Talk:Wikimania bid

Possible venues

Is it too early to start thinking about possible venues if a UK bid is to be created? London is an obvious candidate & Oxford has previously been suggested, however would Bristol be possible? If so I have recently had some communications with the UWE Bristol Exhibition and Conference Centre about another event & asked whether it would meet the criteria set out at requirements for bidding cities. It has several areas (approximate metric measurements and maximum capacities):

• Zone A. 41m x 37m. 1000, theatre style
• Zone B. 63.5m x 37m. 1000, theatre style
• Zone C. 71m x 31.5m. 1000, theatre style
• Zone D. 34.5m x 14m. 800, theatre style
• Zone E. 34.5m x 32m. 800, theatre style

And a variety of smaller rooms + student type accommodation if during vacations. If anyone wants me to follow up or find further information I can make contact with the event manager Kerry Ellery.Rodw 13:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Nottingham might also be an option (easy air links). Possibly York (really pretty city & some interesting GLAM opportunities there which I think is neat)... Bristol is an interesting idea, it's a nice place IIRC. So list so far (collated from my memory of everything that has been mentioned to this date)...

• London
• Bristol
• Oxford
• Nottingham
• Manchester
• York

Lots to consider there --ErrantX 14:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I would look a little wider than England too. It might be interesting to consider cities with excellent direct international airport connections such as Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff. There are very good reasons to take seriously a non-English venue, especially considering the real impact we would have on reenforcing our minority Wikimedia communities in these countries. --Fæ 15:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

That's very true. What about Edinburgh? That's one of my favourite cities? I'm adding a list of proposed locations to the main page --ErrantX 10:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

We need to remember what else is on in some of these places. If you clash with something big you up your venue costs, your accommodation costs and your risk of being gazumped. Edinburgh has the Fringe in August, and I think parts of the festival overspill into adjacent months. WereSpielChequers 19:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think we want somewhere that's either within easy reach (there and back in a day) of London, because a lot of people will want to go there (the same reason a trip to Jerusalem was included in Wikimania 2011, even though the conference was in Haifa), or somewhere that's well-known in its own right, has plenty to keep people occupied, and has good travel connections. The only places outside England that really fit that description are probably Glasgow, Edinburgh, and possibly Cardiff. I would go with somewhere in the (English) Midlands, like Birmingham or Nottingham. Both have easy connections to London (an hour/90 minutes) from stations in the centre of town, are big enough in their own rights to keep people entertained, and have nearby international airports (though East Midlands airport is a bit of a trek from Nottingham on public transport because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to build a station four miles away in the middle of nowhere!).

There's London, of course, but the accommodation (at least the low-cost stuff, for those of us who can't afford swanky hotels) is likely to be quite a way from Central London, people might have difficulty navigating on the Tube. Besides, who wants to write directions for six airports and an international station, not to mention the seventeen other domestic terminal stations, and boats, roads, bus routes! ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I love Edinburgh, and I like the idea of a Celtic fringe Wikimania. But I think we need to be practical here and I'd like to suggest that we limit ourselves to cities that

1. Are a regular conference venue and market themselves as that - so we can tap into any incentives, publicity program or other resources that that town or city puts into promoting itself as a conference venue. And here I'm thinking packages and free maps more than I'm thinking getting the Mayor to make a welcome speech.
2. We are in their off-season so capacity is there and we aren't paying through the nose. (We can't use Edinburgh during the festival)
3. Have accommodation, train to major airport and venue all within walking distance of each other (Like Brighton)
4. We have at least one local resident on the team overleaf
5. As we expect most Wikimanians to fund their own transport, maximum international accessibility is preferable. One of the big hotels by Heathrow would be good if we do this outside of high season. Canterbury would be great in July (we might even get Eurostar as a sponsor).

Things we don't have to have include, local GLAM opportunities - we can arrange that as day trips afterwards. International recognition - this is an opportunity to present an unfamiliar venue. WereSpielChequers 17:08, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, using those criteria, I would say we have: London/Home Counties, Bristol/Bath, Birmingham/Coventry, Manchester/Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham/Derby(?), Glasgow(?), possibly Yorkshire (Leeds, Hull, York, hopefully not Sheffield). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

No organisers? - should we put this on ice?

Two months after the page started we have a useful group of people who would be willing to help this project. But so far we have not had one person sign up in the section Wikimania_bid#Organisers. I suggest that we put this on ice unless and until we have at least four people sign up in that section. Update, the suggestion is now outdated as we have organisers coming forward. WereSpielChequers 16:44, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest a) asking some of the people who have said they're willing to help, and explaining what the organisers will need to do and when it; b) waiting until people are no longer focusing all their attnetion on the charity bid, because that's where most of the effort is being directed at the moment; and c) publicising it more widely than the WMUK wiki, which is not exactly the most visible of locations. We should have an above-average turnout for the London meetup in October, what with it being the 50th and with the EGM, so perhaps bring it up there? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:55, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. We usually have a breakout for GLAM, I'll suggest a breakout table for wikimania. WereSpielChequers 17:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, and hopefully we'll have a few previous wikimanians in attendance, but things tend to progress more quickly in person. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm up for discussing it at the meetup :) Happy to help organise etc. But I didn't want to be presumptive ;) --ErrantX 13:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not making the meet - I will be at the next one though! (went to Sheffield for a family trip instead. But totally forgot my camera @ Kelham Island museum). --ErrantX 13:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

My hope is that the chapter will be able to provide a lot of support to the bid, particularly in the form of the proposed event manager position. If paid staff were available to do a lot of the more tedious work that is required to put on a large conference then I think a lot more people would be interested in volunteering to do the more interesting stuff. --Tango 14:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Quality/cost

I know there is a natural desire to hold an amazing high quality event that knocks people's socks off with venue, quality of food and so forth. But we are a charity and most wikimanians will be on quite tight budgets. So can I put in a small plea for keeping this to a tight budget, and remembering that every pound spent on this is a pound entrusted to us for the promotion of knowledge. One of the reasons why I won't be on the committee is that I'd be the boring one lobbying for a set of student dorms and lecture theatres within an hour or two of Heathrow by public transport, and I know that isn't the sort of event that any of the likely organisers intend. WereSpielChequers 14:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wishlist

Though I don't want extravagance, I'd still want this to amaze people, just in a slightly different way. Things I'd like to see from a 2014 UK bid include:

1. Dates finalised, registration open and bookings accepted several months earlier than previous years - ideally early enough for people to come from countries with quite convoluted visa problems.
2. The UK chapter to offer to sponsor UK visa fees for any serious wikimedian who attends.
3. A cream tea, and not just because I suffer from a low cholesterol level.
4. Fish and chips. A cliché but it will be expected of us.
5. Simulcast and rapid recording and posting of presentations. In the past we've had at least one event that managed to get the event broadcast on the web and one that managed to get it properly recorded and the recordings up. But we could be the first to do both.
6. A relevant keynote speaker who will make the news by speaking at our event.
7. Bed, bar, venue and breakfast all within a 15 minute walk of each other. I'm OK with the party being somewhere that you bus people to and from.
8. The most multilingual wikimania so far. This may not be the first thing you'd think of coming from me or the UK. But as each year we globalise a little more we could and should do this. I'd start by asking people what languages they'd like an event in and which presentations they want covered that way, then lay on translators where there are most requests. Buenos Aires was a bilingual conference where many events were in Spanish or translated. I think that slows down an event, but it would be great to take some of the events that are of most interest to people who speak a particular language and repeat the presentation in that language - these might also be the best events for skype chats and video conferencing participation.
9. Editor helpdesks (advanced). At Wikimania's I've talked people through installing Hotcat and requesting reports in Greek, Hungarian and Indonesian. Wikimania is one of the few occasions when hundreds of our most active editors could quietly ask someone to show them how to do a history merge, create a table or whatever it is that they couldn't quite grasp online. Aside from being useful this would be a great icebreaker - especially when you remember that a large proportion of attendees will be introverts who haven't previously met any other attendees in real life.
10. Sufficient WiFi from the off. Israel was pretty good here, but several hundred Wikimedians means a huge amount of devices trying to access the Internet. Most Wikimanias fail to get sufficient WiFi because they underestimate the need.

Those are the things that I think would make for an amazing UK Wikimania. What would others add? WereSpielChequers 14:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)