LA2

LA2 is the username for Lars Aronsson, Sweden, just like on many Wikimedia projects.

July 17: The conference has started. The sessions are OK, but the coffee break serves too little coffee all too slow. Instead of the promised lunch "tour of the library" we get a video presentation of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and a 3D goggle presentation of the sphinx. I guess the underdevelopment of Egypt doesn't depend on a lack of resources, but a failure to manage the available resources right. The nine (9) video projectors in the ceiling could find better use in nine schools. The WiFi is slow and there is a desperate shortage of power outlets. If I walk half a mile, I can buy coffee for next to nothing, but right here in the conference center, after lunch, there's just no coffee no matter what I would pay.

July 16: It's 7:30 and I'm in Alexandria. I just arrived in a taxi with Kurt Janson, Axel Boldt and Andrew Lih (who was still lost at the airport). The taxi took us to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, but it doesn't open until 11. We walked to the dorms at Saint Marc, where there is a working WLAN. I just hade a Hohos Edita (chocolate bar) and Mirinda (soda) for breakfast. Now it's 8:30.

July 15: My ticket website took me to Frankfurt, to wait for 7 hours for the connecting flight to Cairo. I the mean time I took the S-Bahn to Rödelheim and said hello to Arne Klempert in the office of Wikimedia Deutschland. On the plane to Cairo I met Kurt Jansson and Axel Boldt (German from Minnesota).

My rough plan is to fly Stockholm-Cairo on July 15, take the bus to Alexandria (220 km motorway), attend the conference (July 17-19), spend a few days before and/or after in Alexandra, then go back to Cairo, see the pyramids at Giza and a bit of Cairo, perhaps a few days, and then fly home. Flying to Cairo is about half the price of flying to Alexandria. This plan would probably appeal to many other attendees as well, so it would make sense to arrange a joint visit to Giza (and stay in Cairo). Indeed, this should be part of an extended conference package.

May 29, 2008: Today I tried to login to this wiki, but that didn't stick. I tried to fill out the registration form for the conference, but my browser's back button cleared my form before I got to payment and when I tried to resubmit it, I got an error message complaining about a duplicate registration (see Talk:Registration). So I couldn't proceed to payment. That leaves my registration hanging in the air, just like this whole conference.