Hi,

as promised a few weeks ago, here's the report for Februar 2009. March and April to follow. The report is written from the perspective of February so some wording may seem odd today.

== Projects ==

=== Zedler Award === Preparations for this year's presentation of the Zedler Award are under way. Closing on a date and a venue were the main goals in February. A meeting of partner was planned for March to discuss open issues.

=== School project === Catrin and I attended Didacta, an education fair, in Hanover to gather some leads for potential partnerships. Some more work was put into the project outline which was presented to leads we've contacted before.

=== Wikimedia Conference === Preparations for Wikimedia Conference continued as well. Our Community Assistant Henriette Fiebig took over logistics. Daniel Kinzler and Guillaume Paumier took over responsibility for the program of the developer's and the chapter's tracks, respectively. We've selected T-Labs as the venue which was offered to us rent-free.

=== Newsletter === Just in time for the general assembly, we'll be producing a new version of the chapter newsletter. Catrin will be responsible for content and design with contributions coming from board members, staff, and volunteers. The newsletter will be printed in newspaper-style but will also be available online. Main topics for the first issue will be activities from the past months, the relocation of the office to Berlin, the results of the fundraising campaign, the print-on-demand service started by pediapress, and the 2009 Zedler Award.

=== Content cooperations === Mathias continued his talks with SLUB and other potential partners. An agreement with SLUB is expected soon with first uploads to Commons starting in March.

=== Public relations === February saw the launch of a print-on-demand service at Wikipedia managed by pediapress, which was covered heavily by news media. Another hot topic was the intentional addition of a fake middle name in the article of Germany's new federal ministor of commerce, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Our PR activities used this event as an opportunity to once again promote our school project for media literacy in the classroom. Overall, there were about 40 stories on Wikipedia, most of which relied extensively on the chapter's PR activites managed by Catrin.

== Finances ==

=== Closing 2008 === Financial reports for fiscal year 2008 were finished in time for the general assembly. Overall revenues for the year were €443,955.55 (2007: €289,393.29, +53%). Of those, €375,876.48 were revenues from donations and €30.000,00 were revenues from license deals. Overall expenditures were €344,444.35 (2007: €143,089.62, +141%) including depreciation at €59,819.40.

=== Investments === The board approved new servers and tech gear for Amsterdam on January 12. An order worth €15.836,39 has placed this month.

== Staff ==

Sören Brandes started in the office as a student worker on February 26.

We've continued our search for an executive director. The search committee decided to call for offers from headhunter to get a better idea of services and costs involved. A new meeting was planned for March 1.

== Misc ==

For the rest of the year, these are the events and projects currently on the radar: March: CeBIT, General assembly April: Wikimedia Conference June: Wikimedia Deutschland 5th anniversary July: You and Me August: Wikimania 2009 September: Wikipedia Academy (?) November: Zedler Award, Quadriga