Wikimania 2016 bids/Esino Lario/Location/Tasks

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Cute and cuddly, boys. Cute and cuddly! Skipper, Madagascar, 2005.

Guidelines Wikimania

Members

• These team members generally need to be local, so that they can conduct in-person negotiations, site visits, etc.
• Logistics team will also need to coordinate with every other team
• Facility manager: Helps you with locking/unlocking doors, power issues, lights
• Audio technician : in case there is a problem with the local audio equipment
• IT manager: To get access to server/phone cabinet with Internet uplink, switches, etc.
• You need at least one person in the local team who exactly knows the venue and has access to all the information listed above. This person has to be immediately available in case of emergency. Radios assure the communication between Wikimania office and the rest of the local team while they are around.
• Consider having a tech support assistant from the venue on standby by the registration/help desk during the conference in case issues arise.
• on-site services may actually be provided by a last-minute, larger crew of volunteers that may come from the venue, a local university, the local meetup group, etc. Many people will be required throughout the conference to provide these services, and these people will need to be coordinated by the volunteer coordinator, who should be someone other than the lead organizer.

Role

• Insurance. Your venue will define what needs to be covered (such as false arrest).
• Security issues.
  • Number of people
  • Power strips. too many power strips can be a fire hazard.
• Security during the conference
  • this may necessitate on-site security to ensure that people only leave the venue with their own laptops.
  • Theft prevention should always be emphasized. Discourage vendors from leaving equipment at the venue except in a locked storage room, and discourage attendees from leaving their laptops or cell phones in plain sight—even when going to the restroom
  • Some people will go to the venue straight from the airport, bringing their baggage with them. Offer to store their belongings in the venue's locked storage room.
• Issues related to accessibiliy.
• Having one place to report tech problems was very helpful during Wikimania 2012.
• coordinate on-site services
  • The ones setting up registration tables
  • helping the tech team get access to the venue
  • assisting the program team with room assignments
• providing and receiving budget information and so on.
• Immediately at the end of the conference, you'll need to make sure the physical space are taken care of (storage, cleaning).

Accommodation

• There are two basic approaches to handling reservations:
  • reserve all the rooms for the conference and then re-sell them yourself. It allows you to pair roommates together—saving attendees money—but it imposes a data management burden on the conference team. Should you re-sell rooms directly, be sure to include a modest price markup to account for potential losses that result from not all the room-nights being sold. After all, not everyone is staying from three days before the conference to three days after.
  • leave it up to the hotels and provide a registration code for your attendees. is obviously easier for the conference team, but it makes attendees look for roommates on their own. Not all hotels (and especially not all dormitories or hostels) offer this option.
  • Another option is to pursue a "courtesy block," where you get a guaranteed rate through the conference but you do not need to commit to purchasing any rooms.
  • you might need to do a little of everything.
• you will pay an attrition charge for the rooms you do not fill. If you reserve a large-enough room block far enough in advance, you can leverage this to get a discount. Use this conservatively enough so that the risk of incurring attrition costs are minimized. Keep in mind that, no matter how steep the discount, a room may still be too expensive for some attendees. You will incur zero loss this way, but you cannot get any discount—in fact, the rate may be even higher than the rate advertised on the website. As such, its only value is that it serves as a guaranteed maximum.

On-site team

On-site team lead by the volunteer coordinator.

• Considering the volume of work that needs to get done, the on-site team may rely on a combination of volunteers and workers recruited from the area who are paid a day rate. Typically, traffic work and registration should be left to paid staff while session operators should be community volunteers.
• Make sure your volunteers stand out as volunteers (during Wikimania 2012, they wore bright green sashes).
• Remember to thank volunteers for their work. At the closing of the conference, call all volunteers to the stage. Sometime after the conference, organize an event solely for the volunteers. (The volunteer dinner for Wikimania 2012 was held shortly before the closing party, both at the same venue.)

Tasks of the on-site team:

Registration

• Registration volunteers work at the registration desk, handing out name badges and conference bags to the attendees.

Help desk

• Help Desk volunteers work at the help desk all thoughout the conference, being the point of contact between the attendees and the organizers and answering any questions that may arise.

Traffic

• Traffic volunteers hold signs and direct the flow of people. With a minimum of hundreds of people attending Wikimania each year, it is very easy for attendees to get lost in the venue.
• Volunteers at the airport handed out flyers to attendees which described the deal made

Session

• Session operators run the different track rooms.
• providing water for the speakers
• making sure the presentation equipment is working.
• They also moderate sessions as appropriate.
• after the presentations, should obtain a copy of the presentation slides so that they can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

People like volunteering to run sessions, as they get the best of both volunteering and attending Wikimania—it's a fun job!

The emergency number person

• Your duty phone volunteer must be an extremely trustworthy person.
• He/she should be someone other than the main coordinators.