Talk:Bristol Wikimania Bid

Bristol vs. London

• Support Bristol, although as a resident, I have a conflict of interest. I don't currently hold membership, but will update this when that changes. Holding the event in Bristol is likely to offer the following benefits over London:
  1. Reduced cost (venues for organisers, accommodation for attendees)
  2. Potential support/sponsorship from independent creative businesses to balance large corporate entities
  3. Compact city
     • permits easy access to surrounding geographical areas
     • has potential to involve all city's stakeholders
  4. Potential to arrange (subsidised) shuttle buses via discussions with FreeBus

-- Trevj 20:43, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The cost saving will be more than cancelled out by the added cost of getting there. For most people in the world, you have to go via London to get to Bristol, so it inevitably costs more. --Tango 01:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

That depends on how long people stay in the area (significantly different cost of hotels). I think other issues are far more important. e.g. Facilities (East London Tech City sounds like it's gonna be awesome), the availability of volunteers to organise it and the helpfulness of useful people like the council and the owners of the facilities. Yaris678 10:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Two airlines (in particular) have significant presence in Bristol KLM and EasyJet. It should be no problem to involve all the weight of the city in discussions that involve heavy discounting on plane seats/chartering for pre-booked flights out of Amsterdam (that has frequent flights into the city). There would be the full weight of the city behind this bid, that would include contacts at City Cabinet level with the airport authorities directly. Local businesses would step up and back the bid and I'd expect major levels of sponsor support from groups that have already done so before and have seen value from backing the event. There is already genuine city-wide enthusiasm and support from many groups (as mentioned in the Potential Sponsors section). There is likely to be a Wikipedia Society in the University of Bristol in the coming months, that would support the planning for the bid. There are other vehicles of support that tap into the digital media community (Bristol Media), the world class natural history broadcasting team at the BBC Natural History Unit (via our friends at Bristol Natural History Consortium) and many others.

While recognising that an event in the Olympic Village is hard to overcome, the costs could come in under half of the other event, there would be city-wide (if not region-wide) mobilisation of support behind this event.

Hotels issue - hopefully we can kill that one off too - plan is to get agreement to base 99% of all attendees in the University of Bristol Halls of Residence...so no buses to venues, all in 5-10m walking distance - and a lot of good bars, cafes, green spaces and things to see outside the Wikimania event itself Steve Virgin 00:21, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Culture in Bristol lists some places not already mentioned. I've also copied in the self-evaluation titles from the London bid, so it's not forgotten. Sorry for not actually adding any content there ATM. -- Trevj 19:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC) thanks Steve Virgin 17:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Move to Meta?

Hey. :-)

What's the plan about moving this to meta? Other bids are piling up there and it'd be good to have them developed on a more high-visibility wiki for others to see...

Jdforrester 17:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

As suggested at Talk:London Wikimania Bid#Move to Meta?, I think the idea is that we decide on a single UK bid, before moving it to meta. Yaris678 10:27, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

James - this is still in embryonic stage - can we do it in a week or so time - it is unfinished...rushed in a single couple of hours prior to a Board meeting...would like some time to think it through more carefully - say 2 weeks? Then I'd be delighted to put it across to metaSteve Virgin 15:41, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm in London but I think Bristol might work better for Wikimania - in a smaller city it will be a bigger deal. --Filceolaire 19:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Other Languages

2013 will be directly after Washington - another English speaking city. What links does Bristol have with projects in other languages besides English? Are there any Welsh Wikipedians, for example, on the list of supporters? --Filceolaire 11:32, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

• Reasonably-sized French community, probably partly due to universities, Airbus and partner companies. This means that the Ecole Française de Bristol (not a state school) is sustainable. There's also the local Alliance française, [1]. The twin town in France is Bordeaux, but I don't know the current status of the Bristol-Bordeaux Association[2], [3]. There are apparently other twin towns in Germany, Portugal, Georgia, Nicaragua, Mozambique and China. HTH.

-- Trevj 19:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The Bordeaux link is very strong - regular farmers markets in the summer, trade delegations etc - given the intra-city connections developing that tie for the bid (if successful) is a superb idea Steve Virgin 17:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Record of Meetups

It looks as if there's only been one! A while ago I unofficially created Bristol 2, for the Wikipedia at 10 event. Are there any others which should be noted? It's a good job that Cambridge isn't in the running! -- Trevj 11:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC) No - there was one in May 2010 following on from the Annual Fund Raising Conference listed on the page - then there has been a series of events (see above) at which a wide variety of Wikipedians and would be Wikipedians have got involved. There was also around 30 volunteers 'working' during the Jimmy Wales talk in January 2011 - tweeting, blogging and assisting with the organisation where needed. Bristol has tended to 'do events' over just WikiMeets - the testimony is visible on the page above Steve Virgin 15:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)