-visit. We separated the transport from and to the airport to allow people to select it or not and we have calculated the registration also by including the cost of the t-shirts and welcome beg.

Scholarships and guests

International scholarships

International scholarships will be managed as usual by the Scholarship Committee and the WMF. We have drafted a proposal to contribute to the brainstorming on how to improve the scholarship system for Wikimania.

Italian volunteers and guests

Expense	Number	Days	Cost/Unit	Total in euro	Total in dollars
Insurence for the volunteers	200		€ 10,00	€ 2.000,00	$ 2.744,98
Travel expenses volunteers	50		€ 50,00	€ 2.500,00	$ 3.431,23
Travel expenses volunteers	50		€ 100,00	€ 5.000,00	$ 6.862,45
Accommodation and food	50	9	€ 50,00	€ 22.500,00	$ 30.881,03
Accommodation and food	50	5	€ 50,00	€ 12.500,00	$ 17.156,13
Lunch for volunteer resident	50	8	€ 10,00	€ 4.000,00	$ 5.489,96
Lunch for guests (companies, workers, stakeholders)	11		€ 16,00	€ 166,00	$ 227,83
Insurence for guests (companies, workers, stakeholders)	150		€ 10,00	€ 1.500,00	$ 2.058,74
Welcome bag and thank you t-shirt for volunteers	200		€ 5,00	€ 1.000,00	$ 1.372,49
Total amount planned in the estimated costs				€ 51.166,00	$ 70.224,82
			Currency	€ 1,00	$ 1,37

Volunteers will be invited to support the event through their associations, among those: wikimedia chapters (in particular Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH), associations in Esino Lario (Pro Loco, Alpini, Soccorso Val d'Esino, CAI, group of teachers, Amici del Museo delle Grigne), networks of local associations (in particular Pro Loco and Alpini), like-minded associations and groups (Creative Commons, Open Street Map - which in Italy is already linked to Wikimedia Italia, Linux groups and other open software and open knowledge groups and associations). We are also exploring the possibility of involving the association STS Italia - Società Italiana di Studi su Scienza e Tecnologia (Italian society of studies on science and technology), which is an association of researchers which could also contribute to the evaluation of Wikimania Esino Lario.