Hi all,
Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2014 in London are now being
accepted. Applications are open until the end of the day UTC on 17 February.
Wikimania 2014 scholarships is an award given to an individual to enable
them to attend Wikimania in London from 6-10 August, 2014.
Only a single type of scholarship will be available from the Wikimedia
Foundation for Wikimania 2014. A Wikimedia Foundation scholarship will
cover the cost of an individual's round-trip travel costs as arranged by
the Wikimedia Foundation travel agency, shared accommodation as arranged
by the Wikimedia Foundation, and registration for Wikimania.
Applicants will be rated using a pre-determined selection process and
selection criteria by the Scholarship Committee, who will determine
which are successful. To learn more about Wikimania 2014 scholarships,
please visit <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>.
To apply for a scholarship, fill out the application form on
<http://scholarships.wikimedia.org/apply>. It is highly recommended that
applicants review all of the material on the Scholarships page and the
associated FAQ before submitting an application.
If you have any question, please contact
<wikimania-scholarships(a)wikimedia.org> or leave a message on
<https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scholarships>.
Katie Chan
Chair, Scholarship Committee
--
Katie Chan
Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of any organisation the author is associated with or employed by.
Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine
Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be
more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The
company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here
http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually
attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywo…
and
are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate
position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would
consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this
textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
February 6, 2014 at 7:00 PM UTC (11 AM PST). The IRC channel is
#wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as
a live YouTube stream.
The current structure of the meeting is:
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytic
* Review of financials
* Welcoming recent hires
* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority
initiatives
* Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
Please review
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further
information about how to participate.
We'll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development
+1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689
www.wikimedia.org
Hey folks :)
Adam and I will be holding another office hour on February 3rd at 5pm
UTC. See http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Wikidata+office+ho…
for your timezone. We will be meeting in #wikimedia-office on
freenode IRC.
The topics will be:
* short update on the current state of Wikidata
* questions about the development plan for 2014+
(https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Development_plan)
* any other questions/discussion
We will make logs available for those who can't attend.
Hope to see many of you there!
Cheers
Lydia
--
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
Product Manager for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hello everyone
I am very happy to announce that we have found a wonderful person to be
our Wikipedian in Community for our Kumusha Takes Wiki project in Ivory
Coast. His name is Cyriac Gbogou.
Born on the 02nd of September 1980 in Kpada (Soubré) village located in
the south west of the country and the capital of Ivorian cocoa, Cyriac
Gbogou runs for years a part of the African continent with his parents
as a student-resident respectively in Senegal, Togo, Mali and
Congo-Brazzaville. He finally returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 2001 and
decided to pursue graduate studies in computer science. He holds an
engineering degree in Computer Science.
He gets married in August 2009. In 2010, he discovers the world of Web
2.0. That same year, Cyriac chooses to not follow his employer IBM which
wanted to relocate its activities in Morocco because of the very
sensitive period in Cote d’Ivoire. Loving risk and adventure, he stays
to serve his country as volunteer in Akendewa (now former Secretary
General). His passion for social networks has grown during the
post-electoral crisis of 2011 working with other actors in the Ivorian
web projects such as Civsocial #, # Wonzomai who have saved lives with
the Internet use [1]. Cyriac is the Chairman of the Association des
Blogueurs de Côte d'Ivoire (A.B.C.I)
Since September 2012, Cyriac Gbogou is an independent consultant, a job
he does with passion, as an advisor, speaker and trainer. He was named
by his peers "Village Chief" of the Ivorian web community.
You can also follow him on his blog where he speaks freely on topics:
www.cyriacgbogou.ci
Whilst Cyriac is not (yet) a wikipedian, he is quite knowledgeable with
open source and related projects : he was involved in OSM Ivory Coast
mapping and coordinating mapping party or was involved in the jerry
project (http://youandjerrycan.org) including in the set up of Afripedia
on a jerry server.
More info about Kumusha here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/en#News
Cyriac will have about two weeks to gain some familiarity with Wikimedia
projects before heading to Cap Town for a month, to receive some
training and start planning his activity in Ivory Coast.
It would be great if some of you could welcome him on his (still red)
talk page :) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Cyriac_Gbogou
Florence/Anthere
Dear Chapters,
this is a mail focused on chapters within the European Union but of course
support and participation of any chapter is welcome!
== Preamble ==
Some might have heard about the State Parliament Projects done in Germany
and Austria since 2009:
A bunch of Wikipedians and photographers meet politicians in the
parliament, shoot professional photos, discuss their Wikipedia articles
etc. This way hundreds of free licensed, high quality images have been
made, Wikipedia articles have been improved. In the latest project at
Schwerin (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) we added videos, politicians give a short
introduction about themselves, their position and political focus in German
and in their mother tongue if different from German.
About 20 photographers were able to participate and processes how to work
with the parliament's administration, how to interact with the politicians,
how to efficiently take a lot of photos in a short time and with good
quality have been established.
== Next Level: European Parliament ==
Now we would like to take this to next level: After contacting the European
Parliament I was able to get their approval, the support by the parties and
a date!
Unfortunately the date is already in February, 3rd to 7th, as we have to
use the short time gap between budget deliberations and elections. MEPs
only travel to the EP when deliberations are ongoing but then they are also
busy with meetings, as soon as the election preperation starts there won't
be any time for our project within the next 6 months.
Anyway I am sure we can do that - the elections are also a great
opportunity to raise awareness on our material we have in Wikipedia and on
Commons. It is also an excellent opportunity to bring together volunteers
in doing our core work together, maybe we can transfer the idea of
Parliament Projects to other countries. Volunteers get the opportunity to
learn from each other - the EP is a very challenging project, having more
than 700 MEPs to be handled within a few days. And Wikipedia may improve
its articles, also by bringing together volunteers from different EU
countries. Many MEPs have their articles only in a few of the European
languages, some not even in their native language!
== Your Chapter Involved ==
We are looking forward to get volunteers from as many countries as possible
involved in this project. In order to be handle it we need approx. 35
people to help. Obviously the german and austrian photographers are already
waiting for it, from past projects they already know what will go on. But
there is much more to it: We want your volunteers!
Imagine a project where we could bring together volunteers from all 24
language communities in the EU - that is what we are trying!
Therefore we ask you for a favour:
* please forward this invitation to your local community - you can point
them to our project page on Wikimedia Commons:
**
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliame…
* does your chapter provide travel support for those volunteers in your
country who want to participate? Please do so. Your chapter pays for the
transportation to / from Strasbourg and the accommodation (around 300 EUR
per person for all 6 nights), we take care of the rest (transportation
hotel - EP, catering etc.)
**
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliame…
* does your chapter have photographic equipment we might need? We could use
DSLRs, flash units, background systems, lenses...
**
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliame…
* we would like to supply the volunteers with t-shirts or hoodies with
Wikipedia logo or similar - for a unified appearance and to make them
visible as volunteers and Wikimedians. Is your chapter (or the WMF?)
interested in providing 90 shirts / hoodies? (We planned 2 pc. per person
as they will be worn almost one week.)
**
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliame…
* everyone who likes this project: state your support on the talk page of
our grant request to the WMF which should cover the general costs of the
project. By this grant request we make sure that each chapter only has to
handle local support and can stay within it's budgeted limits and area of
operation.
**
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Olaf_Kosinsky/Wikipedians_in_Eur…
Thanks for your attention and your support! We are confident that even with
the short time given we will be able to run an awesome project which will
have an impact in so many areas - Wikipedia, Commons, our volunteers,
chapter collaboration, outreach, reader experience...
Regards,
Olaf Kosinsky
> the community can help with identifying candidates by
> suggesting people who should be invited to apply (we did that)
Thank you, Oliver! How many people suggested by the community
were invited, and what were their responses? Did Ward Cunningham
get an invite?
Craig Franklin wrote:
>...
> it would be grossly unprofessional for Erik, Jan-Bart, or anyone else
> to publicly discuss the relative merits of people who may or may not
> be involved in a confidential hiring process....
No, the Board resolved to "consult the community as necessary to
assist with identifying, evaluating, and selecting candidates" as per
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointing_and_authorizing_a…
How is it possible for the community to evaluate and select candidates
without a transparent discussion of their individual merits? There is
nothing which requires confidentiality in the hiring process. What
would be unprofessional would be if the Board doesn't follow through
with their own resolution, but we all know how well the resolution to
maximize financial support of the projects fares as soon as the
budgeted fundraising goal is reached since a couple years ago.
We should be discussing the merits of individual candidates in the open.
Should "movement organisations in planning" come to the Wikimedia
Conference?
This is a question that has been asked, does not yet appear to have a
definite answer, and indeed it is not clear who should answer it.
Please provide your thoughts here;
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Conference_2014#Who_is_invit…
Wikimedia Norway has brought onboard it's Third employee from January 1.
We now have a team of 3 full / part time staff supporting the Chapter in
realizing ambitious objectives for 2014. They are all installed in Our New
Offices in Central Oslo.
https://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/About_us
Astrid Carlsen will direct the GLAM program co-ordination, and the
chapter's efforts to strengthen participation, recruitment and retention of
contributors. She has broad experience from the puvlishing sector and from
translation, and has lived and worked in Germany and Norway.
Jorid Martinsen will be a part-time Project manager With the main objective
to increase female participation. She has invaluable experience and
Networks as a recent student organizer at the national Level.
Tor Arne Bjerke will direct the outreach towards academia, and the
chapter's effort to enhance content quality. He will also specifically
develop film Projects and produce recruitment film. Tor Arne has more than
10 years experience from the film industry as a producer, and lectures fil
at a university college.
We are happy to have them all onboard at Wikimedia Norway!
--
*Erlend Bjørtvedt*
Nestleder, Wikimedia Norge
Vice chairman, Wikimedia Norway
Mob: +47 - 9225 9227
http://no.wikimedia.org <http://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/About_us>