Wikimania 2016 bids/Esino Lario/Pillars
The fundamental principles by which Wikimania Esino Lario operates can be summarized in five "pillars":
- Collaboration. The team is one team, which includes all the people involved, who are already wikimedians or not. The edit button exists also offline, and wikimedians are all the people who want to modify things to share their knowledge and to support the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual, educational content. We include all the project contributors in the organizing team, we credit work, we design a program meant for different kind of participants, we include in a transversal way the interests and needs of different people, we make sure participants are in the best conditions to obtain a visa, we select for scholarships dedicated members which need economic support to participate (through a transparent process which provides full - really full - or partial scholarships, according to the needs), and we plan an inclusive and collaborative event.
- Scalability. We are not planning one event, we are planning a format which can be replicated in other places. We document what we are doing and how we do it, we produce guidelines for the future and to involve people who can contribute further to other events; we look for solutions which can be relevant for other contexts.
- What already exists. Priority is given to local suppliers and to tap on existing resources. We look at previous experiences and we build on it.
- What can last. Priority is given to invest in what lasts beyond the event. We reduce to the minimum all the expenses related to the ephemeral and we invest time, energy and budget in what is useful and relevant beyond the event.
- Experimenting and having fun. We gather for the pleasure of it.