Talk:WikiConference North America/2014

Offer of support

I'm a GLAMmer, I can help organize that part, using the GLAMBootCamp/DC model (perhaps on a smaller scale). Bdcousineau (talk) 00:59, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Potential venue: NYU, March 21-23, 2014

I'd like to have some input on a potential venue and timing for the first iteration of WikiConference USA. We have been offered space by NYU's ITP program (an awesome space we've used before) for about 200 participants, on March 21-23 (a Friday + weekend) of next year, during their spring break period. The Friday would perhaps be geared somewhat more to academics and cultural professionals and the weekend to the volunteer community, but I hope that we can have diverse participation throughout. Because of the relatively limited space, there would probably be an application process for participants.--Pharos (talk) 15:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support I am aware that at past NYC Wikipedia Day events about 150 people attended, but if we had that many locals again, a bit of growth, and 30 people from out of town then that would be capacity and enough to start. At this point, it is not worth trying to rent a costly venue when the crowd is not confirmed and this event is happening for the first time. Except for the size the venue is awesome. I also think that size probably will only matter on the day marketed as the biggest day. The Friday workshops will not be overbooked, the exhibition day could be because it will draw people from the free culture movement, and if the other weekend day was a training and workshop day then that day likely would not be overbooked either. I think that if we had confirmed registration and then monitored walk-ins then there would be no problem with excluding the most excited supporters. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
• Pharos, what kind of input are you requesting? The space sounds great, especially if it is provided at no cost! --Another Believer (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
• While I certainly like the idea of a free venue, I'm a bit concerned that such a low capacity, coupled with a relatively high number of local attendees (which Blue Rasberry alludes to above) will effectively turn this into another WikiConference NYC rather than a truly national event. Is there anything we can do to mitigate this? Kirill Lokshin ^[talk] 01:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is largely why I suggested an application process, to ensure that we have more of a national mix, rather than too much domination by locals. Also, keep in mind that the capacity numbers are really for the central hall area, and if we are willing to forego plenary keynotes all in one room, we can probably expand it a bit more even.--Pharos (talk) 19:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Kirill, do you have numbers on how many American Wikipedians attended Wikimania DC? I am especially curious about any numbers of people who were not from this region. Do you know how many scholarships went to American Wikipedians? I was thinking that it might be safe to assume that the number of Americans who attended Wikimania DC would be a safe upper limit for expectations of how many could attend this event. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know those numbers offhand, but I'll ask James—who should have them available—to chime in. Kirill Lokshin ^[talk] 00:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

About 700 Americans pre-registered for Wikimania 2012. Closer to 950 if you include the Tech@State crowd, who would probably not attend a more focused conference. I analyzed the data by ZIP Code (for those registrants who provided ZIP Codes) and this is what I found:

• Zip Codes 0XXXX (CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ, PR, RI, VT, Virgin Islands): 50 registrants
• Zip Codes 1XXXX (DE, NY, PA): 61 registrants
• Zip Codes 2XXXX (DC, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV): 332 registrants
• Zip Codes 3XXXX (AL, FL, GA, MS, TN): 19 registrants
• Zip Codes 4XXXX (IN, KY, MI, OH): 13 registrants
• Zip Codes 5XXXX (IA, MN, MT, ND, SD, WI): 12 registrants
• Zip Codes 6XXXX (IL, KS, MO, NE): 12 registrants
• Zip Codes 7XXXX (AR, LA, OK, TX): 7 registrants
• Zip Codes 8XXXX (AZ, CO, ID, NM, NV, UT, WY): 9 registrants
• Zip Codes 9XXXX (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA, Pacific territories): 141 registrants

So unsurprisingly, most of the attendees were from the DC area and the surrounding Northeast, with a high attendance from the West due to the Wikimedia Foundation sending their employees. I'm assuming fewer people overall will be attending, especially from the West Coast, and a conference in New York will obviously have more New Yorkers than Washingtonians. I think 500 is a reasonable attendance figure. harej (talk) 15:07, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Expecting an attendance that is a large % of Wikimania seems like overkill, especially when we have much less than a corresponding % of the Wikimania budget. I think it is better to have a medium-sized conference with balanced national representation, e.g. not that many more New Yorkers than Washingtonians.--Pharos (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Did 950 Americans actually attend Wikimania? What was the total attendance? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

1,400 in total. harej (talk) 18:28, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... suppose that we did neglect the free space for 200 people. We have two options more - to find another free space or to pay for a space. Managing 500 people might also be more complicated. However, if there were really that much interest I would not want to disappoint it. Let's talk about this at the WALRUS meeting. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

• We got around 150 for our super-low-key Wikipedia 10 conference [1]. Given that there was almost no advertising and we didn't have much in the way of logistics (but did have a number of folks from the WMF who came) I think guessing around 300-350 for a national conference seems pretty reasonable, especially if wikipedia day NYC events have already been getting 150. One solution might be to keep the ITP space but pay for an auditorium for the keynote if need be? -- phoebe | talk 00:27, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

  Thanks for the encouragement. The question is whether there is a need because it is hard to plan attendance. I suppose that 150 people can be expected and that we could advertise until we get the desired number of registrations, but that does move this from the realm of what volunteers have naturally organized in the past into something more complicated than that. Hmm... Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:17, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

• Yeah, the other thing that we could do is just say "well, we have room for x" and take registrations up until that point (+ 5-10% overage for no-shows). If it sells out, it sells out.... and then we know for next year :) -- phoebe | talk 17:29, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

• Above Pharos mentions: "if we are willing to forego plenary keynotes all in one room, we can probably expand it a bit more" -- here's a way past the bottleneck. If we can run Skype or Hangout, many people could see a plenary talk from other rooms without much hassle. At NYC Wikipedia Day I remember one big room and several 15-ish person conference rooms. Is that what we'd have? Or even more space? -- Econterms (talk) 20:01, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Conference tracks

I propose a community track, a newbie track, and a tech track.

1. The community track would be for established Wikipedians and include education, GLAM, WikiProject meetings, talks about community organizing, and anything else that Wikipedians do.
2. The newbie track would be talks suitable for people who have never edited Wikipedia. A lot of this would be exhibition - tours of the outcome of community track projects like presentations on GLAM impact as well as training and explanations of things like fundamentals to editing and dispute resolution.
3. Tech track would be anything which can scare people. Analytics, law and policy, MediaWiki, and other such things go here.

In this scheme 2/3 of the conference would be accessible to non-Wikipedians. The tech track is important because the movement needs to tie with talented community organizations such as the open source community and non-profits which need analytics to be able to function. I would like for this to be more of an outreach effort than a meeting of insiders. Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Update on this: May 30-June 1

We're talking about it at our wikiday event in Boston.

Lane says: 'We have a nice space @ NY Law School, for 3 days in May. This is similar to the previous NYU January events.'

Target size

300 people, 5 tracks.

Program

looking for committee members, and submissions. Interested in inviting GLAM folk in particular

Funding

just got some funding, to cover travel scholarships and basic overhead

Grant reporting

The grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is documented here.

• Grants:PEG/WM US-NYC/WikiConference USA 2014

Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiConference USA 2015

Where could we hold this in 2015? (proposals: NY, Boston, Seattle, SF...)

Moved to Talk:WikiConference USA