General Information

Public Transport

A public transport ticket is on the reverse side of your name tag. It’s valid for all journeys by Bus, Tram, S-Bahn and U-Bahn in zone AB and should cover all your ways. The ticket is only valid together with your ID card/passport.

Daylight saving time

Please make sure you don’t oversleep on Sunday: In the night from Saturday to Sunday, clocks are adjusted forward one hour from 1am to 2am.

1st Infomail, 22 Feb 2011

Dear participants of the Wikimedia Conference – Chapters' Meeting 2011,

just a short update on some organisational topics:

Flights and Visa

We have now finished flight booking and sending out invitation letters. Everyone who requested Wikimedia Deutschland to book their flights should now have received the flight tickets. If not, please get in touch immediately. Same goes for invitation letters!

Venue

This year’s meeting will be held at and supported by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung [1, 2] in Berlin Mitte. Their “Beletage” offers enough room and an inspiring, open atmosphere for a successful conference. Special bonus: it’s situated in the centre of Berlin, with many sights, historical buildings and places, as well as restaurants and bars within walking distance.

Accommodation

Those of you who have asked Wikimedia Deutschland to book/reserve accommodation for will be staying at the baxpax downtown Hostel Hotel [3], just a 9 minute walk away from the venue. Attached you find a list of all booked rooms and nights. Please note, that a cancellation is now only possible against paying a compensation fee. If you are not on the list but want us to take care of your accommodation OR find out that your dates are incorrect: Please let us know right away - deadline is tomorrow, Wednesday 23rd, 5pm CET.

Those of you who pay for the rooms themselves: We are still negotiating about the final rates, but the double rooms are about 30 Euro, 3, 4 and 5 bed dorms ca. 22 Euro per night/person, additionally 5,50 Euro for breakfast. We will let you know the exact rates by the end of next week.

Travel in Berlin

Like last year, we have made an arrangement with the local public transport company (BVG) and will provide tickets for public transport for all of you. You can pick them up with your attendee kit at the registration on Friday morning at the conference or on Thursday evening at the welcome get-together (venue tba).

We won’t be able to offer a pick-up service at the airports or stations, but you will find helpful directions on Meta [4] and a map of surroundings and main points of interest, soon. Also, Berliners are tourist-friendly and helpful and almost everyone is capable of speaking English.

We are really excited and looking forward to welcoming you all in Berlin next month! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Best regards, Bence, Cornelius and Nicole

[1] http://www.boell.de/

[2] http://www.boell.de/navigation/konferenzzentrum.html

[3] http://www.baxpax.de/downtown/

[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011

2nd Infomail, 14 Mar 2011

Chapters' Conference: Only 10 days to go!

Dear participants of the Wikimedia Conference,

The annual Chapters’ Meeting will take place in ten days, and we are already excited to meet you all here in Berlin.

This message is an update on the programme and logistics of the conference. Please read it carefully.

Schedule

You can find the schedule of the conference on Meta[1], with some more detailed information on content and suggested background information. The venue is set on 9:30 am on Friday morning. Please be on time, but don’t be there before 9:30 am!

An important part of the session has been set aside for working groups, a time where participants can discuss specific issues in smaller groups with the aim to come up with recommendations or solutions. Please add your suggested working group ideas to the schedule.[2]

The sessions will be facilitated by Anja Krieger and Sabria David. A number of the sessions will also be visually documented by Anna Lena Schiller. You can find out more about them on Meta [3].

Preparation

All chapters are asked to prepare a 3-minute presentation about themselves for the “State of the Chapters” sessions. Please note that this is a strict time limit, this is an opportunity to give a glimpse into your chapter and to refer to more detailed material available online. [4]

It is highly recommended that you publish your presentation before the meeting so that the other participants can read them in advance, and can prepare their questions or follow the presentation and any recommended links in it on their computers should it be difficult to see the projection at the venue.

Please note that you won’t be able to present with your own computer! If you don’t upload your presentation on Meta, please send the PDF-file to Bence (bence.damokos@wikimedia.de) 2 days before the conference or bring an USB stick, so that we can load it onto the computer at the venue. Please also let him know in advance if you have any special technical requirements for your presentation. Please bring your own power plug travel adapters!

Social programme

We are planning a number of events for the nights of the conference.

On 24 March, Thursday afternoon from 18:00 we will host an informal welcome and pre-registration to those already in Berlin at the Cosmo Lounge of the Baxpax downtown Hostel where most of you will be staying.

Next day, on Friday, we have organized a public get together to meet local Wikipedians and other Friends at HomeBase Lounge. Feel free to invite other free culture enthusiasts from the Berlin area to join us there!

For Saturday, we have organized a surprise for you, with the kind support of Wikimedia France – while we cannot reveal more at this moment, we sincerely hope you will enjoy it.

There is no official programme for the days outside the conference, but a number of people have volunteered to entertain those of you already in town earlier or staying a little bit longer.

Martin Rulsch and –jkb-, local Wikimedians have offered sightseeing tours of Berlin starting from Tuesday of the week of the conference. If you are interested, please sign up and contact the tour guides in advance.[5]

Chuck Smith, the founder of Esperanto Wikipedia has offered to give guided tours at the Computerspielemuseum[6]. Admission fee for groups of 10 or more is €2/person, if there are less than 10 people individuals pay €8 and students/unemployed pay €5 each. The tours cost €60 for the group. Please let Bence know if you are interested.

You are also welcome to visit Wikimedia Germany’s office. To make sure the staff is not disturbed (they will be very busy making sure you have a wonderful time in Berlin), we are offering an office tour on Sunday afternoon right after the end of the official programme.

Outreach material

As in previous years, we will set up a table where chapters can display their outreach material and goodies, so please bring your cool stuff to the meeting. You can of course, take them home afterwards.

Also, this year the Wikimedia Foundation plans to dedicate a wall in their office to display the promotional items chapters have created. If your chapter or local community has created T-shirts or products you would like to have showcased on that display please bring one of the items with you to the Chapters Conference in Berlin and give it to James Owen.

Financial support, Accommodation

Support in paying travel and/or accommodation costs is granted to everyone who requested it in the registration form. All flights are booked and all rooms are reserved at the baxpax downtown hostel[7]. Find attached the updated list of booked rooms. Please bring your own towels!

Participants who (or whose chapters) are able to pay for their accommodation are asked to bring cash to pay for the rooms. Please calculate 27 to 35 Euro per night incl. breakfast, depending on the type of room you are staying in. Since there have been recent changes in the booking list, we can only provide the final rates on the day of your arrival. Wikimedia Deutschland will pay for the rooms in advance, so you don’t have to pay at the hostel reception but at our welcome desk in the hostel lounge on Thursday or at the venue on Friday (depending on your time and date of arrival).

Reimbursement

Participants who have asked for reimbursement of travel costs can ask for travel reimbursement before the conference already. You can hand in a reimbursement form together with your tickets[8] via email to conference@wikimedia.de. Of course, we can only reimburse against receipt/invoice.

Since it is very expensive and often complicated to make bank transfers to countries outside of the EU/US, we offer three ways of reimbursement:

Participants from inside the EU or US hand in the form including their bank account data and will be reimbursed via bank transfer.
Participants from outside the EU or US, who don't have an international bank account will be reimbursed in cash (EUR) at the conference. They have to send in their documents before the conference so that we know how much cash we have to bring.
Third option for everyone would be the transfer to a PayPal account.

Please let us know until Thursday, March 17 how much you spent and how you would like to be reimbursed.

We are really excited and looking forward to welcoming you all in Berlin next week! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Best regards, Bence, Cornelius and Nicole

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Schedule

[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chapters_meeting_2011/Working_Groups

[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Chapters%27_Meeting/Facilitators

[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Preparation

[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Sightseeing

[6] http://www.computerspielemuseum.de/

[7] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2011/Accommodation

[8] http://www.wikimedia.de/images/d/d2/Reimbursement_form.pdf