Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018/Bids

As discussed at the Wikimedia Conference 2017 in Berlin, Germany, the Wikimedia CEE regional network will hold a bidding process in order to decide upon the location and host of the CEE meeting in 2018. This page is the platform on which the bidding process and relevant discussions will take place, as well as the final decision.

Questions about bids or comments related to the process in general are welcome on the talk page, where the bidders will respond to your expectations, questions and ideas for the 2018 meeting.

Bidding timeline

May 16^th Call for submissions	July 23^rd 24:00 (UTC) Submission deadline	July 24^th – August 24^th Community consultation	October 14^th 24:00 (UTC) Final deadline for submission changes	October 15^th – October 31^st Committee deliberations	November 1^st Announcement of the host

Applications

Please use the template supplied at Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018/Bids/Template to create your application and fill in the information relevant to your proposal. Please save your application on a subpage to this page and link it in the list below.

Committee

Members

Danny B. (Czech Republic)
Cornelius Kibelka (Germany)
Tanel Pern (Estonia)
~~Filip Maljkovic (Serbia)~~
Mardetanha (Iran)
David Saroyan (Armenia)
Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (Poland)

Facilitator

Philip Kopetzky (Austria)

Criteria

Mandatory

Proposal must be supported by at least one recognised Wikimedia movement affiliate from the CEE region;
The proposed event location must be in the CEE region and have the support of the local affiliate (if not the same as point 1);

Main conference should take place over 3 days (participants arriving the day before the start of the conference and leaving on final day or day after the conference);
Event scope should be calculated expecting 2 participants per affiliate (approximately 30 organisations, plus other invited individuals and groups e.g. WMF (see 2016 participants for overview);
Venue, accommodation and other size and costs should account for some additional attendees with independent funding;
The rough timeframe of the conference should be planned in accordance to other big events like Wikimania 2018 in order to leave enough time between them and the CEE Meeting (at least around one month. Wikimania 2018 is supposed to take place in July/August, so we strongly recommend September/October)
Venue should be able to host at least 2 parallel conference tracks with appropriate audio/visual support (for example projectors and microphones), additionally plenary events and breakout spaces. All of which, and including accommodation should have strong and stable wifi connectivity (if this is not supported by the venue, additional costs for technological support must be provided);
All agreed in-kind donations should be presented in the bid and indicate the market value of such donations.

Committee decision

The 2018 CEE Meeting committee would like to thank both Wikimedia Ukraine (Вікімедіа Україна) and Wikimedia Serbia (Викимедија Србије) for their efforts in creating their bids. This is the second time that the CEE community carried out such a bidding process to choose the next host of the CEE meeting. As in 2017, the committee hopes that all stakeholders in this bidding process found this useful, productive and not overly bureaucratic.

The committee believes that both bids represent viable plans for hosting the CEE Meeting even though the approach behind each bid is quite different. In practical terms, both bids have: locations near the centre of a big city; venues which are equally accessible; with equivalent travel restrictions for foreigners, and with a similar number of attendees. Both bids are planning to host a variety of social and touristic activities around the formal meeting.

With regards to the WMUA bid for Lviv

The committee was impressed by the bid especially for it’s community-centred, volunteer-driven focus and its cost efficiency. The committee appreciates the effort of decentralizing its chapter activities by using an international event to mobilize and attract local volunteers. The choice of the location – a university library – was also appreciated, both by the proximity of the library’s and Wikimedia’s spirit, as well as in terms of cost efficiency. However, the committee would like to remind the organisers of the challenges of hosting a conference in a library (cf. Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City). The committee also appreciated the idea of hosting a pre-/post conference event, as well as the flexibility of moving the event from August to October, as confirmed by the bidding team.

With regards to the WMRS bid for Belgrade

The committee appreciates the bid submitted by Wikimedia Serbia and would like to highlight the professionalism demonstrated by the chapter’s staff in drafting this bid. The bid has its strengths with a central location in the capital of Serbia and the obvious advantage of having the accommodation and the event location in the same building. However, the committee was concerned about the overall costs of the bid (compared to the Ukrainian bid and compared to the costs for this year’s event, which would be an increase of ~15%) and the proposed workload of different bidding team members, with one staff member accounting for almost one third of the whole workload of organizing the conference. Also, the size of the conference rooms as well as its lack of windows, concerned the committee.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it is the committee’s conclusion that the bid from Wikimedia Ukraine is stronger and therefore is pleased to say that the 2018 CEE Meeting is awarded to Lviv. The committee would like to thank both chapters, leaders in the CEE region, for their commitment and dedication shown in the bidding process. The committee is pleased to see that, despite some minor delays, the bidding process has been effective and efficient in choosing the best host for the upcoming CEE meeting and giving all members, communities and affiliates of the CEE region an opportunity to have stake in this process.

We would like to encourage WMRS to continue their great work within the CEE region and also encourage WMUA to seek the support of committee members and previous organisers when writing the event grant proposal.

CEE you in Lviv in 2018!

On behalf of the 2018 CEE meeting committee (Tanel Pern, Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska, Mohsen Salek, David Saroyan and Cornelius Kibelka. NB: Danny B., originally part of this committee, did not take part in the decision-making process) Philip Kopetzky (facilitator) 15:27, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]