BT Proposal

What is Wikimania?

Wikimania is an annual international conference held for users and supporters of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia, Wikinews and Commons. The first conference was held in Frankfurt, Germany, on August 4-8, 2005. The second conference was held in Boston, USA (on August 4-6, 2006), the third one was held in Taipei, Taiwan (on August 3-5, 2007) and the fourth Wikimania was held in Alexandria, Egypt (on July 17-19, 2008). Wikimania 2009 will be held in Buenos Aires. Last year saw the largest number of attendees with over 620 people attending the conference. The topics of presentations, papers and discussions include the Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis, open source software, and free content. Over the last 4 years, key note speakers important to the free and open source have included Ward Kunningham (developer of the first wiki), Richard Stallman (founder of the GNU project), Joi Ito (CEO of Creative Commons) and Lawrence Lessig (founding board member of Creative Commons).

2010 Oxford Bid

Each year the conference is typically hosted on a different continent, and given that it will have 5 years since the conference was hosted in Europe our chance of success are greatly increased. The organising of the bid will be carried out by volunteers and will be overseen by Wikimedia UK (Wiki UK ltd, We are looking to host the event in the town hall in Oxford. The venue can host 700 people and ...... Accommodation for the conference will be in two forms, the first will be in the University of Oxford Halls, and the second in local hostels. (Needs more here)

Sponsorship

The conference gathers interest at local, national and international levels given the prominence that the Foundation projects get with Wikipedia being the 7th most viewed website in the world and the only non profit site in the top 10. As with the running of the Wikimedia projects, the Wikimania conference is run entirely from sponsors and donations. Over the last 5 years, nearly £500,000 has been donated to support the conference with most of the support being derived from technology and communications companies. The sponsorship is structured each year,