Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco/Wikimania

This page collects suggestions for possible venues for Wikimania in the Bay Area.

University of California, Santa Cruz

UCSC hosts many conferences and Summer camps during the summer.

Housing

UCSC has on-campus housing, distributed in about 10 colleges around the campus; see this map. There would be space available on campus for about 800 participants. There would be availabiity especially mid to late August, when many of the Summer camps end; I was advised that this would be the best period for such a large group.

Cost

The cost is, in 2010, $100 per person per day. This cost includes lodging (this may be in a shared room; we will need to check), three meals a day (cafeteria-like quality), and a parking permit. If participants stay on campus, we get free use of some of the meeting spaces and reasonable rates on others. The charges to rent audiovisual equipment are much better than I was able to find at hotels or conference centers. Of course, sponsorship money could be used to lower the costs to participants.

Meeting Space

UCSC has many classrooms of many sizes, that could be easily used to accommodate the various parallel tracks and break-out sessions. I am less sure about space for plenary sessions. There are outdoor spaces with beautiful views that could accommodate the whole group... during the day it would be too bright there however to use a computer projector. It would be very nice in the evening! Otherwise, I need to get informations about the maximum indoors space size; I am not sure it goes up to 800.

Transportation

From SFO, there is the Santa Cruz Airporter, and the ride takes about 2 hours from SFO (maybe a little less). For large numbers of participants, the conference office at UCSC typically charters buses; we would have to ask attendees for their arrival times in order to schedule the buses. Once on-campus, there are shuttles that connect the campus to the city. UCSC is at a 50 minutes drive from San Jose, 1 hour from Stanford, and 1 hour 45 minutes approximately from San Francisco.

General Comments

The UCSC campus is very very nice: you walk from college to college crossing patches of giant Redwood forest! It feels a little bit like being at the headquarters of a National Park. The campus, and the city of Santa Cruz, are also small enough to facilitate attendees interaction both during the event, and after.

Stanford

Please see m:Wikimania 2011/Bids/Stanford