This probably goes too far of this thread, but judging from another thread
where attendance complain that no C-level WMF executive attended the French
language conference, people expect from Wikimania not so much the talks
(which I guess by now are available online anyway), but a chance of meeting
some people and discussing issues which can not be discussed online - this
is what Dutch call "wandelgangcultuur". In this sense, the live attendance
is not at all the same as the online attendance.
Cheers
Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 1:36 PM Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
> We used to regularly raise the issue of a lack of active
> videoconferencing at Wikimania. Though we (Wikimedians) are highly
> technically literate, we still do not host virtual attendees, such as
> 3D virtual conferencing and claim it a win if we release video streams
> of some of the presentations.
>
> Both to reduce our community's carbon footprint, and to encourage
> access for those that find air travel challenging or impossible, it
> would be great to see the Wikimedia Foundation being active in
> trialing and funding virtual environments for our events. 25 years ago
> I worked for a global bank and had regular virtual meetings in a video
> room where you physically sat at a conference table where the other
> half telemagically was in other headquarters in other cities with
> shared (physical) whiteboards to help workshopping. These days it's
> relatively easy to videoconference, but we should do more to
> experiment with whether booking video suites in different cities might
> also be a good way of encouraging Wikimedians to default to local
> travel and still be active in our multi-national or global events and
> workshops. At the end of the day, paying a few hundred dollars for
> several conference suites or higher end conference kit hire hosted by
> local Wikimedia Chapters, is a fraction the cost of paying for a far
> smaller number of lucky applicants to get their flights and
> accommodation paid for.
>
> This type of high quality conferencing initiative would perfectly fit
> the non-specific high level aims mentioned in the WMF sustainability
> documents. It's weird to me that this is still a debate, and folks are
> defending continued air travel at the current consumption levels,
> rather than even trialling all the virtual alternatives.
>
> Fae
>
> On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 12:14, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anyways this is perceived by the community.
> >
> > In Wikimedia CH we cannot give scholarships for Wikimania because people
> > would not do long trips.
> >
> > IMHO the problem is these big events.
> >
> > For this reason we prefer to give more scholarships for regional wikicon
> > than to Wikimania.
> >
> > This is the reason why you dont see more Swiss people at Wikimania.
> >
> > Kind regards
>
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where attendance complain that no C-level WMF executive attended the French
language conference, people expect from Wikimania not so much the talks
(which I guess by now are available online anyway), but a chance of meeting
some people and discussing issues which can not be discussed online - this
is what Dutch call "wandelgangcultuur". In this sense, the live attendance
is not at all the same as the online attendance.
Cheers
Yaroslav
On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 1:36 PM Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
> We used to regularly raise the issue of a lack of active
> videoconferencing at Wikimania. Though we (Wikimedians) are highly
> technically literate, we still do not host virtual attendees, such as
> 3D virtual conferencing and claim it a win if we release video streams
> of some of the presentations.
>
> Both to reduce our community's carbon footprint, and to encourage
> access for those that find air travel challenging or impossible, it
> would be great to see the Wikimedia Foundation being active in
> trialing and funding virtual environments for our events. 25 years ago
> I worked for a global bank and had regular virtual meetings in a video
> room where you physically sat at a conference table where the other
> half telemagically was in other headquarters in other cities with
> shared (physical) whiteboards to help workshopping. These days it's
> relatively easy to videoconference, but we should do more to
> experiment with whether booking video suites in different cities might
> also be a good way of encouraging Wikimedians to default to local
> travel and still be active in our multi-national or global events and
> workshops. At the end of the day, paying a few hundred dollars for
> several conference suites or higher end conference kit hire hosted by
> local Wikimedia Chapters, is a fraction the cost of paying for a far
> smaller number of lucky applicants to get their flights and
> accommodation paid for.
>
> This type of high quality conferencing initiative would perfectly fit
> the non-specific high level aims mentioned in the WMF sustainability
> documents. It's weird to me that this is still a debate, and folks are
> defending continued air travel at the current consumption levels,
> rather than even trialling all the virtual alternatives.
>
> Fae
>
> On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 at 12:14, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anyways this is perceived by the community.
> >
> > In Wikimedia CH we cannot give scholarships for Wikimania because people
> > would not do long trips.
> >
> > IMHO the problem is these big events.
> >
> > For this reason we prefer to give more scholarships for regional wikicon
> > than to Wikimania.
> >
> > This is the reason why you dont see more Swiss people at Wikimania.
> >
> > Kind regards
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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