WikimediaAnnounce-l February 2011

wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org

11 participants
18 discussions

Chapters report WMSE January 2011
by Jan Ainali 28 Feb '11

28 Feb '11

This is the chapters report for Wikimedia Sverige, January 2011. == WP10 == We had two great events. One at Thursday evening where we had a debate and one in Saturday, day time, where we served cake, gave talks, had Q&A and showed Truth in numbers and other video clips. Images here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_10_Sweden 31 mentions in the media! Several board members interviewed on the radio and TV and some Wikipedians featured in newspapers. http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_i_media&oldid… == Photo hunt == We arranged a photo hunt in the midst of Sweden. Not all images are uploaded yet but they will be in this category on commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikisafari,_Leksand_2011 == Accreditation of a photographer == The president of Estonia visited Sweden and pictures are here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:January_18-20,_2011_Toomas_Hendr… ==Saving Mount Everest== We were invited to the Swedish launch of this project and managed to take these pictures of some mountaineers: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Saving_Mount_Everest,_Swedish_la… == Planning meeting == The board had a yearly planning meeting, this time hosted by the Nordic museum. Jan Ainali Secretary Wikimedia Sverige

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Chapter report Wikimedia Czech Republic, January 2011
by Juan de Vojníkov 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

Dear Wikimedians, I can see <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports#Wikimedia_Czech_Republic>, that we haven't reported about our activities and state for a very long time. It is probably due to the fact that writing a good report is hard, as reported by Eric Moeller (in *[Internal-l] Chapters Reporting --Sustainability*). Today I am coming with January 2011 report and I hope, I will be able to prepare it every month. Maybe during 2011's spring, we will offer you our Annual report for 2010, which may fill up the gap between the last report<http://www.wikimedia.cz/web/Report_March_-_June_2009>and this report. Regards, Jan Lochman (Juan de Vojníkov) Wikimedia Czech Republic chair ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- == WMCZ Report (January 2011) == === General Assembly === January 8, 2011 an early General Assembly (GA) was held in the registered place of Wikimedia Czech Republic in Prague. It was caused by the decline of the number of Board (B) members under 3, when internal rules calls for an extraordinary GA to call to order within 60 days. 18 of 29 members where counted on this event on the beginning. Two people from WMDE as observers, were invited by former Board. During this assembly all former B members resigned (2 of 2) and the same for the auditor (1 of 1). Thus the new B members and Auditing Committee (AC), where elected. There are mostly new faces to both organs. New Board members are (4 from 5, while this can be variable): *Jan Lochman (user:Juan de Vojníkov, chair) *Jiří Ohlídal (user:Jirka O., vice-chair) *Milda (B member 2009/2010, AC member 2010/2011) *Frettie *5th position left empty New Auditing Committee members are (2 of 3): *Krvesaj (chair) *Zákupák *3rd position left empty On this GA changes to actual bylaws and other internal documents were made. GA agreed Annual Report 2010, Annual Report from the Auditor 2010, Annual action plan 2011 and Annual financial plan 2011. Annual financial report for 2010 was not ready and thus it should be completed by the end of April 2010. === January 15, 10 years of Wikipedia === ==== Concert for the benefit of Wikimedia Commons ==== Okino, one of the members of WMCZ had organized an open concert of Czech composers <http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praha_/_Prague> of classical music such as Leos Janacek, Jakub Jan Ryba, Bedrich Smetana or Antonin Dvorak. Also a special copy of Wikimedium magazine was released for this event with an interview with Miroslav Malovec<http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Malovec>, first editor of Czech Wikipedia. All songs were recorded and will be released to Wikimedia Commons. ==== Other ==== Juan de Vojníkov met with some Austrian Wikimedinas celebrating in Gratz via Skype. Danny B., Frettie, Jirka O., Juan de Vojníkov, Mormegil, Okino and Packa were interviewed by local mass media about 10 years of Wikipedia. === Internal === There were around 30 members in January and new members were coming. Board meetings are open to all members. These meetings were organized via IRC and TeamSpeak <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeamSpeak>, individual discussion were also done via Skype. Also one auditor committee happened.

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Wikimedia presents its five-year strategic plan
by Ting Chen 25 Feb '11

25 Feb '11

Dear Wikimedia community and friends: I am very pleased to present the summary report of the Wikimedia Foundation's five-year strategic plan: our first-ever such plan, developed through a transparent collaborative process involving more than a thousand participants during 2009 and 2010. The strategic plan summary can be found on the WMF wiki: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summa… And a wiki-based version will also be housed on the Strategy Planning wiki: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary The purpose of this plan is to chart a direction for the Wikimedia movement to carry us into 2015, clearly articulating our key priorities: * To stabilize Wikimedia's technical, financial and organizational infrastructure * To increase participation * To improve quality * To increase reach * To encourage innovation We'll know we have been successful when we: * Increase the total number of people served to 1 billion * Increase the amount of information we offer to 50 million Wikipedia articles * Ensure information is high quality by increasing the percentage of material reviewed to be of high or very high quality by 25 percent * Encourage readers to become contributors by increasing the number of total editors per month who made>5 edits to 200,000 * Support healthy diversity in the editing community by doubling the percentage of female editors to 25 percent and increasing the number of Global South editors to 37 percent The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, will be hosted on strategy.wikimedia.org, which we anticipate will allow for localization of the report, so it can be shared with a global audience. Everyone is encouraged to help with the translation and localization process on the wiki. I want to thank everyone who contributed to the development of the plan -- the more than one thousand people who worked together on the strategy wiki, on IRC and Skype and mailing lists and in face-to-face meetings, to develop the plan. I would also like to particularly thank Sue Gardner, Eugene Eric Kim, Barry Newstead and Philippe Beaudette. And I'd like to thank my predecessor, former Chair Michael Snow, who commissioned the project. This is the first time ever that anybody has developed a five-year strategic plan in a truly open, collaborative process: we should all be very proud of what we've done here. This is the blueprint for Wikimedia through 2015, and we are energized and enthusastic about where Wikimedia is heading. Our projects will lead the expansion and growth of high-quality free knowledge both on the internet and in off-line settings. Please join us in sharing this plan and helping to make it a reality. Ting Chen, Chair of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees -- Ting Chen Member of the Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. E-Mail: tchen(a)wikimedia.org

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The Signpost – Volume 7, Issue 8 – 21 February 2011
by Wikipedia Signpost 22 Feb '11

22 Feb '11

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Wikimedia Sverige chapters report december 2010
by Jan Ainali 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

==Fundraising== We were taking part in the fundraiser for the first time. ==Wikipedia 10== We did lots of planning of this event. ==Op-ed== We got several persons to co-sign an op-ed with the headline "Publish the cultural treasure where people is looking". These people were mostly thought leaders of the digital age which included a member of the parliament. http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/publicera-kulturskatterna-dar-folk-sok… ==Blog== We published 7 blog posts which can be found here: http://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2010/12/ One interesting blog post was about a new tool, mwhistory, which can be found here: http://srv01.testlabb.se:8080/mwhistory/

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Wikimedia Sverige chapters report November 2011
by Jan Ainali 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

== Image donation from Nordiska museet == We recieved 1000 images from Nordiska museet which is being uploaded to Commons in Category:Images from Nordiska museet. == Wikipedia Academy == We arranged a Wikipedia Academy at the Royal library. == In the media == There has been lots of mentioning of us and Wikipedia in the media. This has been due to two reasons, the image donation mentioned above and Sue's visit to Sweden during Wikipedia Academy. == FSCONS == We had several members attending The Free Socitey and Culture Nordic Summit where we made lot of good contacts. == Wikiversity == *Wikiversity in Swedish has opened. == Numbers == *The Swedish Wikisource has reached 5,000 text units. *The Swedish Wikiquote has reached 1,000 pages. ==References== *http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Nordiska_Museet

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Fwd: [WMF Staff] Announcing Hisham Mundol as consultant for National Programs, India
by Jay Walsh 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Barry - can you send this to: wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org As well? I'll approve it right away. Begin forwarded message: > From: Barry Newstead <bnewstead(a)wikimedia.org> > Date: February 15, 2011 9:01:50 AM PST > To: WMF Staff <staff(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Cc: hisham <hisham.mundol(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [WMF Staff] Announcing Hisham Mundol as consultant for National Programs, India > Reply-To: WMF Staff Mailing List <staff(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > > Dear colleagues, > > I am pleased to announce the > appointment of Hisham Mundol as a consultant to the Wikimedia > Foundation to support us in our program initiatives in India. > > As you know, the Wikimedia > Foundation declared India to be a strategic priority during > the strategic planning process [1]. I announced our plans for > the formation of an office in August 2010 and the Wikimedia > Foundation Board of Trustees approved the creation of the > Wikimedia India chapter in June 2010. India is a priority for > the Wikimedia movement as it has a strong and growing > community of Wikimedians building the Indic and English > language projects. It is a country where the Wikimedia > movement can achieve our mission and learn important lessons > for achieving impact elsewhere. The engagement of Hisham will > enable the Wikimedia Foundation to pilot new initiatives aimed > at accelerating the growth of the community in India. I am > very happy we’ve now reached this point. > > As I have mentioned in the > past, we have a lot of momentum in India but we have a long > way to go to achieve our full potential as a movement. > Indians represent 4% of the world’s Internet users today (and > this share is growing), yet they only represent 1.5% of page > edits on Wikipedia. We should be able to rapidly increase this > share - across all projects - and expand readership in a > corresponding fashion. > > Hisham’s title will be > Consultant, India National Programs. He will report to me. > His role will be to design and implement specific pilot > programs that encourage many more Indians to become > contributors to our projects in Indic languages as well as > English. The National Programs initiative will focus on the > following areas in the first year: > Design and implement an > India-wide program to increase Wikimedia’s footprint on > university and college campuses with students and faculty > with the aim of encouraging contributions to Wikimedia > projects > Support the launch and > implementation of community-initiated programs that seek > to increase the editor base for Wikimedia projects > Engage with the > community and chapter to build a strong relationship among > these stakeholder groups and create communications forums > that allow for effective partnerships > > > As a newcomer to the > Wikimedia movement, Hisham’s first task will be to deepen his > understanding of us: our history, goals, values, culture and > mission. To that end, he will be spending the coming weeks > (not months!) in learning mode: Hisham and I will be meeting > with community members in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore on Feb > 23-25 and then Hisham will join community meetings across the > country as they occur. Hisham will also spend time in San > Francisco with the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well > as with other like-minded individuals and organizations and he > will attend the chapter conference in Berlin. > > Hisham will be creating a > workspace on strategy wiki where he will share what he is > learning and develop the core elements of the action plan > going forward. We encourage active community engagement on > this wiki. We aim to move to action quickly and welcome input > and guidance from across the community. > > Hisham was most recently a > consultant with the Public Health Foundation of India (in a > partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). He > designed and implemented large-scale national programs on > HIV/AIDS prevention. He worked to understand the dynamics of > hard-to-reach communities by conducting in-depth, > on-the-ground analysis (ask him to tell you about his > experience talking to drivers while sitting under their > trucks). The programs he designed and implemented sought to > convince people in large numbers - 400 million young people > across the nation - to change very personal behaviours. While > we are not tackling issues of such an intimate nature, we do > aim to convince large numbers of people across the country to > contribute their personal time to Wikimedia projects. During > this assignment, Hisham worked closely with public, private > and community groups (local and international) to work through > the details of the programs and build partnerships for > implementing them at scale. He did so in a manner that used > persuasion rather than power to build support to move things > forward. We think his experience navigating these varied > groups position him well to work in the Wikimedia community. > His earlier career was in marketing and business development > with a number of well-known businesses: Infosys, Accenture, > Cadbury and Unilever. This experience positions him well to > engage with a movement and organization that is global in > nature, in particular to work with a team that is based > halfway around the world. > > We have scheduled an IRC > chat with Hisham and myself for Thursday, February 17 at 22:00 > India Standard Time (16:30 UTC). > > I want to thank everyone who > helped in the selection process that identified Hisham. It was > a five month process in which we made an open call for > consultants (using my visit in September to drum up interest > via conversations with the community and the media) in India > and around the world. We had 197 applicants from a wide range > of professional backgrounds. Egon Zehnder’s India office, > part of a leading global executive search firm, helped screen > candidates and manage the process. Egon Zehnder conducted > indepth interviews with 25 candidates based on the inputs from > Bishakha and I who helped shortlist. I interviewed 12 > candidates via Skype in the first round and then I had the > help of Bishakha Datta and Achal Prabhala to interview the top > seven in person in Bangalore. Our top two candidates met with > Sue and Erik in Delhi and then Hisham met with the entire WMF > leadership team and a broad group of staff members in San > Francisco. > > We are very happy with the > selection of Hisham. We recognize that we did not manage to > hire someone from inside the Wikimedia community or the open > source community. We did look for people with this background > and one of our finalists was a long time open source advocate. > We also engaged with a long time Wikimedian for a role, though > he ultimately decided to withdraw for personal reasons. We > are committed to seeing Hisham integrate himself into the > community quickly and to seeing him add people to his team > from the community. We hope that the community will engage > actively with him to bring him into the fold. Hisham will most > definitely bring fresh perspectives to the movement that will > help us grow and change for the better. > > Please join me in welcoming > Hisham to the Wikimedia movement. > > > [1] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF > [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.ht… > -- > Barry Newstead > Chief Global Development Officer > Wikimedia Foundation > Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 6634 > Skype: barry.wikimedia > Twitter: @bazanews > _______________________________________________ > Staff mailing list > Staff(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/staff -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw

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The Signpost – Volume 7, Issue 7 – 14 February 2011
by Wikipedia Signpost 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

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Chapter report Wikimedia Nederland, January 2011
by Lodewijk 13 Feb '11

13 Feb '11

This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for January 2011 Fundraiser In November - January, Wikimedia Nederland participated in the annual fundraiser of Wikimedia. The (gross) total raised amount over the actual fundraiser is some 330.000 euro. Detailed reports will be submitted to the Wikimedia Foundation when they have been finalized. A detailed evaluation of this fundraiser for Wikimedia Nederland has been put together by the board and published on nl.wikimedia.org<http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Evaluatie_Fondsenwerving_2010-2011> . 10 year Wikipedia Images around these events are to be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_10_The_Netherlands . Bootcamp On 13 & 14 January, a Wikipedia bootcamp was organized in cooperation with the Images for the Future <http://imagesforthefuture.com/en/> consortium and the Amsterdam Museum <http://www.ahm.nl/>. During a kick-off event on the 13th at the Kennisland (Images for the Future Consortium partner) offices in Amsterdam presentations where given on Wikimedia and CHIs, Possible copyright issues when collaborating, and effects of collaboration between CHIs and Wikimedia. On the 14th of January we organized a workshop during the whole day with some 15 participants from the cultural heritage sector. The workshop was gradual in design, and aimed to provide a better understanding of how Wikipedia and its community works through creating and editing articles, uploading images etc. It was also a good lesson for the involved volunteers to understand where the hurdles are to newcomers. Hackathon On January 14 (until far into the night), a hackathon was organized with some 20 developers participating, developing a wide range of tools together ranging from an iPhone Wikimedia Commons upload application to sentence-level editing. The results were presented at January 15, during the 10 year Wikipedia celebration and new years reception. For more information, seehttp://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon_2011 . Debate / reception On January 15 a debate and reception was organized celebrating the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, in the Amsterdam Museum in cooperation with and sponsored by Beelden voor de Toekomst and the Amsterdam Museum. The meeting consisted of a presentation of outcomes of the Hackathon, a debate with representatives from the Royal Institute for the Tropes, Amsterdam Museum, Wikimedia Nederland and the Brabant Historical Information Center. A birthday present was presented by the Amsterdam Museum (see below) and a reception was held with 120-150 participants. The evening was closed with dinner by 50 participants. Amsterdam Museum image donation The Amsterdam Museum donated 50,000 images under a free license in the celebration of 10 years Wikipedia during the meeting in their museum on January 15th. These images include some wonderful images from paintings and objects, and will be uploaded in the course of the following months to Wikimedia Commons. More information on http://blog.amsterdammuseum.nl/?p=4500 and http://ahm.adlibsoft.com/ahmonline/detail.aspx Small Subsidies A small subsidy of max. € 75 has been awarded to the organizing group of the 10th anniversary in Ghent, Belgium to buy some beverages. For more information, seehttps://0x20.be/10_Years_Wikipedia Wiki Loves Monuments Significant progress has been made around Wiki Loves Monuments. More and more information appears on Wikimedia Commons<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011> and several countries indicated their interest. An international mailing list has been opened to coordinate and exchange experiences and more - please join here <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments>. Lodewijk has attended a brainstorm session in Cologne of some German Wikipedians to set up the German edition for 2011. Meetings, conferences etc. - Lodewijk gave a lecture at the Haagse Hogeschool (College) on Wikipedia - MaartenD attended Symposium Jongeren & Monumenten - Lodewijk attended the Movement Roles meeting in Frankfurt - Lodewijk and MaartenZ (Kennisland) attended Nerds Unite in Utrecht and Maarten presented the results of the hackathon - Several appointments with Cultural Heritage Institutions Press As usual, press attention has been collected here<http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Persaandacht#januari_2011>. Most covered topic was the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, also triggering some more press attention towards for example the statement that Wikimedia aims for 1 billion visitors per month and that we want more female editors. There was some attention around the results announcement of the fundraiser. Upcoming - February: Strategy Weekend - February: Lodewijk will give a Skype talk at the Bangalore Meeting - February 24: Board interest meeting in Utrecht - March 2: Stamtafel Utrecht - March: Lodewijk will attend the Wikimedia Conference in Wroclaw, Poland - March: MaartenD will give a workshop around Wiki Loves Monuments at WMDE's General Meeting in Berlin, Germany - March: Paul and Siebrand will attend the Wikimedia Chapters Meeting in Berlin, Germany - March: Lodewijk will attend Global Melt in Berlin, Germany - April 2: General Assembly - June: 10 years Dutch Wikipedia - September: Wiki Loves Monuments Europe

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Wikimedia Foundation Report, January 2011
by Erik Moeller 11 Feb '11

11 Feb '11

Hi folks, please find below the Wikimedia Foundation report for January. As always, you'll find a wikified version on Meta (this one includes a selection of 10th anniversary photos, so do take a look): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_January_2011 Edits and feedback are always welcome. All best, Erik In this report: * 1 Data and Trends * 2 Financials * 3 Highlights o 3.1 10th Anniversary o 3.2 New Wikimedia Foundation Fellowships o 3.3 Movement Roles Workshop * 4 Technology o 4.1 General Engineering o 4.2 Operations o 4.3 Features * 5 Research and Strategy * 6 Community o 6.1 Fundraising Team o 6.2 Public Policy Initiative * 7 Global Development o 7.1 Offline o 7.2 Global Development Research o 7.3 Grantmaking and Wikimania Scholarships o 7.4 Brazil Catalyst Project o 7.5 India Catalyst Project * 8 Communications * 9 Human Resources * 10 Finance and Administration * 11 Visitors and Guests --------------- Data and Trends --------------- [Only December data is available as of February 10, 2011] Global unique visitors: 395 million (-3.7% compared to previous month / +14% compared to previous year) comScore data for December, all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release January data later in February Page requests: 13.9 billion (-6.7% compared to previous month / + 22.9% compared to previous year) (Wikimedia Foundation data for December, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including Wikipedia mobile) Report Card for December 2010: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/ ---------- Financials ---------- [Only December data is available as of February 10, 2011] Operating revenue for December: USD 8.0MM vs plan of 9.9MM. Operating revenue year-to-date December: USD 18.1MM vs plan of 15.1MM. The successful 2010 fundraising campaign has resulted in the Wikimedia Foundation exceeding its revenue targets year-to-date. Revenue above does not reflect amounts expected to be received from chapters: that revenue will be reflected once payments are received. Operating expenses for December: USD 1.7MM vs plan of 1.8MM Operating expenses year-to-date: December: USD 7.7MM vs plan of 10.0MM The Wikimedia Foundation is under-spent for December primarily due to timing of capital expenditures and internet hosting, as well as under-spending in staffing costs (a decision was made early in the year to bias towards hiring slowly and well, rather than prioritizing speed). Major data center purchases that occurred in January will make up for much of this underspend. Cash and investments as of December 2010 totaled $22.8MM (approximately 13 months of expenses). ---------- Highlights ---------- ---------------- 10th Anniversary ---------------- On January 15, 2011, Wikipedia was 10 years old, an event that was heard around the wikis and celebrated around the globe. The Wikimedia Foundation supported chapters, volunteers, and other groups hosting celebrations in self-organizing events, spreading the good news, and generally marking this a once-in-a-movement historic event. *Celebrations everywhere* More than 400 celebrations were logged at http://ten.wikipedia.org/. Many took place on or around January 15, with more planned for later in the year. Photo gallery can be found here: http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_gallery The celebrations included wiki-conferences, photo walks, casual meet-ups, dance parties, pub nights and kite flying. Wikimedia Foundation staff and board members travelled to support a variety of events, including: Ting Chen in Nairobi, Jimmy Wales and Jan-Bart de Vreede in London, Bishakha Datta in Kolkata, Phoebe Ayers in San Francisco, Frank Schulenburg in Budapest, and Barry Newstead and Moka Pantages in Mumbai. Many celebrations included an airing of a special message from Jimmy Wales produced by WMF for the Wikipedia community: http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WalesCalltoAction.ogv. On January 15, Bay Area Wikimedians staged an all-day conference featuring speakers Ward Cunningham and Kevin Kelly. The Wikimedia Foundation supported that event by staging a party for roughly 250 guests that same evening. Barry Newstead spoke at the Wikipedia 10 celebration in Mumbai. He also spoke at three events in Pune, India: a TEDxPUNE event for school children, a meeting of public administrators in Pune, and the official Wikimedia community event. *T-Shirts and buttons for the mission* The Wikimedia Foundation shipped more than 80 Wikipedia 10 celebration kits to support volunteer-organized events all over the world. Each included 50 custom-themed T-shirts, buttons, and stickers. This was an important pilot for the Wikimedia movement: new data about customs, logistics, and postal services for a wide range of nations has been gathered, and new processes for soliciting orders from chapters or other groups for timely delivery have been developed. *Collaborative design* With the help of San Francisco graphic designer David Peters, WMF produced a simple design scheme to help celebrate Wikipedia 10. The Wikipedia 10 design concept was at the center of event-related merchandise, and was further localized and developed by dozens of local Wikipedia groups in the form of icons, banners, cakes, and other products. http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design ------------------------------------ New Wikimedia Foundation Fellowships ------------------------------------ Lennart Guldbrandsson began a six-month fellowship during which he will work on the Bookshelf Project (public outreach resources and many languages) and the Account Creation Improvement Project (exploring ways to engage more people to become editors after making a Wikimedia project account). The full announcement can be found at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/01/07/announcing-our-fourth-fellow-lenn… Liam Wyatt began a 12-month fellowship to build the capacity of the Wikimedia community to undertake partnerships with cultural institutions known as GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), following his pioneering work in this area: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/01/19/announcing-our-glam-fellow-liam-w… Achal Prabhala began a four-month fellowship focused on the role of oral citations as a source for Wikimedia projects. He will be conducting field research in rural South Africa and India with Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians across three languages - he plans to explore ways to compensate for the lack of written source material in many local languages. The full announcment can be found at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/01/12/new-wikimedia-fellow/ Maryana Pinchuk's fellowship has been extended for an additional 12 months, so that she can coordinate the writing of histories of several more Wikipedias. She and fellow Victoria Doronina will soon be releasing their history of the Russian Wikipedia in both Russian and English on Meta and on the Russian Wikipedia. See the previous announcement: http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/30/two-new-community-department-fell… ----------------------- Movement Roles Workshop ----------------------- The Movement Roles project is a project of the WMF Board of Trustees supported by contractors Austin Hair and Jon Huggett acting as facilitators. Its goal is to clarify the roles and responsibilities of different entities, groups, and people working to support the international Wikimedia movement. It is working on recommendations for the development of Wikimedia as a global network of organizations. The working group held an in-person meeting in Frankfurt on January 29 and 30. The meeting reviewed suggestions from the past few months, identified areas of agreement and disagreement, and proposed ideas to provoke discussion in the broader community. Work will continue on Meta and is open to input and participation from all. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_project/2011-01-29 The group drafted a matrix of organizational roles and responsibilities: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_project/2011-01-29/roles_matr… The next in-person meeting of the group will be the day before the March chapters meeting in Berlin. ---------- Technology ---------- As in previous months, details of our technology activities in the month of January 2011 can be found in the tech blog: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/02/february-wmf-engineering-update/ Highlights below: ------------------- General Engineering ------------------- *MediaWiki 1.17* MediaWiki 1.17 is the upcoming release of the MediaWiki software. We plan to deploy MediaWiki 1.17 to Wikimedia Foundation sites on February 8th. We are still working through the code review queue (revisions, graph) and fixing some integration issues. The major noticeable feature of this deployment will be Resource Loader, which will enable the release of the second iteration of Article Feedback sometime afterwards. We are also dark-launching the improved category collation code that Aryeh Gregor wrote back in August, and will enable this feature shortly after the 1.17 launch. Some new extensions will also wait until after the dust settles from the 1.17 launch. ---------- Operations ---------- *Data Center* In January, we finally placed orders for most of the equipment for the Ashburn VA Data Center. We expect to be slightly over budget on this order as we have decided to order extra high-availability storage hardware for backups. Starting in February, teams of Ops engineers will be working to rack these new machines. We plan to post a link to a live video feed of our enclosure where you can see the work in progress. *Media Storage* Since December, we have been working with a contract engineer to create a new extensible Media Storage Architecture, and are now at the point of testing on a single machine. As the new Upload Wizard is coming closer to production-quality release, we are trying to anticipate a substantial increase in media contributions. *Monitoring* We signed a deal with Watchmouse, a global website and application performance monitoring company. The community can expect us to broaden the public information we make available on performance of our wikis around the world. *Virtualization Cluster* We continued to work on creating an environment to deploy temporary machines for testing and experimentation, for use by WMF staff and volunteers working on important projects (as capacity allows). WMF Ops Engineer Ryan Lane announced the release of the OpenStackManager extension for MediaWiki, which interacts with OpenStack, an open source toolset for cloud computing. There was a bit of a setback, however, with some missing features in OpenStack testing, so we are waiting for the next OpenStack release before deploying this. We have a little more hardware to configure as well. -------- Features -------- *Threaded Discussions - Liquid Threads* A formal evaluation of LiquidThreads, a new discussion system for talk pages, is underway. This includes its UI, code and database architecture. We are modifying the design to incorporate input from several community discussions as well as from our engineering staff. We plan to consolidate all of our documentation on these discussions on mediawiki.org in the next month. *Other Features* Tomasz Finc began work with two new engineering contracts on offline content projects. Tomasz blogged about it here: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/01/update-on-offline-wikimedia-projects/ --------------------- Research and Strategy --------------------- Wikipedia's 10th anniversary saw several scholarly outlets call for experts and researchers to join Wikipedia and help "overcome the prejudices against Wikipedia in academic circles" [1-2]. To this aim, Dario Taraborelli, in collaboration with Daniel Mietchen and Panagiota Alevizou from the Wikimedia Research Committee, designed a survey to better understand the barriers to expert participation in Wikimedia projects [3]. The pilot phase started in December and ended in January and the official launch of the survey is due on February 8, 2011. On January 10, 2011, Dario Taraborelli published, in collaboration with Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia and Moritz Stefaner, an interactive visualization of the 200 longest Article for Deletion discussions in the history of Wikipedia [4], introducing scholarly research on the functioning and impact of AfD discussions to a broader audience. Research continued on the Article feedback study and Dario Taraborelli joined Howie Fung in analyzing the early data, with new results to be published later this month. Members of the Research Committee continued the discussion on subject recruitment guidelines for Wikimedia research projects in collaboration with WMF staff. The committee also started to explore possible venues for a research panel, with the goal of discussing research directions of strategic importance to the Wikipedia community at a major social computing conference. Howie Fung, Diederik van Liere and Erik Moeller continued review of first data from the Editor Trends Study [6] conducted by Diederik van Liere. The study is an in-depth quantitative analysis of major trends in Wikipedia editing communities, and will be published on StrategyWiki in February. Howie and Erik also continued work on the Product Whitepaper, a comprehensive assessment of product development priorities in strategic context. [7] [1] http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125899/ [2] http://www.jmir.org/2011/1/e14/ [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Expert_… [4] http://notabilia.net [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest/Subject… [6] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study [7] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Product_Whitepaper --------- Community --------- ---------------- Fundraising Team ---------------- The fundraising team wrapped up the successful 2010 fundraising campaign in January. The team ran contribution banners that asked people to get involved with Wikipedia by starting to edit. These banners were later replaced by banners that highlighted Wikipedia's 10 year anniversary. The team spent the rest of January beginning an in-depth retrospective on the testing and operations of the 2010 fundraiser. ------------------------ Public Policy Initiative ------------------------ The Public Policy Initiative Team kicked off the new year with a two-day train-the-trainer session in San Francisco prior to the start of the spring semester. A group of current ambassadors were trained as trainers to prepare them to lead five two-day regional ambassador trainings in various US locations: San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Baton Rouge, and Indianapolis. As a result, the number of Wikipedia Ambassadors is growing rapidly, and about 46 % of them female. With the goal of globalizing the program, Wikipedia community observers from Sweden, Israel, Germany, and Brazil attended the train-the-trainer session and the San Francisco ambassador training. Sage Ross spoke about the Public Policy Initiative at the Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebration in Washington D.C. ------------------ Global Development ------------------ ------- Offline ------- * We began pursuing partnerships with computer manufacturers and other education agencies to aid in the distribution of the offline materials upon completion. Meanwhile, milestones were accomplished by the Wikimedia community: o The community neared completion of new releases of the "Wikipedia 1.0" project and Wikipedia for Schools, two article selection projects in the English language Wikipedia that select the most applicable and high-quality subset of articles. Other language communities also actively contributed to the development of offline content, including Tamil. o Community distribution began of the Wikipedia for Schools English version, using the Kiwix offline reader, throughout Kenya. --------------------------- Global Development Research --------------------------- * Completed a first draft of the English version of the Wikipedia editor survey; * Created a mobile strategic plan for current and next fiscal year with engineering, including a detailed timeline for different phases of mobile research beginning with ethnographic research and survey in key markets to UX testing; * Started work on the readership survey, working with vendors to conduct a household survey in key countries; * Worked with engineering team to conduct analytics for global development, including the creation of a monthly report card that focuses on India. -------------------------------------- Grantmaking and Wikimania Scholarships -------------------------------------- * Funded 13 new grants in December and January, nine of which were in support of Wikipedia 10 celebrations; * Met our budget for grantmaking in 2010-11 at the end of January; * Held an open call for Wikimania 2011 scholarship applications throughout January and then closed the call on January 31, 2011. ----------------------- Brazil Catalyst Project ----------------------- Kul Takanao Wadhwa and Jessie Wild spent the last half of January in Brazil, with these goals: * Raising awareness of Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's presence in Brazil; * Finding productive partnerships for WM initiatives in Brazil; * Introducing the Brazilian community members to different organizations; * Better understanding what WM presence in Brazil could and should look like going forward. They met with universities, community members, student organizations, government officials, and potential tech partners. The trip was very productive, and a full set of details including the agenda and materials utilized can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global/Brazil/Agenda_January_2011 Progress on the Brazil Catalyst Project work included: * Mobile research: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global/Brazil/Brazilian_Digital_Landscape#Mo… * January Community Interviews: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Community_Interviews… * Debate on structures: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global/Brazil/Debate_sobre_estruturas * Started to document laws that could affect WMF in Brazil: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Brazilian_Digital_La… * Started documenting possible legal structures as well as more practical issues that will help with logistics, such as "how to send money to Brazil". Also started checking-in with lawyers and accountants who can help with logistics on the ground: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Procedures_to_open_a… ---------------------- India Catalyst Project ---------------------- Barry Newstead and Moka Pantages spent one week in India to attend Wikipedia 10 celebrations, meet with community, stakeholders, NGO and government officials, and conducted fact-finding meetings with associated organizations. Highlights from the trip included: * Barry attended Wikipedia 10 celebrations in Mumbai at VJTI and in Pune at the Symbiosis Institute. Moka joined Wikimedians in Bangalore; * Barry met with some members of the newly formed Indian chapter, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, and Achal Prabhala, Wikimedia Advisory Board member; * Barry, Moka and Arjuna from the India chapter had an introductory discussion with Nokia Research; * Barry and Moka traveled to Mumbai to meet with a group of students and educators at IIT-Mumbai, as well as to visit Reliance Telecommunications for introductory discussions on their mobile strategy and tour their operations center and data center; * After Mumbai, Barry and Moka traveled to Delhi met with Bishakha Datta, Hari Prasad Nadig from the Wikimedia India chapter, and contracted legal counsel to attend a round table discussion with local NGOs and officials working in similar areas as the Wikimedia Foundation; * Barry and Moka met with Google India's communications and legal teams in Gurgaon; * Moka stayed behind and conducted additional meetings with community members, as well as press and communications organizations in India, Hong Kong and Seoul; * In Hong Kong, Moka met with Chinese Wikipedians from Hong Kong, as well as a group of five who traveled from neighboring Macau; * In Seoul, Moka met with a group of 16 Korean Wikipedians. This meeting kicked-off a group initiative to continue regular meetings to begin the chapter creation process. -------------- Communications -------------- Since Wikipedia's inception, journalists and other cultural commentators have struggled to assess its societal impact, often criticizing the content as inaccurate, or the model as one that cannot work. As the 10th anniversary approached, the international media seized the opportunity to reassess: this resulted in hundreds of stories around the world that were overwhelmingly positive. The media coverage painted a picture of Wikipedia as a successful educational endeavor serving more than 400 million people. Its volunteer and non-profit nature were recognized and celebrated. January 4-6 NYC Media Tour with Jimmy Wales * Jimmy was interviewed by six media outlets, including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. January 9-12 NY Media Tour with Sue Gardner * Sue was interviewed by 10 media outlets, including an off-the-record lunch with the New York Times, which prompted the "Gender Gap" story January 30. January 12 Media Call * Both Sue and Jimmy participated in an hour-long media call with 15 journalists including the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and ReadWriteWeb. Highlights included: * Cover stories for BusinessWeek and the Economist * Front page of the New York Times * Substantial pieces by Time magazine, La Tercera, the Washington Post, Wired, Agence-France-Press, Origó, Hong Kong Economic Times, Associate Press, Spiegel, The Guardian, Chronicle of Higher Education, El País, NPR, Times of India, PC world (macedonian edition), LA Times, The Hindu, The Atlantic and the Huffington Post, La Repubblica. Links to coverage: * http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage * http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Wikipedia-to-increase-loc… * http://www.makpcworld.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1065… * http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2011/2011/01/wikipedias_tenth_birt… * http://www.economist.com/node/17902943?story_id=17902943 * http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article1073395.ece * http://news.etnet.com.cn/feature/shisuibaike20110114.html * http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/wikipedia-marks-10-years-of-edit-i… * http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201111571716655385.ht… * http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,739367,00.html * http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli-e-cultura/2011/01/11/news/10_anni_wikip… * http://www.elpais.com/articulo/Pantallas/Wikipedia/anos/278/ediciones/elpep… * http://www.origo.hu/techbazis/20110115-az-alapitokat-is-meglepte-a-wikipedi… * http://diario.latercera.com/2011/01/14/01/contenido/tendencias/16-56057-9-d… Other links and information for January 2011: Press releases issued in January 2011: * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Half_a_Million_People_Donate_to_Keep_Wi… * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Celebrates_10_Years_of_Free_K… Media contact through January 2011: * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#January_2011 Blog posts through January 2011: * http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/01/ For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the community-edited Wikipedia Signpost editions for January 2011: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-01-… * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-01-… * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-01-… * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-01-… * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-01-… --------------- Human Resources --------------- A large percentage of the staff in San Francisco was out for at least a week with the "WikiPlague", a variant of the RSV virus that we seem to have caught at the 10th Anniversary Party. We made solid progress in recruiting over January and posted and boarded all of the positions we wanted to. We engaged two new recruiting firms, and are starting to see results from them. HR also conducted a hiring and onboarding process overhaul. We started tracking metrics for new hires and the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole, and will start compiling anonymized data regarding diversity and other internal characteristics so that we stay mission-aligned. The fellowship engagements have prompted the formalizing of the Fellowship program and other alternative employment options at the Wikimedia Foundation, and initiated a conversation that is currently ongoing. We have decided on an HRM software called OrangeHRM, which is an open source project. More news on this in February as we start engaging with them. New Hires * Maryana Pinchuk, Research Fellow (Community) – Temp Full Time Extended * James Alexander, Community Associate (Community) – Temp Full Time * Ryan Faulkner, Data Analyst (Tech) – Temp Full Time * Mark Hershberger, Bugmeister (Tech) – Temp Full Time New Openings Posted * Data Analytics Engineer (Tech) * Fundraiser Data Analyst (Community) * Development Associate (Community) * Volunteer Development Coordinator (Community) * Community Department Research Fellow (Community) * Performance Engineer (Tech) * Operations Engineer (Tech) * Software Developer – Features (Tech) Openings Still Posted * Head of Community Fellowship Program * Senior QA Engineer * Software Developer (Mobile) Contracts Completed * Keegan Peterzell, Community Associate * Dan Rosenthal, Community Associate * Alexander Zariv, Community Associate * Pete Forsyth, Public Outreach Officer Total Employee Count Plan: 81 Actual: 60 Remaining Open Positions to fiscal year end: 31 Job Openings - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimeidaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork -------------------------- Finance and Administration -------------------------- * Submitted draft of the 2009 Form 990 tax return to KPMG; * Identified a firm for sellers permits, sales tax, etc. related to the planned Wikimedia merchandising webstore; * Worked with attorneys regarding residency certificates needed to receive Telefonica licensing payments (certificates should arrive in February); * Worked with KPMG regarding India entity and proposed legal structure. ------------------- Visitors and Guests ------------------- 1. Edward Erhar (User:The_ed17) (Online Ambassadors, who support professors and students via online means such as IRC and Wikipedia talk pages) 2. Lennart Gulbrandsson (Bookshelf and Account Creation Improvement Project) 3. Nevio Carlos de Alarcao (Wikimedia Brazil) 4. Achim Raschka (Wikimedia Germany) 5. Dan Vaks (Wikimedia Israel) 6. Federico Rampini (US Bureau Chief for one of Italy's top daily papers, La Repubblica) 7. Brent Barnum (Trivad) 8. Hans Lim (Trivad) 9. Gabriel Mugar (User:Gabrielm199) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Train-the-Trainer event) 10. PJ Tabit (User:Pjthepiano) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Train-the-Trainer event) 11. Chanitra Bishop (User:Etlib) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Train-the-Trainer event) 12. Rob Pongsajapan (User:Pongr) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Train-the-Trainer event) 13. Dominic Grifo (User:AMDomG) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Train-the-Trainer event) 14. Derrick Coetzee (User:Dcoetzee) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 15. Dominic McDevitt-Parks (User:Dominic, formerly User:Dmcdevit) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 16. Mike Cline (User:Mike Cline) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 17. David Lee (User:bibliomaniac15) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 18. Joni Spigler (User:Saudade7) (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 19. Christopher Cheney (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 20. David Guz (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 21. Matt Senate (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 22. Jodi Wilson (Wikipedia Campus Ambassors Training) 23. Honor Gunday (Paymentwall) 24. Brian Roth (Paymentwall) 25. Jonathan Zittrain, Elizabeth Stark and 17 students from the Stanford Cyberlaw Class 26. Ward Cunningham (Advisory Board) 27. Corey O'Brien (OMP Consultant) 28. Frank O'Brien (OMP Consultant) 29. Steve Geer (OMP Consultant) 30. Ken Berger (President and CEO of Charity Navigator) 31. Christine Herring (Arabic production called 'On the Road in America') 32. Arthur Honegger (Swiss public TV) 33. Amar Ashar (Berkman Center at Harvard) 34. Madeline Stranionis (Watershed) 35. Karen Valby (Fast Company) 36. Mimi Zhang (Penn State University) 37. Sarah Novotny (Blue Gecko) 38. Martin Schulz (Yale Computer Science Department) -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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WikimediaAnnounce-l February 2011