---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Filip Maljkovic <dungodung@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@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