[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

Thu Oct 11 01:16:52 UTC 2007

Aphaia wrote:
> On 10/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>   
>> I did not hear of visa problems at Frankfurt, but it affected many
>> people who would have liked to attend in Boston.  AFAIK, unfortunately
>> and ironically, the only people that were kept from Taipei because of
>> visa issues were the Egyptians.
>>     
> For the record, visa arrangement for Egyptians were perfect: The
> Ministry of Foreign Affairs of R.O.C. promised those Egyptians would
> be able to get visas on port. Unfortunately it was settled after the
> Egyptians had given up to attend and had filled their schedule with
> other local concerns. So ultimately there was no critical visa issue
> in Taipei. No registered attendees rejected by the government of the
> hosting place. It was not the Taipei case.
>   
Thank you for clarifying this.
>> I expect that visa issues will continue to be a factor in choosing
>> American hosts at least until after they have had a change of government.
>>     
> As for accessibility, visa issue was a big concern of us the jury,
> particularly people who were involved into the 2006 conference
> organization in Boston. And for enforcing free knowledge in a global
> level, I personally this visa issue concern could be much more
> weighed, even more than the geographical rotation (as announced, even
> if we got rid of this category, the final result wouldn't be altered).
> Immigration policy is also a political concern, but it directly
> affects the conference and hinders our community members to share the
> knowledge with us the rest.
The rotation is still only one factor, and the United States is not the 
only country in the Americas.

I agree about the importance of the visa issue.  Taiwan has done a good 
job of working around its political isolation.  Egypt knows the value of 
tourism.  As an organisation we have advanced much from the work of 
American wikipedians.  But with such a self-contradictory assortment of 
American laws it is mostly their own citizens that are poorly served by 
government.

Ec