Please find below the chapters report for Wikimedia Nederland on September
2010. The report is as usual also posted on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Best, Lodewijk
Wiki Loves Monuments
September was Monument Month for Wikimedia Nederland, with Wiki Loves
Monuments as main activity. The photo-contest around rijksmonumenten (Dutch
national monuments) yielded more than 12.000 images from over 200
participants from all over the country. You can find more information about
the general outlines of the project in this blog
post<http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/29/a-monument-month-for-wikimedia-ne…>.
The biggest win in this project is perhaps not even so much the images
themselves but the awareness that has been created with the contestants and
the lesson that an extremely simplified upload form on Wikimedia Commons
helps a lot to lower the threshold for uploading. The jury is now going
through all these images and will announce the winners by November 20.
For more information, please take a look at
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.nl(in Dutch)
Wiki takes Haarlem
Haarlem is a province capital near Amsterdam, and a major city when it comes
to numbers of rijksmonumenten. The city has 1148 rijksmonumenten, of which
many had no photo before September. We organized as part of Wiki Loves
Monuments an effort to photograph as many monuments as possible within one
day - Wiki takes Haarlem. You can see the results in this google
map<http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.nsesoftware.nl%2Fwiki…>-
a yellow pin means there is a photo, blue means there isn't. 1064
images
have been uploaded thanks to Wiki Loves Haarlem.
Wiki Loves Vlissingen
The library of Vlissingen (Americans, you might find Flushing a more
recognizable pronunciation) has raised the stakes for photographers
participating Wiki Loves Monuments within the municipality of Vlissingen
even more. Besides the prizes that are already available through the general
competition, they put up an iPod Touch and an e-book reader for people
taking photos for Wiki Loves Monuments in Vlissingen! They created their own
local jury and will also announce the prizes on November 20.
Nationaal Archief
Nationaal Archief (the Dutch National Archive) and Spaarnestad Photo have
released some 1000 very relevant political images under a free license. This
release was announced in the international political Press Center
Nieuwspoort in The Hague with a panel of former and current politicians
present. These politicians shared with us their memories and thoughts with
the images, giving a lot of background information on the meaning of the
images. You can find more information about this collaboration in this blog
post<http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/13/dutch-national-archive-joins-wiki…>
.
Meetings, conferences etc
Besides what was already mentioned earlier in this report, there was also a
Summer Barbecue on September 4 in the southeast part of the country. Even
through the number of participants was moderate, the atmosphere was great.
Coming up:
- October: Europeana brainstorm meeting & conference
- October 9: General Assemblee, Fundraiser meeting
- November 20: Wikimedia Conference & Prize ceremony Wiki Loves Monuments
- January 15: Wikipedia 10 years anniversary
Hi folks,
I want to let you know that as of this Friday, October 22, 2010, Mike
Godwin will be leaving his role as General Counsel for the Wikimedia
Foundation. Mike’s transition out of the role will be a fairly lengthy
one: he will continue to be available to the Wikimedia Foundation to
provide information and advice for several months to come.
The search for his successor will begin immediately. It's being
conducted by the recruiting firm m|Oppenheim.
There's a detailed Q and A below that I hope will answer any questions
you've got.
Thanks,
Sue
Why is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation?
Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation is a confidential personnel
issue, and the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t talk about confidential
personnel issues with anyone except the people directly involved. We
want to handle this kind of thing with respect for people’s privacy
and dignity, and we are hopeful we can do that in this instance. That
means, we’re not going to answer this question, and we hope you will
understand why.
Is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation because of a change in
direction or policy, related to our legal context?
No.
Is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation over a point of principle?
For example, because the Wikimedia Foundation wants to do something
that he disagrees with, or because it doesn’t want to do something
that he thinks it should do?
No. We’re not aware of any significant differences of opinion between
Mike and the Wikimedia Foundation, in terms of values, principles,
ethics, future plans, or anything like that.
Is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation because he did something egregious?
Not at all. The Wikimedia Foundation believes Mike has always acted in
what he believes to be the Wikimedia Foundation’s best interests.
What is Mike going to do next?
We don’t know what he’ll end up doing next, but we wish him all the
best, and we hope that he will continue to do the same kind of work
he’s always done -- helping to advance people’s online freedoms. We
think he’s really good at that work, and we hope it’s what he
continues to do.
I like Mike, and I know that it’s a tough economy. Can I ask what the
Wikimedia Foundation is doing to ensure that Mike is okay while he
figures out his next steps?
Yes. The Wikimedia Foundation and Mike have figured out severance that
we all hope will protect Mike and give him time to think about what he
wants to do next. The terms of the severance are confidential: we
won’t talk about them now, or in the future. But you can rest assured
that the Wikimedia Foundation wants to see Mike continue working to
advance people’s online freedoms: everybody would like to see him
continue making an important contribution.
How will a new General Counsel be recruited?
The Wikimedia Foundation has hired m|Oppenheim to help us recruit a
new General Counsel. m|Oppenheim has done great work for us in the
past: they helped us recruit Zack Exley, Barry Newstead and Cyn
Skyberg, and they are currently helping us find a Director of
Technical Operations. We’ve been happy with them, and we’re confident
they’ll be able to help us successfully recruit a new General Counsel.
Who will be involved in the hiring process and how will it work?
Currently, m|Oppenheim is developing a job description for the role.
To that end, they’ve spoken with a number of board members, the
Executive Director, and some of the senior staff. At the same time,
m|Oppenheim is also developing a list of people to contact who might
be interested in the role, or who might know people who would be.
(This list includes people at all kinds of ideologically-like-minded
organizations, such as the EFF, Berkman, our Advisory Board, and so
forth, as well as people at large internet companies such as Google,
eBay, etc.) That “connector” list is being developed in consultation
with several board members, the ED and senior staff. By October 22nd,
m|Oppenheim expects to have the job description posted publicly, and
will begin generating a list of potential candidates.
Once a candidate pool is developed, interviews will be held. The
interviewing process will likely include at a minimum Sue Gardner,
Erik Moeller, Cyn Skyberg, Kat Walsh, Arne Klempert, and Barry
Newstead. There will probably also be others involved (e.g., possibly
additional board members, and possibly additional members of the
senior staff), but that’s the skeleton plan we have right now. We will
also aim to get a sampling of the legal needs of various stakeholder
parties such as chapters, probably by asking m|Oppenheim to interview
two or three chapters representatives and other relevant stakeholders.
If I am interested in the role, or know someone who might be, what should I do?
We welcome applications, and we also welcome ideas about where we
might find good candidates. Feel free to get in touch with Lisa
Grossman at m|Oppenheim, at lisag(a)moppenheim.com. She’d be glad to
hear from you.
Will the new General Counsel job description be significantly
different from Mike’s?
No. m|Oppenheim is having conversations with stakeholders about the
General Counsel role, and will update the job description based on
those conversations. But we don’t expect the resultant job description
to be substantially different from the existing one.
What is the gist of the General Counsel job?
Our General Counsel role is slightly unusual, in that it has a bit of
a double focus. First, the Wikimedia Foundation (and the Wikimedia
movement) are ideologically-motivated -- or if you prefer,
values-driven/agenda-driven. That means we need a lawyer who shares
Wikimedia’s ideological agenda: who, for example, supports people’s
right to access information online unimpeded by censorship, and who
supports a legal context that enables people to work collaboratively
online to develop educational and informational materials for other
people to read. And second, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)3
non-profit organization based in the United States that operates
international web properties, and interacts with non-American chapter
organizations. To that end, we need a lawyer who can be responsible
for all the legal terrain implied by that: somebody who understands
the legal issues relevant to the operation of a big website, to the
operation of a US-based non-profit organization, to the legal transfer
of funds among various international entities, and so forth. Clearly
no single person can be an expert in all of that. Which tells us that
we need a General Counsel who is 1) ideologically-aligned with our
work, and 2) capable of effectively outsourcing specialized legal work
to others, and ensuring it gets done well, consistent with our vision,
values and goals.
How long will it take before there is a new General Counsel in place?
We’re expecting a new General Counsel would likely start work sometime
in January. It’s possible the search would take longer, and we won’t
hire anyone until we have a candidate we’re happy with. But past
searches suggest to us that we can likely expect the search to wrap up
in January, or shortly afterward.
Who will look after the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal interests in the interim?
We’re currently talking with outside counsel that we’ve worked with in
the past to establish an interim presence to help us during the
General Counsel search time frame. We should have that in place by the
end of this week.
If I get a legal complaint or have a question that in the past I would
have forwarded to Mike, where should I now be sending it?
All legal information should be submitted in the same way that you are
doing so now: any changes to the process will be handled further
downstream.
Is it dangerous, for the Wikimedia Foundation to be legally exposed
during this period?
Obviously it would be ideal for us to have a General Counsel in place
consistently, with no interruption, and we wish that Mike had been
able to agree to stay on with us during the recruitment process.
Having said that, we’ve taken steps to protect Wikimedia, and we
believe we will be well-protected in the interim period. We believe
that because 1) the Wikimedia movement in general has developed some
pretty solid legal understanding over the years, which includes robust
processes for handling legal threats and problems of various kinds.
There is a good infrastructure for handling certain types of legal
risks, that’s not entirely dependent on a General Counsel for
day-to-day operations. 2) Over the past several years, we’ve developed
good relationships with a number of lawyers with specific
subject-matter expertise that we need. Those relationships will be
helpful for us in the interim period until a new GC arrives. 3) For
the transition period, we are lining up a good generalist lawyer, who
we’ve worked with in the past, and who has agreed to be the Wikimedia
Foundation’s single-point-of-contact for support until there’s a new
General Counsel in place. And 4) Mike has agreed to be available to
the Wikimedia Foundation for advice and support, for many months to
come. So all in all, we think the risk has been acceptably mitigated.
How was this Q and A document developed?
This document was written mostly by Sue Gardner, with some help from
Cyn Skyberg. It was reviewed in detail by Mike, and he's agreed to
have it published.
Why was this Q and A document developed?
We know that whenever someone leaves the Wikimedia Foundation, there
are always lots of questions. And we know that people have sometimes
been dissatisfied with how short and uninformative our answers are. We
sympathize with people who want to know what’s going on. This Q and A
is an attempt to balance Mike’s right to privacy, against people’s
desire to understand what’s going on, particularly because Mike is in
a high-profile role, and is well-known inside the Wikimedia community.
We wouldn’t have published it without Mike’s permission.
In general, when people leave the Wikimedia Foundation, they make the
decision about how much to say, when and to whom. So you should
assume, whenever anyone leaves, that what’s being said is what they’re
comfortable with: no more, no less.
If I have additional questions that aren’t answered here, where should
I take them?
If you have questions about the General Counsel role, please feel free
to ask them in any regular forum (e.g., foundation-l, internal-l) and
Sue or someone else will get them answered.
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The September edition of Wikimedia Hungary Report is available at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Ma…
For your convenience it is copied below:
*Wikimedia Hungary Report*
*Vol 3 Issue 2*
*September 2010*
*Prepared by: Bence Damokos*
This is an update on Wikimédia Magyarország's activities covering September
2010.
Meetings Confucius Institute
On 6 September, members of Wikimedia Hungary met with the staff of the
Confucius Institute – the Chinese Studies department of Eötvös Lóránd
Science University, Budapest – to discuss a possible collaboration on
improving articles on Chinese topics in the Hungarian Wikipedia. The
discussion was focused on the Chinese related policies and guidelines and
related technical questions of the Hungarian Wikipedia community, but the
possibility of a future WikiProject-like collaboration was mentioned, as
well.
Library 2.0 meeting
On 29 September we have participated in a meeting organized as part of the
European Union funded Library 2.0 programme of the Hungarian National
Szécheny Library aimed at involving librarians in editing and improving
Wikipedia. The work of the librarians is coordinated by a project manager
chosen by the Library Institute, while we have agreed to provide support and
training in using Wikipedia, initially by setting up a WikiProject with the
list of topics related to libraries and librarianship that they will focus
on. As many of the 15-20 librarians (including students of the trade) were
new to Wikipedia, we have offered to give a workshop on editing at a
upcoming training event of the National Library in October.
Book contest
On 16 September we closed the nomination phase of our Book creation contest
(see previous report<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikim%C3%A9dia_Ma…>).
13 books have been entered on a wide range of topics (from an overview on
Hittites, through metal working and the culture of Miskolc, to a book on
Formula–1 champions), that demonstrated to us that there are a number of
fields where the Hungarian Wikpedia has a very good coverage.
Out of the 13 entrants the 5-member jury have chosen the five best (it was a
very close call) that will be improved through October and will be printed
by PediaPress for a upcoming two-day wikimeetup and Wikimedia Hungary
General Meeting in November in Veszprém.
Content donation: Dictionary of Hungarian Literature of Romania
On 10 September Wikimedia Hungary the Kriteron Publishing House (based in
Cluj-Napoca) and the Transylvanian Museum Society have signed an agreement
to release the first four volumes of the Dictionary of Hungarian Literature
of Romania (Romániai magyar irodalmi lexikon) under the Creative Commons
Attribution - Sharealike 3.0 licence so about four thousand entries on
Hungarian literature can be added to and improved in the Hungarian
Wikipedia.
We are very happy about this agreement as the dictionary has been a primary
resource for Wikipedia's articles on the Hungarian literature of Romania,
and the possibility to build on the resource rather than just cite it will
have huge benefits for presenting this field (especially, as there are few
online resources available for this topic).
Wikipedia 10 conference
Organization of the 10 years of Wikipedia
<http://konferencia.wikimedia.hu/> conference
for 15 January 2010 has been ongoing in September. Our priorities for this
month have been inviting and confirming the presenters, keynote speakers and
guest of honour of the conference.
Szilveszer E. Vizi, former president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
has agreed to open the conference as guest of honour. Frank Schulenburg, the
Head of Public Outreach of the Wikimedia Foundation will be in Hungary to
give a keynote presentation on the WMF Public Policy Initiative. The other
presenters of the conference have also accepted our invitation. We are
currently looking for one or two more people to participate in a panel
discussion on Wikipedia.
The priorities for October are promoting the conference among future
attendees, finding a suitable venue and setting up a dedicated conference
website.
Dear all,
on behalf of Wikimédia France, I am very glad to announce the opening of
public registrations for the GLAM-WIKI:Fr conference in Paris - December
3rd-4th 2010 : "Cultural heritage and Collaborative Web"
Please check the websites :
http://rencontres.wikimedia.frhttp://fr.amiando.com/rencontres_wikimedia_2010.html
The conference is featuring those wikimedians :
Adrienne Alix - Alexandre Moatti - Andrea Zanni - Beatriz Busaniche -
Benoît Evellin - David Monniaux - Erik Möller - Florence Devouard -
Gerard Meijssen - Jean-Frédéric Berthelot - Liam Wyatt - Ludovic Péron -
Mathias Schindler - Michael Dale - Michel Briand - Nicolas Vigneron -
Osmar Valdebenito - Rémi Mathis
... and +40 other great people from the cultural sector.
http://rencontres.wikimedia.fr/index.php?title=Who
Please spread the word and feel free to use the annoucement below.
Thanks!
========================================================================
Wikimedia France promotes free sharing of knowledge. This year, our
association dedicated a lot of our energy to cultural partnerships and
so did other Wikimedia associations around the world. Institutions from
the cultural sectors, associations, professional and volunteers: we have
a lot to learn from each others: let's do it live!
The /Rencontres Wikimédia 2010/ conference aims at gathering as many
cultural actors as possible to discuss online collaborative practices
and new opportunities to take free access to culture a step further.
The event takes place at 101 rue de l'Université, Paris (Victor Hugo's
conference room) on the *3rd and 4th of December 2010*.
Detailed schedule:
<http://rencontres.wikimedia.fr/index.php?title=Programme/en>
List of speakers:
<http://rencontres.wikimedia.fr/index.php?title=Who>
Free registration:
<http://fr.amiando.com/rencontres_wikimedia_2010.html>
The /Rencontres Wikimedia 2010/ are part of the GLAM-WIKI series:
Wikimedia UK is organizing the GLAM-WIKI:Uk event at the British
Museum in November 26th/27th -- read more: http://glamwiki.org
========================================================================
--
Bastien
It is my pleasure to welcome Mani Pande to the Wikimedia team.
Mani joins as the Senior Research Analyst, Global Development. In this
role, Mani will work across the Global Development team and the
organization as a whole to design and lead research work that helps us
make good strategic decisions and evaluate the results of the work that
we do (to make even better decisions). In addition, Mani will help to
design and deploy metrics for key Global Development areas so that we
can monitor our performance against the strategic plan.
A native of New Delhi, Mani brings a global perspective to our work. Her
passion lies in understanding how consumers use technology to map
opportunity spaces for new product strategies and industry growth. She
has a special interest in the transformative technology experiences
brought about through the use of mobile devices by emerging market
consumers. She has also extensively studied the growth of open source
movement.
Mani is an accomplished quantitative researcher & has conducted surveys
studying technology usage, sustainability and health in US, India and
China. Mani is an experienced ethnographer having conducted work in
India, Brazil, Russia and China on technology usage and studying women
in the software industry. Mani worked for the Institute for the Future,
a forecasting research organization based in Palo Alto, for over 5
years. She has a PhD in Sociology from Kansas State University and an MA
and MPhil in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Before moving to the US to pursue her PhD, Mani worked as a
reporter-cum-sub-editor for The Times of India. Her beats were media
(favorite assignments covering a Cindy Crawford press conference &
Yanni's show at the Taj Mahal) & crime (no favorites here, just saw a
lot of gross stuff).
Mani loves to cook. Her specialties, Thai red curry, enchiladas in mole
sauce (from scratch) & chicken biryani. She posts pics of food that she
cooks on Twitter. You can see some of the pics (@manipande on Twitter).
Welcome Mani!
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 634
Skype: barry.wikimedia
Twitter: @bazanews
To the full report:
http://www.wikimedia.org.il/Reports_-_March-September_2010
(Hebrew version:
http://www.wikimedia.org.il/%D7%93%D7%95%D7%97_-_%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%A5_%D7%A1%…
)
Membership and Meetings*Membership *
At the end of 2009 there were 21 members
Since the beginning of 2010, nine members have joined the chapter.
*General Assembly*
On 24 June 2010, Wikimedia Israel held its annual general assembly in Tel
Aviv. The meeting included elections to the executive board. Mr. Shay Yakir
was reelected Chairperson of the Board. Two acting board members, Mr. Idan
Dorfman and Mr. Asaf Bartov, were reelected for another term. Two new board
members, Mr. Tomer Ashur and Mr. Rotem Simcha, were elected, filling in for
former board members who had resigned or had not presented their candidacy
for reelection. Mr. Tomer Ashur was appointed treasurer.
At the meeting, the Audit Committee, consisting of Mr. Harel Cain and Prof.
Uzi Vishne, presented its findings and recommendations to the assembly. The
Audit Committee also approved the financial reports for the year 2009
(calendar year).
Financial report and Budget *Financial Report 2009*
At the end of 2008, the total assets of the chapter were: ILS 7,082.80
(equals to USD 1,898 or EUR
1,453)[1]<http://www.wikimedia.org.il/Reports_-_March-September_2010#cite_note-forex-0>
Of the aforementioned amount, ILS 6,076 (85.8%) came through donations to
the chapter.
At the end of 2009 the total assets of the chapter were: ILS 73,479 (USD
19,694 or EUR 15,213)[1]<http://www.wikimedia.org.il/Reports_-_March-September_2010#cite_note-forex-0>.
Of the aforementioned amount, ILS 70,204 (95.5%) came through donations to
the chapter.
Projects Wikimania 2011
The chapter volunteers are hard at work preparing Wikimania 2011 which will
be held in Haifa. Negotiation took place with all hotels at the conference
area obtaining large discounts for attendees. Chapter members are also
working to obtain scholarships for the event. The registration site is
expected to be up and running by 1st January 2011.
Most of the relevant information has already been entered to the official
website of the conference: http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org
Supporting legislation that promotes free content availability
Following lobbying by the chapter members, on 26th May the Knesset (the
Israeli Parliament) members voted 21 in favor and zero against a bill
drafted by MK Meir Sheetrit, i.e. unanimously supported the proposed
amendment to the copyright Law making state and IDF-owned photographs free
for use by the public. This vote in called a "preliminary reading" and is
the first of four votes needed. The proposal was then passes to the Science
and Technology committee of the Knesset, where it will be formalized,
amended, and then passed back to the general assembly for voting into law.
Chapter members have met with the Technology committee and with the Ministry
of Justice in order to better the wordings of the Law.
The Wikipedia Academy Israel conferenceThe Wikipedia Academy Israel
conference is a professional conference about the assimilation of Wikipedia
in the educational system and the academic sector, promoting the free
content idea in Israel, using organizational Wiki systems, and other similar
subjects. The conference is intended to host hundreds of people from the
fields of information handling, teachers, lecturers, students, and of
course, the general public. The first conference was held on the 3rd of May,
2009.
The second annual conference
<http://www.wikimedia.org.il/Wiki_Academy_2010>took place on 14th June
2010 at the Tel Aviv University. More than 230
people attended the conference. 20 Academia's gave academic lectures. The
keynote speakers were Mr. Samuel J Klein, Member of the Board of the
Wikimedia Foundation, Director of Outreach of the One Laptop per Child
Project in the United States, and Prof. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Director
of the Information and Innovation Policy Research Center at the National
University of Singapore*, Author of "Delete" - On the Virtue of Forgetting
Information in the Digital Age.*
The conference was organized by Wikimedia Israel in collaboration with the
School of Communication at the Netanya Academic College
<http://www.netanya.ac.il/content/_ArticlesLang/Article.asp?CategoryID=179&A…>and
the University
of Haifa <http://www.haifa.ac.il/>, and through the sponsorship of The
Netvision Institute <http://www.niis.tau.ac.il/>, the Tel Aviv University
Student Union <http://www.student.co.il/?CategoryID=643> and the Sagy Center
for the Study of the Internet located at the Haifa University.
The next academy will take place as part of Wikimania 2011.
Africa Center Project
As part of the annual delegation sent by the Institute of African Studies in
the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Wikimedia Israel, in partnership
with Amutat Hamakor, initiated a shipment of Linux-installed computers
including a static version of the French Wikipedia to Cameroon and Benin.
Wikimedia Israel collaborated with members of Wikimedia Switzerland and
Wikimedia France to produce an up-to-date static version of the French
Wikipedia (numbering about 1 million entries, and including images), French
being a major language of reading and writing in Cameroon and Benin.
The students also have portable installations of the offline Wikipedia, so
that they may install it on any other computers they may run across in
Africa and they have received training on using Linux and Kiwix, the offline
Wikipedia reader (free) software, so they may train others to use the
computers.
Incidentally, the Linux version installed on those computers is called
Ubuntu Linux, 'Ubuntu' being an African word (in the Zulu language) roughly
translatable as "unity of mankind" or "mutual reliance".
Supporting and promoting the distribution of free knowledge in developing
countries is one of the five major goals identified by the Wikimedia
Foundation as central to its five-year strategy plan, developed by thousands
of members of the Wikimedia Movement.
Lectures and Collaborations
Members of the chapter gave lectures about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects
to several companies and groups in order to promote new writers to join
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project.
- A lecture about Wikipedia as crowd-sourcing was given by Asaf Bartov
and Dror Kamir at the Israeli Translators Association conference in
Jerusalem, on 9 February.
- A lecture about reading and editing Wikipedia and about the Free
Software and Free Culture movements was given by Amir Aharoni to the in the
Tel-Aviv branch of the youth movement Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed on the 30
April.
- A lecture about Hebrew Wikipedia was given by Amit Avidan and Dror
Kamir to members of the "Shiluvim" students and alumni association, on 5
May.
- A lecture about Wikipedia was given by Amir Aharoni to members of the
Academy of the Hebrew Language, on 23 June.
- A lecture about Hebrew Wikipedia was given by Harel Cain to employees
of Amdocs, a large hi-tech company, on 3 August.
- A lecture about Hebrew Wikipedia was given by David Shay to the
communications students of Tel Aviv University, on 28 July.
- A lecture about the Hebrew Wikipedia, the Israeli Wikimedia community
and the outreach to Israeli Academics was given by Amir Aharoni at the New
York City Wiki Meetup on 29 August.
- A lecture about Wikimedia Israel -- successes and challenges -- was
given (via video-conference) by Asaf Bartov to the Bangalore (India)
Wiki-Meetup on 12 September.
- A lecture about Hebrew Wikipedia was given by Asaf Bartov to employees
of OpTier Ltd., a software company, on 21 September.
A new project with the Israeli Library Association aiming to promote
collaboration between librarians and writers in Wikipedia has been agreed
upon, and the Association now encourages libraries to collaborate with the
chapter in hosting lectures about Wikipedia to be held in libraries for
librarians and for the general public.
Elef Milim
The Elef Milim Project brings together Wikipedians for fun educational
activity aiming at enriching the free image repository with pictures of
sites, buildings and landscape in Israel. It is a series of field-trips to
different sites in Israel, organized and guided by those Wikipedians who are
experienced in tourist guiding, history and/or geography.
In Hebrew Elef Milim can be translated as "a thousand words" - a reference
to the proverb a Picture is worth a thousand words - or as "a thousand
miles" - a reference to a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single
step.
In total 33 tours took place as part of this project. At the relevant time
period of this report, the following tours took place:
- The 27th field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Acco>took
place on 5th March 2010, to the Old City of Akko. The tour guide was
one of the city councilwomen and a local resident of the old city, who
introduced to us the residents of the old city.
- The 28th field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Herodion>took
place on 9th April 2010, to the mountain desert fortress of Herodion
built by king Herod the Great near Bethlehem south of Jerusalem.
- The 29th field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Nahariyya>took
place on Firday, 7th May 2010, to the northern city of Nahariya.
- The 30th field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Muslim_Quarter>took
place on Tuesday 18th May 2010, to the Muslim Quarter in the Old City
of Jerusalem.
- The 31st field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Ramat_Rachel>took
place on Friday 11th June 2010, to the Kibbutz of Ramat Rachel near
Jerusalem. During the tour we visited the Kibbutz, heard about the
discoveries in the archeological site were a large palace from the First
Temple period has been discovered, and unriddled the odd discoveries there.
We also saw various sculptures such as the Olive Columns by the artist Ran
Morin, and have met with the artist.
- The 32nd field-trip of Elef Millim
project<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Elef_Milim_-_Yagur>took
place on Friday 6th August 2010, to the Kibbutz of Yagur near Haifa.
International Wikimedia Chapters Conference
In March 2010 two delegates from Wikimedia Israel, Itzik Edri and Asaf
Bartov, participated in the International Wikimedia Chapters Conference,
held in Berlin, Germany. The 3-day conference was attended by delegates from
more than 20 Wikimedia chapters worldwide, and consisted of knowledge- and
experience-sharing, working groups, and focused discussions on particular
issues, such as institutional partnerships, fundraising, and outreach.
The Israeli delegates participated in the Communications and Developing
World working groups. In the communications working group, Itzik shared his
experience both as Wikimedia Israel spokesman and as a professional media
expert in his day job. Asaf undertook to summarize and present the results
of the Developing World working group's discussions (A Proposed Agenda for
Wikimedia in Developing
Nations<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/2/24/Proposed_Agenda_for_Wikimed…>),
and has proceeded to recruit volunteers and coordinate the creation of a
dedicated Wikimedia mailing list for discussing Growing Wikimedia in
Developing Nations<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/devnations-l>.
Other Projects
- The Piki Wiki
Project<http://www.wikimedia.org.il/Free_image_collection_project>
- The Hebrew Wikipedia mobile poster
exhibition<http://www.wikimedia.org.il/The_Hebrew_Wikipedia_mobile_poster_exhibition>
Dear colleagues,
As usual, we are sharing our experiences with you. This time we are sending a summary of our activities throughout the months of August and September. Sorry for the delay and we hope you like them.
Kind regards,
J. Gustavo Góngora-Goloubintseff (User:Góngora)
Courses and conferences
*We organized a workshop on bots for Wikipedia. It combined distance learning with a conference, which was on 18 September at the Centre Cultural Can Fabra in Barcelona as part of Software Freedom Day. This initiative is the result of the creation of the Coordinator for the knowledge and free software. Joancreus, Puigalder.
*On 22 September began the period of registration for Viquibalear.
Release of contents
*We have started to use released contents from Termcat. Our colleague Simonjoan has imported a Drug List.
*The Torrents Ibern Foundation agrees to release the thematic dictionaries that has already released. The next ones will be made under the condition that the license be free. It is scheduled to go next year and they are dictionaries of physics and chemistry. As for the dictionaries that have already been released, we will talk to the authors and publishers asking them to be released. We will keep you informed. User:Gomà.
*On September 13 we met Salvador Giner, president of the Institute of Catalan Studies. Amongst other things we asked for the release of thematic dictionaries and if possible the Dictionary of the Catalan language of the ISC. We need to study the details but the president is in favor of releasing all whenever possible. We will continue reporting. User:Barcelona.
Media
*We issued a press release announcing the awards given by the British Museum, two of which were to articles from Catalan Wikipedia. This was published by Racó Català, Directe, La tafanera, Tribuna, L'observador. User:Ssola.
*After having overcome the Norwegian Wikipedia in number of articles, on August 21 we had an email interview for TV3 from which they made an entry in the news. They were echoed by the media. Crònica, Racó Català.
*After coming back from holidays, we have resumed the project with TV3 "Internet Space" (Espai Internet). The articles we have worked on are 'The Seven Wonders of the World' and the biography of Rafael Casanova, which has received 1,400 visits just in one day (September 11), twice last year on the same date.
Relationship with entities
*On September 21 we attended the assembly of the Coordinator for the knowledge and free software. We agreed to share among all entities: Value provider merchandasing products, contacts for local activities to do, Relationship of contacts with the media. The data will be kept private at the site but if you need something please just ask Wikipedia access. User:Toniher
*On September 27 we met Francesc Vallverdú from the Institute of Catalan Studies. We asked the experts from the subsidiaries if they could make a periodic review of the quality of Wikipedia articles concerning both language and content. We also discussed how we can encourage members from the Institute to contribute to Wikipedia. They have over 5,000 active members and he will talk to the presidents of the various subsidiaries to promote these initiatives.
Miscellaneous
*On August 13 we were touched by the news of the death of our colleague Jordi Coll Costa. Master of many wikipedians, we always showed our respect and gratefulness for his support and care to everyone. With more than 130,000 editions on Catalan Wikipedia, he was the one who had done more editions. The association awarded him with a silver plate from Wikipedia in April 2010. A delegation attended the funeral in Figueres.
*On October 23 we will celebrate the Wikipedians annual meeting. Following the tradition, we do it in the Capital of Catalan Culture this year, which corresponds to Badalona. (Next year the capital of Catalan culture will be Escaldes-Engordany in Andorra, the city where the first article of the Catalan Wikipedia was written about 10 years ago). The association has prepared all the documentation to book the place for the meeting. It has also contributed with € 300 to funds in order to help reduce travel costs of Wikipedians who come from far away.
*A student of Telecommunication Engineering and Humanities has begun, with the support of the association, a Degree-final project to study the motivations of editing on Wikipedia. We expect to have very interesting results in a few months.
*The association has decided to award a scholarship to User:Kippelboy to travel and attend GLAM Wiki 2010, organized by Wikimedia UK and the British Museum. Kippelboy is already in contact with a number of museums here in order to adapt the experience of the British Museum, he has also started with a project to try to collaborate with the CCCB.
*We have contributed to the preparation of the Free Culture Forum to be held in Barcelona from 28 to 31 October. This year it will focus on economic sustainability of free knowledge. Saturday evening we will prepare a post for reflection on the experience of Wikipedia. Lilaroja.
*The Mozilla Drumbeat Festival organization to be held in November is progressing well and it is expected to be a success. There will be plenty of activities related to Wikipedia and its sister projects. Esenabre, Toniher, Barcelona, Sj.
*Throughout August two requests for aid and support were presented at the PuntCAT Foundation. One of them was presented for 3 activities: Financing participation in the 'Viquiescoles' project (enlargement of the Viquibalear project) outside schools from Balearic Islands, creating a network of contact points in different counties and developing bots and software to allow maintenance and editing. The other one was presented by the Center for Regional Studies of Baix Llobregat; the aim is to develop a local wiki that is not a fork of Wikipedia; the encyclopedic articles will remain on Wikipedia while local articles that do not have enough relevance to be on Wikipedia will be placed in a complementary database. Within the project, the content creation will be favored and we will also provide material for the Center. We expect a resolution in late October. User:Gomà
*In late August we reached a consensus in the community to activate the 'Amical-bot' for the creation of articles on U.S. towns. The bot has collected the experiences from the projects in English, Portuguese and Dutch and has added some improvements. The results can easily be seen in articles such as Hill 'n Dale.
*Our colleague Lilaroja was one of the participants on a video about usernames.
For further information, see the original version in Catalan.
Hello all,
please find below the August 2010 report of the Wikimedia Foundation.
If you're so inclined, you can help us improve the wiki version, which
has nicer formatting, too:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_August_2010
All best,
Erik
== Highlights ==
*Usability improvements deployed to all remaining wikis
*[[Google Summer of Code]] participation completed with 6 projects
*Public Policy Initiative ramped up with training in Washington, DC
and the first advisory board meeting
== Data and Trends ==
:The monthly report card for August 2010 can be found at:<br/>
:http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_08_detailed.html
:Global unique visitors:
:373 million (+3.7% compared to previous month / + 21.4% compared to
previous year)
:Page requests:
:13.4 billion (-1% compared to previous month / + 23.9% compared to
previous year)
We experienced an unusually large drop in traffic during the summer. A
seasonal drop is to be expected, but there's no full explanation for
the magnitude of the drop; one hypothesis is that the 2010 World Cup
in South Africa drew a significant amount of attention from Wikipedia
and other highly multilingual websites. Beginning in August, we've
started to return to earlier traffic levels.
The following changes were made for the August 2010 report card:
* The content section now summarizes each project (Wikipedia,
Wikimedia Commons, etc.) as a line, as opposed to the more granular
project/language view (English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, etc.). The
default view shows a normalized growth line for each project,
indicating that Wikimedia Commons is currently our fastest growing
project in terms of content.
* The "active editors" section now no longer counts Wikimedia Commons
contributors, due to the significant number of users who are active on
a primary project like Wikipedia and who use Wikimedia Commons as a
support project. This leads to a slightly reduced total count.
Generally, the "active editors" count has always double-counted users
who are active on more than one project in a given month -- this is
expected to be fixed later this year.
See the synopsis page at
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_08_synopsis.html
for more trends and notes.
== Financials ==
:Operating revenue for August: USD 131K vs. plan of USD 210K
:Operating expenses August: USD 0.9MM vs. plan of USD 1.4MM
:Operating revenue for year-to-date August: USD 273K vs. plan of USD 398K
:Operating expenses for year-to-date August: USD 2.2MM vs. plan of USD 3.0MM.
:Unrestricted cash on hand as of the end of September: USD 9.0 MM
Revenue is under for the month and year-to-date primarily from
unrestricted revenue; additionally, revenue related to mobile (Orange)
has not been recorded pending finalization of contract re-negotiation
with Orange.
Expenses are under for the month and year-to-date due to:
* Capital expenditures and internet hosting (budgeted evenly over the
year but will start lower and increase as the additional data center
is built out and hosting costs increase)
* Salaries, taxes and benefits due primarily to hiring delays and
underspending in staff development
* Professional services including outside contract services
This underspending is partially offset by overage in grants and awards
due to grant to Wikimania Poland and sponsorship of WikiSym Poland and
Wikimania scholarships.
== Strategic Planning ==
During August, the Wikimedia Foundation began distilling the material
on the strategy wiki into a high-level document that could easily be
shared with Wikimedia partners and supporters. To that end, Jay Walsh
hired a writer to begin developing a first draft. The draft document
will be vetted and refined over the next several months, and then
presented to the Board of Trustees for approval in October. The final
outstanding piece of substantive work before the document can be
finalized, is the development of a small number of high-level targets
for the Wikimedia movement, to be achieved by 2015. The development of
the targets has been done on the strategy wiki to date: that work will
be supplemented and carried forward with an informal survey of Board
members, staff members and community members, the results of which
will be shared with the Board, and will influence our approach to
target-setting, as well as the final metrics. The targets are expected
to be approved by the Board by October 2010, and will then be folded
into the final strategy document.
== Technology ==
See http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/10/october-2010-wmf-engineering-update/
for the most recent Wikimedia Foundation engineering update, and see
individual project pages on MediaWiki.org for details.
'''Personnel:'''
* In August, we hired a new operations engineer, Ryan Lane.
* Six WMF engineers attended OSCON, the largest open source conference
in the US, on passes donated by O'Reilly. We were formally asked there
to submit content for two other O'Reilly conferences: a new conference
on Data and one called "Tools of Change" about alternative
publishing/distribution of knowledge
'''Operations:'''
* Planning work on Data Center continued: We made a second visit to
Ashburn, VA for final inspection of co-location facilities and Q&A
before final bids are submitted. This was also a chance for our
employee Rob Halsell, who will be moving to Virginia to support the
new Data Center, to check out local housing.
* The Ops Team started using an open source tool called RequestTracker
to track all Ops related issues including CapEx bids & purchases and
Ops work to be done. http://bestpractical.com/rt/
* There was a global 1-hour editing outage relating to saturation of a
database server cluster that was remedied by rebalancing the load on
that cluster. Viewing pages was unaffected.
* We negotiated a deal for a two-year gratis license to use
Watchmouse, monitoring software that will help us validate our
performance in specific geographies. http://www.watchmouse.com/en/
'''Features:'''
* Development of the fundraiser systems continued, including
preliminary implementation of GeoIP lookup (to match donors to
location).
* The final Phase V rollout of the Vector skin (aka the UX project)
was completed on all remaining wikis.
* Work on the new Article Assessment feature pilot (in support of
Public Policy Initiative) began.
'''General Engineering:'''
* We had a first meeting with Peter Adams, creator of Open Web
Analytics http://www.openwebanalytics.com/. OWA is an open source
platform for collecting data which we hope to extend to handle our
traffic load. Initially we will test using the Fundraiser activity
since we already gather data for it. We'll need to hold a "Data
Summit" to socialize the idea of collecting more data to support
better design of new features. We are also conducting testing on
Piwik, a complementary project.
* Planning for the Data Summit began. It will probably take place in
November - but will be an invitational meeting to keep numbers
manageable.
* Development of monthly public posting about all Tech projects began.
September was first post.
'''Labs:'''
* We watched a demo by Microsoft Research engineers about WikiBabel
(recently renamed WikiBasha), an interface for human editing of
machine translations of Wikipedia content. They are interested in
making a future open source release of this code. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kit_Lywait/WikiBasha
* We met with Wikia staff about investigating their Rich Text
Editingcode for possible use in WMF projects.
'''Outreach:'''
* We met with Greg DeKoenigsberg, formerly of RedHat's Fedora project,
about the joys and perils of wrangling communities.
* We concluded this year's Summer of Code participation with 6
projects out of 6 successfully completed. Three of our mentors will
attend the "Mentor Summit" in October in Mountain View (Google will
fund their travel). Details:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/08/gsoc-conclusion/
* We began work on expanding and hardening a Virtualization Test
Server cluster. This system, when completed, will allow us to set
upsafe "sandbox" areas for volunteer developers as well as for
specific feature development teams. This work is an expansion of work
previously done for sole use of UX project.
* We accepted code from researcher Andrew West as part of an English
Wikipedia Arbitration Committee decision against his unauthorized spam
experiments on Wikipedia.
== Global Development ==
The Global Development team continued to work on the formation of the
team during August. We launched searches for key positions including
Senior Research Analyst and Chapter Development Director, and we hired
Egon Zehnder's India office to support our search for a National
Program Director in India. (Note: the Senior Research Analyst position
was filled in early October.)
On the business development side, we are in the initial stages of
increasing focus on mobile and offline partnerships. Unfortunately, a
partnership to strengthen our offline capabilities fell through in
August; however, we are preparing an RFP with our technology
colleagues focused on adding to the software available to the
community for offline projects. We will soon be initiating planning
around the WMF's offline work in support of the active work ongoing
within the community. We think there are some big opportunities to
extend our reach via offline copies of Wikimedia content. As we begin
to explore the work, we see offline versions as a support for both
people who have no internet access AND people who might have
intermittent access OR have to pay for access on a per use basis. More
to come.
We are working on partnerships to support the work of our technology
operations team on the data center project - more soon on this front.
Our chapter relations benefited from a visit to San Francisco by our
colleagues from the German chapter. We also continued work with
chapters seeking grants for their activities. See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
Moka Pantages was promoted to Global Communications Manager as part
ofa shift in our Communications work toward a more "Global" approach
to our communications work. Moka's role will be to enable us to
coordinate media and other communications in support of our Global
Development work as a movement. One key initiative is to broaden the
ComCom to encompass more geographic diversity and continue to
strengthen the cadre of community members working on media and
communications in support of the movement.
The Wikimedia Blog highlighted a Hungarian/Serbian Wikicamping trip
and the "Wiki Loves Monuments" competition by Wikimedia Nederland.
See: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/
== Communications ==
During August, Wikimedia spoke with the following media outlets:
Newsday (New York, NY), the Wikipedia Signpost, the New York Times
(New York, NY), WGBH (Boston, MA), Information Week (San Francisco,
CA), Corporate Counsel Magazine (New York, NY), Newsweek (New York,
NY), Newsday (New York, NY), Washington Internet Daily (Washington,
DC), Philanthropy 2173.com (San Francisco, CA), the National Post
(Toronto, ON), TheWikipedian.net, Opera Mundi (Sao Paolo, Brazil), the
BBC World Service (London, UK), Team Magazine (London, UK), Politico
(Washington, DC), CNET (San Francisco, CA), TVA (Montreal, QC), the
Washington Post (Washington, DC), Davis Enterprise (Davis, CA),
Pressan (Iceland), CNN (Washington, DC), CBC Montreal (Montreal, QC),
CNN Global Connections (London, UK), The Independent (London, UK),
Ciudad X (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Inside Higher Education
(Washington, DC), the Economist (New York, NY), Buzzmachine.com (New
York, NY), the Guardian (London, UK). See:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact
Communications provided support to the highly visible Public Policy
Initiative, which launched in August. Alongside the initiative,
Communications continues to support the creative operations around
public outreach's 'Bookshelf initiative.'
In August we commenced planning for two new Communications positions,
a movement communications officer and a global director of
merchandising and product.
Also in August we kicked off the writing and design management of the
WMF 5 year strategic plan and the Foundation's 09/10 Annual report.
Major issues and media-interest topics:
FBI Challenges Wikipedia on use of FBI shield (August 3) -
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03fbi.html
Please also see the detailed weekly news summaries by the Wikipedia Signpost:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-08-02
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-08-09
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-08-16
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-08-23
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2010-08-30
== Community Department ==
'''Fundraising:'''
The Fundraising team built a network of community participants
representing many languages and projects who took on increasing
responsibility for driving this year's fundraiser. Volunteers are
engaged directly in the creation of messaging and testing strategy. A
large collection of fundraising banners were suggested by the
community and began to be tested live during weekly, one-hour tests.
The team also worked with technology staff to build out needed
infrastructure to support this year's larger finanicial goals.
Foundations and Partnerships staff submitted to the Hewlett Foundation
both a report that closed out our most recent grant, and a proposal
for future funding.
Major Gifts staff worked to design an experiment to test whether
improved stewardship of our $250-$1000 donors can result in
significantly increased support.
'''Public Policy Initiative:'''
The PPI team held its first Wikipedia Campus Ambassador training at
George Washington University in Washington, DC. Wikipedia Ambassadors
are volunteers that support new editors (either online or on campus).
Topics covered included Wikipedia editing skills, presentation skills
and classroom management. The program is experimenting with different
types of ambassadors, such as librarians, Wikipedians, students,
teaching/learning depts at universities. The Initiative hosted its
first Advisory Board meeting in San Francisco. (Attendees listed in
the Vistors section below.)
Public Outreach staff completed a welcome brochure and other printed
materials -- all available as open source DTP Scibus files. They also
launched Wikipedia on Campus on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/WikipediaOnCampus
'''Community Department Fellowship:'''
The Community Department developed a "Fellowship" program with the
intention of creating a space at the Foundation for leading
Wikimedians and outside experts to research problems and seize
opportunities for the Wikimedia movement. As a small pilot, we hosted
Wikimedians Steven Walling (Portland, USA) and Damian Finol (Caracas,
Venezuela) to work on a "Contributor Taxonomy" research project.
== Controversial Content Study ==
During August, the Wikimedia Foundation continued work on the
Controversial Content Study. In June, the Board had asked the ED to
commission a study with the goal of figuring out what --if anything--
to do about controversial material in the projects. Sue hired Robert
Harris and Dory Carr-Harris to conduct the study, and they spent July
and August investigating: speaking with Board and some Advisory Board
members; reading thousands of wiki pages of policy and discussion;
having e-mail exchanges, Skype calls and wiki discussions with
community members; finding and reading dozens of research papers [1]
about how governments, industry organizations, technology companies
and parents grapple with these issues; and interviewing experts
including people from large websites, and interest groups on all sides
of the issue. They have not done any primary research: this terrain is
fairly well-studied, and they were able to find lots of relevant
material. Robert and Dory will continue their work for two more
months, whereupon their recommendations will be presented to the Board
of Trustees at its October meeting.
[1] Specifically, literature
gathered and reviewed included examination of cultural attitudes,
regulation and/or filtering practices in over 70 countries including:
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India,
Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, the United
Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
== Administration ==
The 2009-10 fiscal year audit work started in August (the audit field
work was completed at the end of September and the audit committee
will review/approve the audit report in late October).
A ticketing system has been implemented for use by staff who have IT
Support needs/ requests-later this system will be expanded to include
requests/needs for help with other administrative tasks. The office
internet speed has been greatly improved and is now 20x faster than
before.
The interview process started for various new admin support positions.
== Human Resources ==
In August we added 1 permanent hire (Ryan Lane, Operations Engineer)
and 5 temporary employees who will be working on the Fundraiser as
Community Associates (Deniz Gultekin, Steven Ma, James Alexander,
Keegan Peterzell and Alex Zariv). Systems Administrator Fred Vassard
resigned from his position with Wikimedia.
In addition, the Human Resources department began sharing data on
staff and contractor comings and goings via social media at
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork and
http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork.
:Total Employee Count:
:Plan: 57, Actual: 54
== Fundraising, Grants, and Partnerships ==
During August, the Wikimedia Foundation received 887 donations, with a
combined total value of USD 41,623. Year to date, the Foundation has
raised USD 105,915 in donations.
== Visitors and Guests ==
*Pavel Richter, Wikimedia Germany
*Sebastian Moleski, Wikimedia Germany
*Till Mletzko, Wikimedia Germany
*Steven Walling, Wikimedian
*Damion Finol, Wikimedian
*Gebruiker:Ciell, Wikimedian
*Victor Vasiliev, Wikimedian
*Thomas De Souza Buckup, Wikimedian
*[[Mimi Ito]], Advisory Board member
*[[James Gosling]]
*[[Timothy Garton Ash]]
*Laura Hill
*Microsoft Research India / WikiBasha team
*Tim Vollmer, Creative Commons
*Jana Hughes, University of Portland, State center for Women,
Politics, and Policy
*20 US State Department Fellowship recipients from Iraq, Lebanon,
Palestine and Iraq visited to share their perspectives on Wikimedia in
the Middle East
*PPI Advisory Board members: Robert Cummings, Mary Graham, Barry
Rubin, Rod Schneider, Wayne Mackintosh
*Bugzilla User Group attendees (August 4)
Hello,
One of Wikimedia Sverige's biggest commitments every year is the
Gothenburg book fair
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair), where roughly 100
000 authors, librarians, publishers and the public come together for
four days. This year the theme was African literature, with lots of
African authors and publishers, organized by the Nordic Africa Institute
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Africa_Institute), a part of
Uppsala university.
Lars Aronsson, from Wikimedia Sverige, talked to NAI about their book
fair catalogue "Afrika har ordet"/"Africa speaks", where they presented
65 African authors. He asked them if they would consider releasing the
catalogue under a free license. The director Carin Norberg agreed to put
the text as CC-BY-SA, which makes it compatible with Wikipedia. The
images, unfortunally, could not be released, but Wikimedia Sverige took
more than 300 images during the book fair
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:G%C3%B6teborg_Book_Fair_2010
), so some of the authors have been covered by us. For instance the
South African artist Zapiro,
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Shapiro
A list of the 65 authors can be found here:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall:Afrika_har_ordet_2010
Hopefully these biographies will serve as an inspiration for other
language versions to write about these authors as well.
And on a even more positive note: The NAI have talked about taking
photos of their own and releasing them under a free license. Let's hope
that they do.
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost:
l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
----
Forwarded by Jan Ainali
Wikimedia Sverige
with apologies for the delay.
Wiki Loves Monuments
In August, much work was done on Wiki loves Monuments. The project website
was expanded, explanations and instructions were added etc. Lessons were
taken from past similar events. A simplified Commons upload form, with many
fields having a fixed value due to the nature of the contest, so that also
non-Wikimedians can use it. Also a Flickr group has been created to lower
the participation threashold for Flickr users. Effort has been put into
getting the word out (approaching local newspapers, sending out a press
release etc), and it seems that the cultural heritage organizations are
picking it up with enthusiasm. Read more on the contest in this WMF blog
post:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/08/29/a-monument-month-for-wikimedia-ne…
Geograph
Geograph Britain and Ireland is a web-based project, initiated in March
2005, to create a freely accessible archive of geographically located
photographs of Great Britain and Ireland. With the help of a mini-grant
through the mini grant project, Wikimedia Nederland was able to help in the
uploading process of the 1.8 million free images to Wikimedia Commons by
Multichill. For more info, see the Commons page:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geograph_Britain_and_Ireland .
Nationaal Archief
Nationaal Archief and Spaarnestad will be donating more than 1000 relevant
press photos from the ANEFO collection for use on Wikipedia. These photos
are from politicians and historically relevant events after World War II
which currently lack an image. The donation will occur at September 13 in
major Dutch political press center, Nieuwspoort. See
http://wikipedia.eventbrite.com/ for more information (in Dutch).
Wikimeets
A tradition has been started in August, the first Stamtafel was held in
Utrecht. In Germany they are already familiar with this concept, under the
name "Stammtisch" and it seems the concept gets popular here too. In a few
months we will know more about how popular exactly. But for now, every first
Wednesday of an evenly numbered month there will be a Stamtafel in Utrecht.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten
Meetings, conferences etc.
Lodewijk participated the Round Table discussion on e-culture at Kennisland,
which was a preparatory meeting for their conference in October, and had a
meeting in Amsterdam with Philippe Beaudette on the 2010/2011 fundraiser and
how Wikimedia Nederland can participate in that.
Coming Up:
- 1 - 30 September: Wiki Loves Monuments
- 4 September: Annual Summer Barbecue
- 13 September: Release Nationaal Archief
- 6 October: Stamtafel Utrecht
- 9 October: General Assemblee