Team/Openness and Transparency

From Wikimania 2014 • London, United Kingdom
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  • Ed Saperia - Ed owns 100% of a company called Original Content London which produces various digital and multimedia projects, and events. Original Content London will not be involved in Wikimania, although Ed may draw upon assets (eg projectors, storage, vehicles) that belong to his company to aid the event. He was previously employed by Barclays Capital. He has many years of amateur event planning experience. He organised Jimmy's Wikipedia 10th anniversary party (the one with the 5' globe and the candy floss). He has also organised another party for Wikimedia in the UK, which he paid for out of his own pocket, and from which he received no profit. He went to school with James Forrester. He is a Wikimedia UK member. Ed is a former employee of TechHub, a tech-startup-community-facilitation company.
  • Anastasia Andrianova - Anastasia works for Byhiras, a London-based financial technology start-up she helped set up. Byhiras will have no involvement with Wikimania. Previously employed by Lehman Brothers, she used to work in private equity. Originally trained as a social scientist (International Relations and Economics, DPhil candidate Oxon), she maintains keen interest in humanities and various aspects of human interaction with the world. Through her experience in the financial services and capital raising, she has developed a network of contacts (potential corporate and institutional sponsors, contributors) that could be leveraged in preparation for the bid and the ultimate hosting of the conference.
  • James Knight - James is head of international development at TechHub, a community space for technology entrepreneurs with sites across Europe and the US. Mike Butcher, lead editor of Techcrunch Europe (an official media partner of this bid) is a co-founder of TechHub, however neither TechHub nor Techcrunch will profit from this activity. James is also involved in Orignal Content London. James has previously worked in the financial services industry at GCA Savvian, Westpac and Silicon Valley Bank.
  • Kimi Lawrie - Kimi is an employee of Original Content London, however is volunteering to work on the Wikimania London bid in her free time and is not being paid for her work on the bid. Kimi was educated at Goldsmiths university after which she worked at NDMC Ltd with clients such as Barclays, Canon Europe, High5Games, US Tech Solutions, Encanvas, Squork and Cabasse.

Both James and Ed are extensively active within the London technology cluster and have cultivated many relationship within the sector due to their involvement with their respective companies. Since the larger technology corporates (Google, IBM, Cisco, Facebook, Amazon etc) are likely sponsors for Wikimania in London, it is likely that future conflicts may present themselves at which points all interests will be declared prior to entering into any agreement with said parties. All the above individuals had pre-existing relationships before commencing the Wikimania London bid.