Dear New England wiki-kin,
Update from the conference :) Please ask any questions you have about the
event.
Abhishek and I attended the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin last weekend.
There were roughly 200 attendees from 100 affiliates, and many other
attendees from the WMF and our host, Wikimedia Deutschland.
Some partnerships, collaborations, and US-specific conversations:
* There were many discussions about influencing policy that affects free
knowledge and the projects. European wikimedians have an annual meeting to
clarify policy positions, draft statements to share with politicians and
campigns, and decide how to push for key topics. US Wikimedians and the
WMF discussed net neutrality
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gamaliel/Net_Neutrality> and upcoming
legislation in the coming month. Senator Wyden is interested in meeting
with Wikimedians to inform his positions in support of NN.
--> How do we feel about supporting active NN advocacy and even lobbying?
A day of action is coming up on May 9
--> WMDC and the WMF talked about having a permanent lobbyist in DC to
support and coordinate national efforts.
* We shared ideas for better collaborations with universities and
libraries, and connections b/t open repositories & wikidata. Special props
to the many US librarians involved in that conversation. Stanford has a
large library-data initiative that is focusing on adding a
wikidatan-in-residence to integrate their projects with WD.
* We started a new user group for offline distributions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects>.
* There is now a user group focused on the annual US wikiconference; and a
few new regional groups, all of which sent a representative.
* In the strategy discussions, a number of people (again) from within and
without the country asked about when we would have a US Chapter.
Implications: support for native languages within the US, nation-level
outreach outside of the currently active metropoles, and small projects
across the country.
SJ
--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266