Wikimania 2020 bids/Indonesia

Wikimedia Indonesia is one of the well-established chapters in Asia. We are known as a chapter that successfully knitted together diverse wiki communities in Indonesia. We connect several language wiki communities (Javanese, Sundanese, Minangkabau, and Gorontalo) who are now learning from each other and working hand-in-hand in the pursuit of a common goal: free knowledge.

Quick facts
Country: Indonesia
Host: Wikimedia Indonesia and WMF
City: Denpasar/Badung, Bali
Venue proposed: Some hotels & MICE facilities in Bali are currently being investigated
Date: June-August 2020
Planned attendance: 800 pax
Contact: Biyanto Rebin (WMID) & Ivonne Kristiani (WMID)

Indonesia

Indonesian diversity Clockwise from top: A puppet shadow player, Sikerei - Mentawai people's shaman, Fire war ritual in Bali, Tambur flute player in Papua

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a sovereign state in Southeast Asia, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is the world's largest island country with more than thirteen thousand islands, and at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles). It is also the 14th largest by land area and the 7th largest by combined land and sea area. With over 261 million people, it is the world's 4th most populous country as well as the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is inhabited by more than half of the country's population.

Lying along the equator, Indonesia's climate tends to be relatively even year-round. Indonesia has two seasons—a wet season and a dry season—with no extremes of summer or winter. For most of Indonesia, the dry season falls between April and October with the wet season between November and March. Indonesia's climate is almost entirely tropical, dominated by the tropical rainforest climate found in its every major island, followed by the tropical monsoon climate that is occurred predominantly along Java's north coast, Sulawesi's south and east coasts, and Bali, and finally the tropical Savanna climate, found in isolated locations of Central Java, lowland East Java, Papua’s southern coast and smaller islands to the east of Lombok.

Indonesia is ethnically a very diverse country, with around 300 distinct native ethnic groups and more than 700 living languages.

Why Bali?

Why Bali? Why not other cities in Indonesia?

Why not Jakarta? There are certainly more flights to/from other countries and a lot of convention centers with varied hotels nearby. But Jakarta is considerably less safe than Bali, especially on the streets and in the public transportations. Other than that, the traffic in Jakarta is really bad. If we rent a convention center, participants would stay in different hotels nearby. Even though they are close, the commuting time could be really long due to bad traffic. We want to ensure that Wikimania participants have a good experience.

Why not Bogor? Bogor highlands is in West Java and is known for its frequent rain showers. It has Sentul Convention Center and several hotel options. However, it is located in the outskirts of Jakarta, around 2-3 hours drive, depends on traffic. If we are not lucky and the traffic is bad, we might need to allocate more commuting time. Also, this means we need to allocate another budget to provide transportations from the airport to Bogor, otherwise it would be complicated to reach.

Why not Yogyakarta? Yogyakarta or Jogja is known as city of students and the heart of arts and culture of Indonesia. There are not many options for a convention center or a hotel large enough there for 1,000 pax. The main problem with Yogyakarta is its airport. Now, its Adisucipto airport is shared with the air force, means if they want to use it, planes should hover around on the sky waiting, this causes a lot of delays. The government is planning to open a new international airport there in 2020, but we are not sure or should there be a delay this would be the main hindrance.

Bali is the most feasible place to have an international conference for several reasons.

Bali is well-known for its excellent and reliable Meeting, Incentive, Conference, and Exhibition (MICE) service.
Ease of entering. Indonesia has a visa exemption policy for many countries (see map below). 169 countries can receive free 30-day visa on arrival, which is most of the countries in the world.

Visa policy of Indonesia

Ngurah Rai Airport, Denpasar (DPS) in Bali is the second busiest international airport (hub) in Indonesia. It has direct flights from/to many cities and hubs, such as: Singapore (SIN), Kuala Lumpur (KUL), Hong Kong (HKG), Taipei (TPE), Narita (NRT), Osaka (KIX), Incheon (ICN), Perth (PER), Sydney (SYD), Auckland (AKL), Dubai (DUB) and Doha (DOH). Participants from other countries could easily find a flight either through those cities or through Cengkareng International Airport, Jakarta (CGK). As a popular tourist destination, flights to Bali from everywhere around the world are relatively inexpensive. It takes a long time to get to Indonesia from nearly everywhere except Australia and Asia (24 hours+ from North American, Europe, South America and Africa. So, travel expenses from these countries should be on par with South Africa.
Safety/Security: Bali can be considered as a safe island and Balinese is largely known for being hospitable and welcoming to tourists from all over the world, regardless of their difference. Bali is also generally very safe for women travellers. The area of Denpasar or Badung area is the most secure on the island and where many event venues/hotels are located. There is more security presence in this area. Natural Disasters such as earthquakes, volcanos and tsunami threat are present. We would need to inform everyone about these potential threats. As in many other countries, attendees will need to drink filtered water and also have necessary vaccinations, especially rabies. See: https://safearound.com/asia/indonesia/bali/
This Wikimania would also be an occasion to further develop and maintain the cooperation and network with other Wikimedians in the region, in continuation of the conversation we brought up in ESEAP conference. In addition to that, we are also encouraging more participation from other chapters or user groups in the region in partaking in designing the program and contributing or sharing the perspectives from their countries.
Holding this international event in Indonesia would be a great exposure to a wider audience otherwise unreached. As a hugely populated country, the number of editors and contributors is still low. Wikimania Bali could serve as a leverage to increase the awareness of our movement in the country, to introduce more people to our vision, to show them how far we have gone, and to encourage them to join the movement. In line with our strategic direction, knowledge equity, Wikimania Bali would be a chance to introduce a more diverse community to the movement and to incorporate new perspectives.
The event would also open our networks with potential cultural and educational partners in Bali, besides maintaining our relationships with existing partners who would join the conference. It will possibly also connect us with potential volunteers who would spearhead the Balinese Wikipedia. With 3.3 million native speakers, Wikipedia does not yet exist in Balinese, compared to the existence of Gorontalo Wikipedia with only 0.9 million native speakers.
Many communities of developers, open data enthusiasts and start-up companies are located in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. They are most likely willing to attend the conference in Bali and network with the global Wikimedia movement. The price of flight ticket and accommodation in Bali is relatively cheap for people coming from Jakarta and Yogyakarta as there are many non-star hotel options.

Venue

There are several numbers of venues that are suitable for an international event like Wikimania. We are currently investigating venues in Seminyak and Nusa Dua.

We striked out the possibility of holding the event in a university setting because of several reasons:

The location of big university in Bali is quite far from any accommodation/hotels. It was not walking distance and transportation is hard.
Partnering with university in Indonesia might means going through the labyrinth of bureaucracy, or a lag of response, that could effect inefficiency.
Regarding facility, since it's not a MICE facility, we need to organize and contact the catering ourselves, etc. Usually this means more costs, since we are dealing with more than one supplier, as in one for the venue and the other for the catering. The university might lack some facilities needed for the conference.
Using facilities of the university here is rarely free of charge. The price might be a little under market price, but the hassle makes it not worth it.
Unreliable Internet connection.

In surveying the venues, we made Internet reliability and its speed our priority. Therefore, we are not recommending smaller properties nor university settings because of this. This might mean that we will need to be in a larger and more expensive property. Also, to avoid high season and higher price rate, we might need to move the proposed dates either earlier or later.

Team

Wikimedia Indonesia has experienced in forming a diverse team that comprises of dedicated full-time staffs, part-time consultants, and passionate volunteers across Indonesia; whether it is to host a conference, run a workshop, or organize a competition. We are working as a team across different cities in Indonesia: Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Padang, and Surabaya. We are also known in initiating, with the help of others, a regional networking of chapters, user groups, and volunteers in the region through an ESEAP (East, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific) conference in Bali in 2018.

Previous hosting experience

Wikimedia Indonesia had successfully held two international conferences.

The first one was Creative Commons Regional Conference in 2012 in Jakarta. It was organized by Wikimedia Indonesia as the parent organization in the country and includes 148 participants. Most of the participants are from Indonesia while the rest comes from other countries such as Australia, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, The Philippines, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, The United States, Vietnam.

The second was ESEAP Conference in May 2018 in Bali. It was the first regional meeting that brought together Wikimedia communities across the region. In total, there were 58 participants from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, The Philippines, East Timor, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Brunei, and China.