Wikimania 2016 bids/Esino Lario/Team

Cute and cuddly, boys. Cute and cuddly! Skipper, Madagascar, 2005.

Wikimania Esino Lario is a conference promoted by Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH in partnership with Esino Lario city council, Ecomuseo delle Grigne, Pro Loco Esino Lario, Parco Regionale della Grigna Settentionale and the Esino Lario local associations and community. Please refer to the support of institutions. Wikimania Esino Lario team is composed mainly of volunteers, it will have a specific staff and it will be implemented also with the support of some of the staff of Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH.

A limited overview of what the four main working areas of Wikimania Esino Lario imply.

Volunteers

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  Gogo (Carlo Maglia) managing and photographing the volunteers - with a school internship
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  Check in the morning of the volunteers - with a school internship
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  Catherine de Senarclens
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  The registration team (with Jimmy Wales)
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  The registration team (with others)
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  Communication team
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  Pietro Pensa mayor of Esino Lario.
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  Lara Pensa
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  Alpini and Protezione Civile
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  Yiyi
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  Team at the Primary School.

The group promoting Wikimania Esino Lario is composed by volunteers. We also had the support of the project manager Giulia Sepe at the beginning of 2014, managed and financed by Wikimedia Italia. The majority of the people involved in Wikimania Esino Lario are volunteers and the event is led by volunteers.

Kinds of volunteers

• Promoters group. The promoters group is composed of wikimedians, and other volunteers. We have involved in the team a series of people who have the specific skills to help us in the planning and who can advice with their expertise. Among the team there are volunteers with experience in attending Wikimania and engaged in the Wikimedia movement, there are representatives of associations of Esino Lario and people managing the buildings we will be using, two former mayors of Esino Lario, an engineer with an expertise in infrastructures and safety (the Italian regulation is pretty precise and complex), and – just to provide some examples – an expert in ICT for development with experience in connectivity in rural areas of Sierra Leone in Sub-Saharian Africa, other experts in ICT (servers, hardware, systems), an expert in audio systems, experts in art, cultural events and tourism, a consultant for catering who will be working for our event as food curator. We are also benefitting from the advice of a large group of people: we have informed and met representatives of public administrations at a provincial and regional level, we received a lot of help from the staff of the Esino Lario city council providing us with information and the urban plans to update OpenSteetMap, we received advice from the executive director of the Comunità Montana della Valsassina, Valvarrone, Val d'Esino e Riviera and really a large number of people in Esino Lario has not only supported us by confirming apartments and private meeting rooms but also by suggesting solutions, spaces and contacts. Really a long list of people we need to thank and we hope we can work with further. At the moment people met in Esino Lario during site-visits, meetings and presentations, we have a mailing list in Italian created by Wikimedia Italia and we exchanged by email; for the implementation of the project we will organize the group of promoter in smaller teams to allow people to collaborate and exchange more closely.

• Volunteers during the event. During the event we expect 300 volunteers to contribute to Wikimania Esino Lario
  • 100-150 volunteers based in Esino Lario.
  • 100 wikimedians mainly from Italy and Switzerland and some international volunteers involved in particular in the program.
  • 50-100 volunteers from Italy not necessarily linked to Wikimedia (i.e. volunteers recruited in local high schools and universities).

• Volunteer service (before-after the event). We are browsing the possibility of supporting further the involvement of volunteers by creating links with existing volunteer programs (essentially Italian and European). We have contacted two youth organizations who have experience in this field; we don't have jet a conformation of their involvement. Existing volunteer programs can allow us to involve volunteers longer than during the event. this would be an interesting option to have some people contributing to the preparation of the event; we already have accommodation which can be used to host them.

Tasks

See:

• Location tasks
• Technical tasks

Staff

We expect the management of the project to require the involvement of some staff; staff can guarantee continuity and it can take care of a more regular work which will be needed before the event (coordination, management of the participants and administrative work). Another task which might require support from staff is transport management. At an early stage of the planning, we expected a series of tasks to require staff; during the planning process we have produced an executive project, we have involved a series of partners and we have started and tested the collaboration with a group of volunteers; some of the tasks we expected to need staff appear to be manageable by volunteers or partners.

At the moment we already benefit from the involvement of some staff of the partner institutions (in-kind contribution):

• Wikimedia Italia staff. Through partnerships we have already secured the contribution of Wikimedia Italia for the communication of the event (newsletter and other media used by Wikimedia Italia) and during the conference (on-site registration with 3 people for 7 days); this contribution is in-kind (it involves staff already collaborating with Wikimedia Italia). We are discussing with Wikimedia Italia board the possibility of increasing the contribution of their staff with a co-funding from a grantmaker.
• Wikimedia CH staff. We have asked Wikimedia CH an in-kind contribution of 4 staff members to work with us during the event; Wikimedia CH can also contribute to facilitate the visa process for specific countries.
• Esino Lario city council. We can benefit for Wikimania Esino Lario of the collaboration of two people involved in the Esino Lario tourist office as in-kind contribution, and the staff of the city council has already supported us during the planning process. Another interesting asset of the collaboration with the city council is the possibility to extend the collaboration with some of their suppliers.
• Wikimedia Foundation. If selected Wikimania Esino Lario can take the advantage of having the involvement and support of the event coordinator of Wikimedia Foundation.

We have requested an estimated cost to an event company for the management of the transports (5'000 euro + VAT) and the coordination of the event (20'000 euro + VAT). We include in the budget a general amount for staff.