Dear openZIM developers team!
As I wrote last week I was at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin.
== Wikimedia Israel / hebrew Wikipedia on OLPC == One result was that I meet Asaf Bartov from Israel who is working on hebrew Wikipedia for the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC, XO). I haven't heard from him since I came back, but I am pretty sure we will hear from him after the Easter holidays. I keep him up-to-date by forwarding the most relevant mails from this mailinglist.
== Wikimedia Italia / italian Wikipedia on DVD == I also talked to Frieda Brioschi from Wikimedia Italia concerning their Wikipedia DVD. They have a company in Italy which created a proprietary software with GUI for the DVD and an "unknown" storage for the data (reminds me of the Directmedia approach in the first place). She said the software was "awkward". They plan to have a new DVD this year and the company promised to write a new software which is better. Frieda stated that WMIT is not yet sure if they will sign a contract with this company again. After talking about openZIM Frieda said that she will take that into account. I offered her that WMIT can make their DVD on its own by using our software and maybe Kiwix, or they point the company to our software which they can use and integrate zimlib or she may also ask Emmanuel - maybe he would be willing to make a DVD for WMIT.
== Wikimedia Polska / polish Wikipedia on DVD == Wikimedia Polska had a DVD using HTML dumps and a Java applet as search engine. Didn't sell, no current plans on having a new DVD.
== Wikimedia Foundation Conference Call == Erik Möller (Deputy Director of Wikimedia Foundation) contacted me after the conference by mail, stating that he heard from openZIM and would like to talk to me about that.
Quote: "Since it seems like prior offline reader efforts are merging into it, I would like to understand the goals and deliverables of the project better, and also discuss whether we could support it in any fashion."
We have now fixed a date with James Owen, his assistant, for a conference call at Thursday evening, April 16th at 20:00 our local time (CEST).
I would like to collect some statements and ideas how Wikimedia Foundation could help us. To do that in a collaborative way I created
http://openzim.org/Wikimedia_Foundation_Relationship
and will now start filling in what I have in mind, but invite you to add what you feel is important to mention from your point of view.
Thanks for your attention,
Manuel