Wikimania 2009/Bids/Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe (Europe)

Wikimania 2009 official bids:
Brisbane - Buenos Aires - Karlsruhe - Toronto
Questions and Answers:
Brisbane | Buenos Aires | Karlsruhe | Toronto

City details

• Country: Germany
• City proposed: Karlsruhe (Translation: ar, bg, ca, cs, da, de, et, el, es, eo, fa, fr, ko, hr, id, it, he, la, lb, mk, nl, ja, no, nn, pl, pt, ro, ru, sq, simple, sr, fi, sv, tr, vo, zh)
• Proposed dates (Friday to Sunday): August 7th to 9th, 2009, with possibility of arriving on the Thursday night and leaving on Monday morning
• Contact persons: Wilhelm Kawana Bühler, Hauke Löffler

Conference venue

We have three different locations in Karlsruhe, where we can offer a conference for up to 2000 people. All locations are connected to the city centre by local transport within 20 minutes.

A wireless network and other conference facilities are available.

Kongresszentrum Karlsruhe

The Kongresszentrum is a fully equipped convention centre in the city centre and the proposed location.

1. Main hall: up to 2000 people
2. Seminar rooms: 17
3. Lounge facilities: 5
4. Other rooms (organisation, staff, speakers, interviews/press, storage): yes

If we need more rooms, we can walk to the university.

The zoo is next to the Kongresszentrum, the Schlossgarten (garden of the castle) is 10 Minutes to walk.

Other conferences

The month before, about 1500 physicists will discuss magnetism there http://www.icm2009.org/

Until 2006 the LinuxTag was hosted at the Kongresszentrum Karlsruhe.

Accommodation

• Location of main accommodation facilities

(where can the attendees be hosted. On site, off site, how far from conference venue? For attendees? For VIPs?)

• Room details and price range

(What's the accommodation like? Dorms, B&B, Hotel? Singles, doubles? How much does it cost per person and per day?)

• Catering (one meal a day, breakfast is a plus)

(Where do we eat, how much it costs)

• Contacts with accommodation partner(s)

(Have you contacted the proposed locations, exchange of emails, price quotes etc.)

Party opportunities

Schloss Ettlingen with tram

Wikimania traditionally hosts two parties, one for attendees (capacity of 250-350) and one for sponsors and VIPs (capacity 40-60).

• Attendees party(ies) propositions
  • serveral locations, Karlsruhe is for example its university campus inside the city centre
• Sponsor party(ies) proposition (accessible by local trams or VIP-coaches)
  • there are several castles to rent
  • we can hire a ship on the river rhine
  • we can have a party at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Centre for art and technology of media)
• Special location
  • within the city centre there is a brewery, that can host the two parties within one (large) building on different floors and offer hotel-rooms on its area.

Air flights

Flight costs listed are roundtrip!

The following table was made on Feb 14, 2008, using information from expedia.com for August 8 to August 11, 2008. There is currently no information for August 2009 - so no „special prices“ available.

North America From Cost in USD Airline Los Angeles QLA $ 1364 Delta New York NYC $ 859 Continental Mexico City MEX $ 1273 Continental San Francisco QSF $ 1189 Continental Toronto YTO $ 1174 Air New Zealand South America From Cost in USD Airline Buenos Aires EZE $ 1862 Lufthansa Brasilia BSB $ 2017 TAM Brazilian Airlines Asia From Cost in USD Airline Osaka OSA $ 1603 Air China Tokyo TYO $ 1797 Air China Beijing BJS $ 1435 Air China Mumbai BOM $ 829 Gulf Air Abu Dhabi AUH $ 804 Gulf Air Riyadh RUH $ 1017 Etihad Airways

Europe From Cost in USD Airline Berlin BER $ 89 Air Berlin London LON $ 139 Lufthansa Paris PAR $ 120 Lufthansa Rome FOC $ 112 Lufthansa Athens ATH $ 299 Olympic Moscow MOW $ 308 Fly LAL Oceania From Cost in USD Airline Sydney SYD $ 2212 Air China Melbourne MEL $ 2352 Air France Auckland AKL $ 2493 Qantas Airways Africa From Cost in USD Airline Cairo CAI $ 555 Alitalia Cape Town CPT $ 993 Emirates Dar es Salaam DAR $ 1245 Emirates Tunis AUH $ 804 Gulf Air Casablanca CMN $ 284 Iberia

Destination is FRA, maybe Strasbourg (France, SXB), Baden-Baden/Karlsruhe (Germany, FKB) Stuttgart (Germany, STR), Basel (Switzerland, BSL) is cheaper for special destinations. And it's cheaper to fly from Berlin to Karlsruhe.

• Distance from international airport(s)and how do we get to the location:
  • about one hour by train: Baden Airpark, Frankfurt Airport, Strasbourg Airport
  • less than two hours by train: Stuttgart Airport, EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg

Train

Europeans may want to check train-connections to Karlsruhe Mainstation (Hauptbahnhof).

Direct connections are available to destinations outside Germany:

• Paris (France) with TGV
• Basel/Zurich/Chur/Bern (Switzerland)
• Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
• Copenhagen (Denmark)
• Prague (Czech Republic)
• Milan (Italy)
• Vienna/Salzburg/Linz (Austria).

It's not cheap, but not everybody likes to use airplanes inside europe.

more

• Local transportation and local social opportunities

(Wikimania usually does not offer dinner. What are the surroundings of the location like? Lots of restaurants and places to hang out? What is the local transportation like?)

• • Local transportation with tramways (well known as en:Karlsruhe model, Wikimania-special-tickets possible)
  • over 350 bicycles to rent are available (Wikimania-special-tickets possible)
  • The location is near the city centre, everything you need is available.
• Visa issues

  Wikimania:General organisation/Visa for Germany

  German Federal Foreign Office: Visa regulations

• Tourism opportunities

  Karlsruhe itself :) and Heidelberg (40 min) or Black Forest (30 min)

  Rhine - we can offer session or party on the river Rhine.

  Alsace and Paris (3h)

Local sponsorship opportunities

• Conference venue will be fully sponsored, no rent for conference rooms, internet, wireless internet
• special rates for public transport (should be)
• special rates for 350 bicycle to rent
• do we need VIP-coaches?

Local team

(Who stands behind this bid, who will be able to help locally, names and what they can help with)

• Wilhelm Kawana Bühler (main contact, works in e-science, organiser of an international e-science conference near Karlsruhe 2007 with 300+ people, Wikipedian, city wiki Karlsruhe)
• Hanno Rince Wagner (Wikipedian, was in the team of "Wikimania 2005 network")
• Chuck Smith (Esperanto Wikipedia Founder, attended all previous Wikimanias) - will help proofread English documents
• Karlsruhe has its own non-profit wiki-association with more than 40 members, founder is Hauke Löffler (contact to regional and national sponsors, Wikipedian, founder of the city wiki of Karlsruhe, de:Stadtwiki Karlsruhe)
• Church of emacs (Wikipedian)
  • and others from de:Wikipedia:Karlsruhe (Wikipedians from Karlsruhe)
• Beate Paland (Wikipedian, local city wiki, one of three organisers of the yearly ruby on rails conference in germany)
• to be asked
  • a very active knowledge-management-association (more sponsor contacts)
  • an active open source community
    • including openstreetmap-community detailed and free as in CC-by-sa
    • including the Karlsruhe local team of the largest European Open Source event LinuxTag

Miscellaneous

Will the conference and the flights to it be carbon neutral?

It depends :) Inside Europe you can take the plane or one of the high-speed-trains. Some will use the cheapest, some will use the greener transportation. But we will try to find a balancing between greenhouse gas emissions with renewable energy.

Karlsruhe is the place of birth of the The Green Party in Germany and we will make the conference as environmental friendly as possible.

Self-evaluation

• Weaknesses of the proposed location ...and how to overcome those weaknesses
  1. next international airport (Frankfurt Airport) is 65 minutes away by train. But if you're in Karlsruhe, you have only short distances. Within europe you can use trains.
• Strengths of the proposed location
  1. Karlsruhe has a dedicated and experienced team, that is linked to science and communities, and an own legal entity
  2. the region of Karlsruhe has other free knowledge efforts and projects, for example
     • free maps (OpenStreetMap)
     • Researcher of the University of Karlsruhe work on Semantic MediaWiki and worked on Creative Commons licensing
     • local information is stored in a MediaWiki: Stadtwiki Karlsruhe, which is the world largest free city wiki (Wikimania 2009 will push this into a multilingual project in German, English, French, Spanish and maybe others)
  3. The TechnologieRegion Karlsruhe combines economy, research and culture: in Karlsruhe both art and savoir vivre have found a home.
  4. The Wikimania 2009 will have mostly everything within walking distances, but you can always take a tram.