This year, the mostly white, male, 20- and 30-somethings have decided that Mexico City will be their Wikimania destination. The gringo-geeks will find themselves in a strange new environment for the week, so your trusty Examiner would like to help them out with these five handy travel advisories.
1. Bring your umbrella
While many people unfamiliar with the locale might think that Mexico City in July will be hot, it's really not, thanks to its being more than 7,000-feet above sea level. So, temperatures between the mid-50s and mid-70s are to be expected. However, it looks like the weather forecast during Wikimania calls for many showers and thunderstorms. No surprise, the LA Times once said, "Predicting rain on a summer day in Mexico City is like forecasting death in an old-folks home." You'll want to watch for power outages and possibly localized flooding -- after all, the city used to be a lake. To quote the LA Times again, "daily downpours do offer a cleansing sensation in a city coated in the grime of tens of thousands of pollution-belching buses and taxis". Enjoy this special form of summer weather, Wikipedians!
2. The hotel
Most Wikimania attendees will likely stay at the conference site, the Hilton Mexico City Reforma. While TripAdvisor says that there are 15 higher-scoring hotels in the city that the Wikimedia Foundation might have chosen to host the conference, it's still a fine, fine hotel. Disregard the report from one recent guest from Santiago, Chile:
"when I arrived to my room the bath tub was still with water and pubic hair from the previous guest; when I complained I was called at midnight to offer me a room upgrade under the condition that I should move immediately".
TripAdvisor reviews probably aren't considered by Wikipedians to be a "reliable source", so this review may be rejected -- or shouldn't it? Regardless, the folks at Wikimedia Commons would probably like to request that any attendee who checks in and finds pubic hair in the hotel room bath tub -- please take a freely-licensed photo of it and post it to Wikimedia Commons to support "Freedom of Panorama", even if this might violate the creative design rights of the bathtub manufacturer.
3. Political activity
Mexico City has a vibrant political action scene, which many of the social cause-minded Wikimania guests are sure to support. Do note, however, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City told U.S. citizens to avoid protests and reminded them that even peaceful demonstrations could turn violent. You may witness in person some of the recent happenings that (until now) you could only read about online -- government buildings being burned, airports being shut down by angry mobs, or even commercial food trucks being hijacked so that their goods may be distributed for free to "the people".
4. Practice your street smarts
We saw in an "Ally Skills" presentation from the Ada Initiative that one thing conference coordinators should do to make women feel safe is not to schedule conferences in neighborhoods known to be unsafe. The Wikimania conference will be held smack in the middle of the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City, one of the six boroughs (out of 16 total) that the US Department of State calls out for tourists to be aware of as having "the highest number of crimes reported in 2014". The city as a whole is already marked by the State Department as: "Crime Rating: Critical". So, the Wikimania sponsors are asking women (and men) to come to a city with critical levels of crime, to a high-frequency crime borough in that city. The Ada Initiative typically pockets $9,000 in honoraria and travel fees for this kind of presentation. One would be advised not to carry that much cash on your person, as Mexico City does have its share of pickpockets. Another way for Wikimania attendees to perhaps earn some extra spending money would be to find and capture escaped convict Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, which would net a $3.8 million bounty.
5. Pay attention to Jimbo's keynote
Jimmy Wales' keynote speech is always sure to amaze the audience. Don't miss it! He usually begins his talks with his trademark kickoff word, "So...". He's also likely to fumble for a while with the overhead projector system, which at past Wikimania events has caused him some frustration. But really be on the lookout for a major geo-political gaffe that doesn't at first seem like a gaffe. Like the time in 2011, when Wales awarded a $5,000 prize to a Wikipedian from Kazakhstan, for all the great work he was doing with the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. What Wales didn't realize (or bother to realize) was that the award recipient was a once-and-future government operative, helping the autocratic regime replace the contents of the free Kazakh-language Wikipedia with content from a state-approved encyclopedia. But don't mention that one, if you should bump into Jimbo at the conference -- he doesn't like to talk about that.
Bonus travel tip
And here's a bonus tip for those flying to and from Mexico City. If you happen to be traveling to this conference with financial support from one of the many scholarships or grants that the Wikimedia Foundation hands out to its favorite boosters, when you're all done with the conference, make sure you don't nearly miss your flight home because you stayed out until 5:00 AM. Also, once on the aircraft, be on the defensive -- make sure a box of pretzels doesn't fall on your head, as happened to the very same oversleeping recipient of a Wikimedia travel grant.
Next year's Wikimania should be an even more interesting travel situation than this year's when a small Italian village in the mountains will struggle to even find lodging for many hundreds of Wikipedians.
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