Hello All:
I have been following this thread with great interest and a kind of deeply
appreciative fascination.
First to say that I am relatively new to WMF - having been on board for
just a bit over a year. Previously the jobs that I had pretty much covered
the entire waterfront:
Summer jobs in high school
Jobs while in college (didn't we all do that!)
4 years in a combination of corporations and small businesses
17 years as a volunteer as I raised my two sons
17 years in non-profits (helping to found 3 of them)
2 years in county government
2 years as a scheduler for a Presidential campaign
and most recently, just before I came here, 6 years as a scheduler for a
US Congressman.
"She must be 'old as dirt" you are thinking - well not just yet - and among
other things that set WMF apart - they do not discriminate on the basis of
age :-) :-) :-)
WMF is unique in so many ways from all the other places I have worked, just
to name a few:
Basic operating manual: Assume good faith! Look for the truth! Express
your views in an unbiased way! (a slight rewording of the "rules" for
editing).
Everything is discussed in the open.
Everyone is welcome to express their opinion.
The leadership (all the way to the "top") openly apologizes when mistakes
are made.
Rather than "dig in" and insist on continuing processes that don't work,
people at WMF put their heads together and look for a different solution.
Much like the point in the movie "Apollo 13" when they discover that the
air in the stranded capsule is slowly killing the astronauts. The team is
told to bring everything to a meeting that the astronauts have available
inside the capsule. They all come into the room shouting and pointing
fingers at each other in an effort to lay blame regarding what went wrong.
At some point Ed Harris, who plays the White Team Flight Director, yells,
"Let's just work the problem!" WMF is good at "working the problem".
When I reflect on the above, I ask, "what if the entire world worked this
way, or even half the world, or even just enough people to get us to the
tipping point. It would be powerful stuff.
I don't intend to imply that we are looking at perfect - but then, life is
not about perfection of action (we are after all human), it is about
perfection of intention which is not that from "assume good faith."
Take good care, Amy
--
*Amy Vossbrinck*
*Executive Assistant to the*
*Chief of Finance and Administration, Garfield Byrd*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
*149 New Montgomery Street*
*San Francisco, CA 94105*
*415.839.6885 ext 6628*
*avossbrinck(a)wikimedia.org <avossbrinck(a)wikimedia.org>*
The WMNL monthly report for February is available on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederl…
It is also included as plain text below.
*COMMUNITY: supporting and mobilising volunteers and editors*[
- · *Education Extension*.
The Wikipedia Education Extension has been installed on the Dutch language
Wikipedia. This extension facilitates courses ranging from a single day to
several months and gives trainers/teachers insight in the activities of
students of these courses. The extension will be used for GLAM activities
that involve training and might be used for projects with educational
institutions.
· *European Parliament in the picture*
WMNL supported a member of the community to take part in a drive to make
portrait photographs of Members of the European Parliament. Following the
photo-drive, a project was started to provide articles on all MEP's on the
Dutch language Wikipedia. This resulted in 179 new articles.
· *Female artists on Wikipedia*
A group of Wikipedians organised a writing event on female artists on
February 1; this event was supported by WMNL. The event led to an article
in a national newspaper.
· *Meeting of OTRS group*
The group of volunteers dealing with requests and questions for
NL-Wikipedia OTRS met at the WMNL office to exchange ideas and experiences.
They also gave a refresher course in working with OTRS for some of the
other volunteers present at the office.
*WORK: content, collaboration and activity development*
· *WWII*.
Preparations have begun for the WWII project. Goals of this project are:
1. To motivate people to share their knowledge about WWII by writing
articles or by uploading images.
2. Contact GLAMs for contentdonations and organise activities.
3. Cooperate with other Wikimedia chapters to stimulate exchange of
information between the different language versions of wikipedia.
As a first activity, April will be focussed on motivating people to
contribute images of all the war monuments in the Netherlands. This will
not be a photo competition in view of the sensitive nature of topic. WMNL
is cooperating with the Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei, the organisation in
charge of official remembrance ceremonies.
· *GLAM activities*.
Several GLAM partners were visited to discuss new plans for activities in
2014. Plans are being worked out with Teylers Museum, Amsterdam
Museum, Rijksmuseum, Museum Catharijneconvent, Universiteitsmuseum
Utrecht and Centraal
Museum. The activities discussed are increasingly tuned to the workflow of
GLAMs: a content donation when a new exhibition opens, followed by an
edit-a-thon or Wikipedia course at the GLAM to write articles and put the
donated content to use.
· *Wiki loves Earth.*
WMNL has started work on Wiki Loves Earth: a project to put Dutch nature in
the spotlight on Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons with text, images and
sound. The formula for this contest is derived from Wiki Loves Monuments,
which WMNL has organised from 2010 to 2013. Wiki Loves Earth was first
organised by Wikimedia Ukraine. Several countries will participate in 2014.
WMNL is cooperating with the Dutch association of National Parks.
· *Education Program.*
A kick-off meeting for an education program was held on the 1st of February
for community members, staff and board. As a result, WMNL developed and has
put out a call for tender for proposals to investigate the feasibility and
potential of cooperation with educational institutions in the Netherlands.
A decision on which proposal best meets the requirements of WMNL will be
made in March. Several other chapters have set up programs with
universities and other educational institutions.
· *Wikipedians in Residence.*
WMNL initiated a meeting between the managers of the Wikipedians in
Residence on the 19th of February to discuss lessons learned and
cooperation. The 6 Wikipedians in Residence in the Netherlands had a
meeting on the 24th of Februari. The notes of this meeting are public
(Dutch).
*WMNL*
· *Media*.
A full overview of media coverage can be found
here<https://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Media-aandacht#februari>
.
· *Newsletter.*
The WMNL newsletter of February was sent out to the subscribers.
*GLOBAL*
· *meeting of executive directors*
WMNL director Sandra Rientjes attended a meeting of Executive Directors of
Wikimedia Chapters in Berlin on February 3 and 4. Focus of the meeting was
on sharing experiences in programme development, FDC-process, management
and governance.
· *International meetings: Program Evaluation"*
Sebastiaan ter Burg attended the Program Evaluation hangout, it can be
viewed here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7iMVOPRKhQ>.
*GOVERNANCE*
· The board had a skype meeting on February 7.
*Upcoming*]
· Wikidata/dbpedia workshop
· GLAMwiki Toolset workshop at the Amsterdam Museum on April 3
· General Assembly on March 29. Important topics: election of new
Board members, official approval Annual Report 2013.
Sandra Rientjes
Directeur/Executive Director Wikimedia Nederland
tel. (+31) (0)30 3200238
mob. (+31) (0)6 31786379
www.wikimedia.nl
*Postadres*: * Bezoekadres:*
Postbus 167 Mariaplaats 3
3500 AD Utrecht Utrecht
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>From the NYPL's blog - http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/03/28/open-access-maps
"The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce
the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution
downloads. We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions.
To the extent that some jurisdictions grant NYPL an additional copyright in
the digital reproductions of these maps, NYPL is distributing these images
under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The
maps can be viewed through the New York Public Library's Digital
Collections page, and downloaded (!), through the Map Warper"
Regards,
Charles / User:Chuq
Hey folks,
The purpose of this note is to remind you that the WMF will be
participating in the FDC Process Round 2, which begins tomorrow. I'd
like to invite you to comment on the plan-in-progress, which will be
at this URL within about 24 hours:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…
The WMF welcomes your thoughts on the draft plan. Of course you're
free to ask questions and make comments on whatever aspects of it
interest you, but we'd probably find high-level input the most useful.
Does it seem to you that the WMF's 2014-15 planning is generally on
the right track? Do you believe the four "crucial initiatives" as
described in the draft are where the WMF should be focusing its
energy? What do you think about our plans WRT the technical
infrastructure, our mobile work, editor engagement, and non-technical
movement support? Bearing in mind that we're an organization focused
fairly narrowly on product & engineering and on grantmaking, is there
anything really significant that you see as missing from the draft?
Are we missing any important risks to the organization or to the
movement overall?
Please don't reply here, because your input might get missed by the
people who should see it. Please reply on meta, at the link above.
And a few explanatory caveats:
First, it's important to know that the plan, at this point, is draft.
That's new. Last year the WMF submitted material after it had been
approved by the WMF Board and after the fiscal year had begun. That
was an okay first step to getting input from community members, but
obviously the input will have more impact if we get it before the
plan's locked down. That's why this year we're submitting a draft
version of the WMF plan, rather than a final version. We've
deliberately synched up the timing of the WMF planning and FDC review
processes such that the community/FDC input will come in during April
and early May, which is exactly when the plan is being actively
refined and revised on a near-daily basis by the team responsible for
it (primarily the C-level people, and also the people who work in
their departments).The benefit of this timing is that community/FDC
input can easily be incorporated into our thinking while we're
actively discussing and rethinking and revising internally at the WMF.
The drawback is it means you'll be reviewing material that is still a
work-in-progress, and so you may find mistakes. The plan may also be a
little confusing, which is partly because it's still in-progress, and
also partly because we are merging this year the original
WMF-Board-only format with the FDC proposal requirements. It'll be a
little clunky: we ask you to bear with us as we work out the kinks.
Second. You'll need to bear with us if we seem a little slow or
unresponsive during the discussions. It's a busy time for the WMF:
we're currently actively recruiting my successor as ED, which means
Erik, Geoff, Gayle and I are far busier than we normally would be.
And, the WMF will be working through roles-and-responsibilities for
the FDC process in real time during the discussion period, which means
questions may languish for a while before we figure out internally
who's supposed to answer them. It might also be worth me saying that
we won't have unlimited time for the process, and we're hoping it will
be broadly participatory rather than being dominated by a small number
of people. That means that if any particular person has lots of
questions and follow-ups, we may eventually be unable to keep
responding. If that happens to you, please don't be insulted -- it
won't be personal. Also, if questions are asked and you know the
answers (or can link to answers or more information) please feel free
to help each other as well: you don't need to wait for us.
Third. You should know -- the WMF is not asking the FDC to recommend a
dollar allocation for the WMF to the WMF Board for approval. Partly
that's because from a timing perspective there's no good way to make
it work. The WMF Board needs to approve the plan by 1 July 2014 when
the new fiscal year begins, and the FDC input is released 1 June. That
month-long window doesn't leave sufficient time for the WMF to
adequately incorporate a dollar amount recommendation from the FDC
into our cycle, particularly given that the window needs to also
include WMF Board approval. Ultimately, I think it's fine that the WMF
Board would approve a dollar amount from the WMF rather than the FDC:
I think the most important function the FDC can play here is to help
the WMF to evaluate and assess the strength of the plan overall. And
so, I've asked the FDC to i) provide input on the plan on the WMF's
proposal page during the community review period (the month of April),
ii) give the WMF formal feedback (reinforcement, support, suggestions,
concerns) on 8 May, and iii) if it chooses to, give a more full and
detailed assessment of the WMF plan as part of its overall package of
recommendations on 1 June. Any June assessment will not be received in
time to significantly influence the plan upon which the Board votes,
but we would take it under advisement as the year plays out. This is
perhaps not ideal but there is no perfect solution, and I think it's a
step forward from last year, because it'll mean the WMF gets community
and FDC input at the point in the process when it will be most
influential.
I am really pleased to have the WMF participating for the first time
with its full draft plan in the FDC process. The draft will be posted
within the next 24 hours, and your input is welcome from then until 30
April. We look forward to hearing what you think.
Thanks,
Sue