London Wikimania Bid

In a nutshell

• Country: United Kingdom
• City: London
• Venue: Olympic Village
• Proposed dates: 31st July - 4th August
• Planned attendance: Any Wikimedian!
• Contact: Panyd or email us

Introduction

Our team

User:Panyd

Conference

Venue

The London Olympic village in June 2011 (whilst still under construction).

Our sponsors want us to be the first event held in the Olympic Village after the 2012 London Olympics.

Special events

Parties

Wikimania traditionally hosts two parties, one for attendees (capacity of 250-350) and one for sponsors and VIPs (capacity 40-60). We would like to hold a third event for chapter heads to discuss issues relevant to them.

• Attendees party(ies) propositions

(location, how to get there, what's cool and relaxed about it)

• Sponsor party(ies) proposition

(location, how to get there, what's chic and high profile about it)

• Chapter Head dinner proposition

(location, how to get there, what's chic and high profile about it)

Logistics

Accomodation

Hotels

The Olympic village has many hotels on site with 17,320 beds in total. There are a wide variety of buildings from luxury to budget.

Getting to the United Kingdom

International travel to the United Kingdom is extensive. Access to the UK is provided by 30 international airports providing travel to 200 destinations, 8 ports with international passenger ferry services to Europe, and a rail link to mainland Europe via the Channel Tunnel.

Train (via Belgium and France)

Eurostar high-speed trains run between London (St Pancras International), Ebbsfleet and Ashford through the Channel Tunnel to Paris (Gare du Nord), Lille and Brussels. During the summer an additional weekly train operates to Avignon and during the winter a weekly service runs a ski service direct to the French Alps. Through tickets and connections are available in Lille, Paris and Brussels from many European cities to most large UK cities.

Journey times average two hours fifteen minutes to and from Paris, and one hour fifty minutes to Brussels. A second class return from Paris to London costs between €85 and €230. While it can be cheaper to fly from London to Paris using a low-cost airline, bear in mind that the journeys to the airports can be expensive and time-consuming.

Ferry

Ferries run from Calais to Dover on a regular basis and a return ticket costs around £40. Journey times average at around an hour and a half. However, there are many other ports in the UK as well and travellers can access British ports from at least seven surrounding countries. Due to the relatively small size of Britain, it is not unfeasible for someone to make the journey from their country to London within 24 hours.

It may be cheaper to fly on a low-budget airline but for the sightseer there are a variety of ways to travel into the country.

Air

London Heathrow Airport - The busiest airport in the United Kingdom and third busiest airport in the world. Only 12 miles away from London it has a variety of ways in which a person could travel from their to the conference location. For more information on where Heathrow Airport flies, please see here: Heathrow_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations.
London Gatwick Airport - 30 miles outside of London, Gatwick serves fewer destinations but has just as many transport links into Central London. For a list of where Gatwick serves, please see here: London_Gatwick_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations
London City Airport - The smallest of London's three main airports, but the closest to the conference area. London city airports destinations can be found here: London_City_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations

Financial

Budget

London Wikimania Bid/Budget

Sponsorship

Confirmed Sponsors

Tech City

Potential Sponsors

Visa, Google, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, BT or Telefonica

Timeline

• Rough draft budget - December 2011
• Venue Viewing - December 2011
• Creation of Budget, Bid documents, venue selection, approaching potential sponsors etc - Now-January 2012
• Start working on bid page and forming wikimedia volunteer bid team - Yesterday - We have User:EdSaperia, User:Panyd, User:HJ Mitchell, User:Marek69 and User:ErrantX working on this
• Bidding officially opens - January 2011
• Bidding closes and winner announced - May 2012
• Conference - July/August 2013

Self-evaluation

• Weaknesses of the proposed location ...and how to overcome those weaknesses

1. Expense- London is a very expensive city at the best of times.

   Proposed solution - Attempt to have whatever we can subsidised by our sponsors. This may mean donations in kind rather than monetary donations.

2. Weakness 2

   Solution 2

• Strengths of the proposed location

1. Excellent transport links
2. Excellent facilities which are more than capable of holding the number of people we need