Wikimania Committee/Minutes/2018-04-13

Participants

1. Ellie Young (WMF liaison)
2. Deror Avi (representing WM 2011)
3. Iolanda Pensa (representing WM 2016) Chair
4. Andrew Lih (core organizing team of Wikiconference North America)
5. Romaine
6. Phoebe Ayers (representing WM 2017) Vice-Chair
7. ??

Agenda

• Minutes of the Previous Meeting: Wikimania Committee/Minutes/2018-02

Updates on Wikimania 2018

• Everything on track; water crisis situation being monitored - announcement by Ellie went out 2 weeks ago to wikimedia lists; Program committee working on review/selection, etc Program (not scheduled) will be up early May. Registration going live 4/23 for everyone.
• Hotel and venue/accommodation contract is in process.
• Regular meetings every other week with core team. Notes shared on google drive.
• Issues still to be addressed: pr firm (in progress); social/media outreach - need volunteer support; finalizing invited speakers (Douglas); sponsorships/partnerships (ellie/douglas); finalizing vendors/contracts for various (in progress). Finding volunteers to help with post-production of videos of talks (WMF has committed to supporting the recording of all this year; maybe a few streaming as well.) Not doing translation services, but if someone wants to champion it would be useful.
• Scholarship recipients: sending out registration info and visa package - in process now.https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Wikimania_scholars. Will announce to lists soon.
  • We have 121 full scholarships, and could have as many as 127 (waiting on some compliance issues with grantees who are in WMF grants program).Full Scholarships: 18 from Africa; 10 from Middle East; 45 from Asia & Pacific; 10 from CIS; 24 from Europe; 6 from North America; 14 from South America. 32 female, 93 male, 2 other/nonbinary
  • We have 18 partial scholarships (we offered 20, but one person declined and another we moved to full) We have 21 people on the waitlist. Partials: - 0 from Africa; 0 from Middle East; 2 from Asia & Pacific; 3 from CIS; 11 from Europe; 2 from North America; 0 from South America. 2 female, 16 male

Wikimania 2019 Sweden

• Ellie going on site visit with John Andersson week after next to visit chapter/team and assess venues - stockholm vs. Gothenburg. Will have decision on city/venue early May.

Future Wikimania

• Broader discussion with Andrew Lih’s (see his email) re future.
  • Long term future vision of Wikimania and issues - (Andrew)
  • Are we as a movement stepping up to the plate and realizing our leadership potential and obligations when it comes to Wikimania, our signature annual conference?
  • So where are we in doing a conference that *leads* the greater global conversation about open knowledge and education?
  • Are we in a rut with our conference? Are we improving and optimizing Wikimania, beyond the logistics?

With our new strategic goals, should we be looking at new ways to expand Wikimania to embrace our obligation on the world stage or re-think how we do programming?

Decisions and Next Steps

• Ellie will schedule next meeting for week of 20 May.
• Andrew Lih and Romaine will be at Wikimedia Conference. Ellie Young will not be there so please check with Douglas how things are going at Wikimania Cape Town.
• Iolanda gave suggestion about Visa letter additional letter from UCT (DONE! )
• Proposal to create a track with like-minded organisations at Wikimania Sweden 2019. Andrew Lih will work on this
• Andrew Lih offered to serve as Liaison to Wikimania-sweden and will reach out to John Andersson next week at Wmcon.