Jaunākā informācija par nākamo CEE konferenci Belgradā 11.—13. oktobrī.
Mārtiņš
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Filip Maljkovic <dungodung(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 11:32 PM
Subject: [WMCEE-l] CEE meeting 2019, update 1
To: A list for Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe <
wmcee-l(a)tools.wikimedia.pl>
Dear friends,
I hope you got some rest throughout the holidays and that you entered 2019
with joy and willingness to contribute some more to our amazing community!
:)
I'm writing to you today to give you a small update about Wikimedia
Serbia's efforts to bring you Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019.
Practically, since the meeting in Lviv in October 2018, we've been working
diligently on the next year's conference. My colleagues and I have been
taking notes during and after the conference, so that we could create a
checklist of things what to do and what not to do before and during the
conference.
However, for the most part, we've been doing research in the past two
months. We've been trying to find the best venue/hotel given our
constraints. We've reached out to about 25 hotels and several venue
vendors, and then narrowed that list down to a few, which we visited in
person. After this research, we've narrowed down the list to 4 options.
After talking with Alex and Chen from the Foundation, we decided to go with
the option of Hotel M (accommodation + venue at the same place), which is a
nice hotel in a quiet Belgrade neighborhood, about a 15-20 minute drive to
the center. We've also fixed the dates, so I'm happy to announce that the
Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019 will be held from *October 11 to 13*. I'm very
glad that the hotel and venue will be at the same physical place.
Hotel M is a 4 star hotel, so service should be nice :). It turns out that
getting an affordable hotel with all the needs of our conference is quite
tough, so we decided to go with a slightly more expensive hotel, but
without a doubt that we'll have problems with rooms, equipment, internet
etc. Of course, participants paying for their own stay will have access to
our reduced rate at the hotel.
We're still considering whether to include a pre-conference day this time,
but we're still going through the options. Since our grant budget will be
quite strained, it's doubtful it will include the per-conference costs, but
there are options of external funding, in a way... Stay tuned for more.
In other news, we've held an online meeting with WMF (as briefly mentioned
above), but also with previous year's organizers (wave to Nat & Vira), who
have given us their insights and shared their thoughts and also a very
useful planning document.
We've been working very hard internally on creating a budget, which is
roughly already made (we tried to do research about many things including
air tickets, streaming, catering, etc). The next big thing we have is the
grant submission, which is due in less than a month. We'll focus our work
on it in the next few weeks.
One more new thing is that the registration process (including the
scholarship part) will be informed by previous year's responses from people
(that will be provided to us by the Ukrainian team). This is to ensure the
best possible outcomes and prevent misuse of movement funds through
negligent conference attendance. We're also thinking about changing the
"scholarship representation algorithm" (shaking up the 2 per
community/country rule a bit), but stay tuned for updates regarding that.
We definitely plan on sending out the registration form pretty early this
year (definitely before the high summer), so beware of that!
So I think we still have time until the conference and there is no rush.
But! Time flies quickly, so let's not get too comfortable. We all want to
think about program, so we will need to form the program committee soon.
Also, organizing a conference of this size is quite a lengthy task, so if
any group of volunteers is considering doing this next year, it's not too
early to give it some thought. :)
With best of luck in the new year and until next time (I'm planning on
sending one of these every so often, just so you know what's been cooking),
Filip Maljković
Wikimedia Serbia
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