Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung
to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia
Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability
projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to
Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he
helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first
year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web
analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to
that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based
on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He
has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science
in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s
joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was
madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our
communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are
likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done
on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects,
including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the
Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re
very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a
Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the
larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really
digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two
years, in three years, and working together with software developers
and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a
reality. Our work will be organized along the following product
areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and
Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group,
going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik
van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the
new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the
Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good
example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner
(reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering
director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting
to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives
the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product
Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and
coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will
help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more
effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development
and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum,
a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Development department has recently
published a midyear report on its activities, regarding the 2011-12
annual plan. You can find it on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Development_Midyear_report_2011-…
--
Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
In case you missed our blog post or reports in the tech media:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/26/announcing-the-official-wikipedia-andr…https://market.android.com/details?id=org.wikipedia
We recently released the first version of a Wikipedia smartphone app
for Android phones. It's based on Apache Cordova (AKA Phonegap), and
of course fully open source.
I'm really proud of our mobile team; it's a great app and if you
haven't tried it already, you should. :-) This is still an early
release and lots of fixes and enhancements are yet to come.
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for September
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
* Cultural heritage
This was the month of Wiki Loves Monuments, which was conducted in 18
European countries this year, resulting in approximately 175,000
photographs by 5500 users (over 4000 of whom were new users) for Wikimedia
Commons. Of those, 13757 photos were uploaded for the Netherlands by 287
users, of which 203 were new users. Despite the fact that the 2010 WLM
contest was already highly successfull, this years contest did result in
even more photos of Dutch monuments than last year. An evaluation will be
conducted based on a short participant survey.
Meetings etc.
The weekend of September 24th was spent on a two-day strategy session,
devoted to creating a working 2012 plan based on the outcomes of the strategy
weekend in February<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>.
The goal is to publish the plan by October 1st, in order to let members
review it before the general assembly. A few ongoing projects did not make
it into our 2012 plan due either to a lack of resources, or simply being
superceded by new developments on MediaWiki software, such as plans to
redesign Wikiportrait for international
use<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiportrait/v2>
.
A training session for aministrators, scheduled for early October, has been
cancelled for a lack of participants.
Press and outreach
Wiki Loves Monuments was publicized in local and national papers, with
multiple interviews given by Lodewijk Gelauff, the main contact for the
project.
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for October
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
* Cultural heritage
After ending Wiki Loves Monuments, it was decided to keep the local
campaign upload tools live on Wikimedia Commons for all participating
countries. Hopefully this will lead to more donations of cultural heritage
photos during the rest of the year.
The results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 are still being analyzed, but in
early November it was clear that a huge spike in new user edits was visible
on Wikimedia Commons for the month of September, thanks to the Europe-wide
Wiki Loves Monuments contest. For the Netherlands, 60% of the monuments on
the Rijksmonuments lists in the Wikimedia Commons database have now got at
least one photograph on Wikimedia Commons that can be used in Wikipedia
articles. It is not yet known what the actual usage in articles is (number
of links from registered monument photos to Wikipedia articles).
Conferences etc.
At the general assembly of October 22nd, the budget for 2012 has been
accepted by the members. Cyriel came into the board replacing Austin. Three
motions were passed, two of which affect the budget and if the Grant cannot
be changed, then the decision was made to commit funds from the reserves to
cover the difference. The first motion was passed to research the need for
a separate Grant agreement and a Fundraising agreement, whilst researching
the steps needed to become a "payment processor" again. A motion was passed
to allocate 5,000 euro's for consulting a lawyer before signing
international agreements that involve international law (this was regarding
the signing of the previously mentioned agreements in October). A motion
was passed to allocate 10,000 euro for publicity regarding Wikipedia, WMNL
and the possibilities available for donating to Wikimedia Nederland.
Press and outreach
There was a lot of press coverage in the Netherlands about the Wiki Loves
Monuments results<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/02/165000-photos-submitted-during-second-…>
.
There was also a lot of press coverage about the Wikistrike in Italy
(Telegraph & NRC among others). Our member Lodewijk Gelauff was interviewed
by BRN radio:
http://www.bnr.nl/programma/bnrdigitaal/246149-1110/wikipedia-itali-plat-ui…
We issued Nieuwsletter #12.
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for November
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
* Cultural heritage
Cultural Heritage was one of the tracks at the Wikimedia Conferentie
Nederland. Presentations<http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2011/11/08/wikimedia-conference-2011-cultu…>were
given which will be available later.
Jill Cousins reported during her keynote speech that one of the biggest
challenges facing Europeana is convincing partners to offer digital content
under a CC-by-SA license. Among common objections such as "fear of loss of
potential income" or "fear of unforeseen undesirable outcomes" is the
largest objection: "fear of loss of atttribution". To illustrate this, she
discussed the case of the "Yellow kitchen maid", a term used to describe en:The
Milkmaid (Vermeer) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_%28Vermeer%29>,
in which a maid is wearing a bodice that is not very yellow. The painting
hangs in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, and due to the immense popularity of
various internet images, casual visitors feel cheated that the real
painting does not show "the true color", and complain about this to the
museum.
Interestingly, the most hits from "backlinks" to an actual collection were
from direct references in Wikipedia articles in multiple languages, rather
than from attribution links in media files on Wikimedia Commons, according
to a related presentation on the statistics of Wikimedia contributions from
Open Images, by Martin Zeinstra.
The Tropical Museum presented a plan to work together with Wikipedia to
create a new website with modern "media mashups" that will help visitors
and others understand more about museum material on expeditions. This is
very much in an early stage, but the idea is that Wikipedia may use
Tropical Museum content in articles in the usual way, and then based on
stories locked into 19th and early 20th century expedition diaries, the
website will offer mashups of the Wikipedia media and articles to
illustrate the stories. Hopefully some volunteers will be interested enough
to join their brainstorm sessions and keep us informed on the proceedings.
Conferences etc.
On November 5th the Wikimedia Conferentie
Nederland<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conferentie_Nederland>took
place with 120-140 visitors. There were three tracks available and the
morning keynote speech by Jill Cousins of Europeana was given to a full
auditorium, which was just as full at the end of day for the Wiki Loves
Monuments prize ceremony. Some of the presenters have agreed to publish
their presentations in the public domain.
On November 11th, Sue Gardner and some other staff members of WMF visited
Utrecht and had a dinner with board members and some active members. It was
an opportunity to talk face to face about issues on and off the usual
Wikimedia mailing lists.
Press and outreach
On November 10th, the award-ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments
Belgium/Lŭemburg took place in Brussels. WMNL was represented by Lodewijk
Gelauff, one of our most active volunteers and lead for this Europe-wide
contest.
On November 11th, the cultural heritage association Heemschut had a
symposion on the occasion of its 100th anniversay. WMNL was represented by
Ziko van Dijk in a panel discussion. Wiki Loves Monuments was mentioned
several times at the day.
On November 25th, Ziko van Dijk gave a lecture at the Open Day of the
Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) in Rotterdam. The day after that,
WMNL and UEA had a joint seminar on free knowledge led by Marek Blahus and
Ziko van Dijk.
Newsletter #14 sent out.
Upcoming
- December: GLAMcamp in the
Netherlands<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_NL>
Greetings, Cyriel
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for June
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
*
Cultural heritage partners
Maarten Brinkerink gave a talk at the annual conference of the Dutch
Association of Archivarians, and visited the GLAMcamp in New York.
The board discussed the possibility of hosting a GLAMcamp in the
Netherlands at the end of 2011.
For Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), Wikimedia Nederland has arranged together
with Heemschut that someone can work for WLM part time on the costs of
Heemschut.
Lodewijk en MaartenB talked to people of a Delft cultural heritage wiki
about a joint event with regard to WLM.
Community
There is a fund for small-scale activities of the Dutch Wikimedia projects
communities. Unfortunately, the community does not seem to take much
advantage from it. The board decided to promote the fund better.
Conferences etc.
On June 18th we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia in Dutch.
Some 60-70 Wikipedians came to the Talent Factory in Den Bosch. In the
afternoon, a photo scavenger hunt followed several routes through the old
town with its many monuments. In the evening we met in the Talent Factory
and had two short speeches, of the Dutch chapter president and the
president of the Wikimedia Foundation. At midnight we commemorated the real
birthday, June 19th. Photos see
here<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:2011-06-18_Wikipedia_10_NL_Den_B…>
.
Professionalization
Marjon Bakker, our communications employee, visited the office of Wikimedia
Deutschland and came back with a lot of advice.
Fundraising Summit
Board members Paul Becherer and Siebrand Mazeland attended the Fundrasing
Summit in Vienna, Austria, where chapters and WMF were together to
coordinate efforts for the yearly fundraising campaign, focusing mainly on
messages, technical aspects and fundraising outside the yearly campaign.
Press and outreach
The Dutch press, also the most important newspapers, reported extensively
about the tenth anniversary. See
here<http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Media-aandacht#juni_2011>
.
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for July
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
*
Cultural heritage partners
Maarten Brinkerink talked with the Tropenmuseum, and reported that a
Wikipedian in Residence might be useful with regard of the Tropenmuseum's
activities around its vast and various collections.
Conferences etc.
The only local Wikimeet ("stamtafel", like the German "Stammtisch") that
takes place on a regular basis is the one in Utrecht, the most central city
of the Netherlands. On July 9th a Wikimeet happened in the Flemish city of
Gent. One of the Dutch participants was Lodewijk. Some 10 people were
attending, six of them "Wikimedians". They discussed about WLM and the
possibility of founding a Belgian Wikimedia chapter. The Belgians may need
more input from outside, Lodewijk said.
Professionalization
The board discussed about hiring a person for the fundraiser and gives
highest priority to this.
Press and outreach
The new Wikimedia Nederland website left its beta phase, thanks to Hay
Kranen. It is meant to inform the Dutch public about Wikimedia and its
activities: http://wmnederland.nl/
For active members, the old wiki (verenigingswiki) will remain the most
important tool for planning of and collaborating on Wikimedia activities in
the Netherlands: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for August
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
*
Wikimania
A large group of members of Wikimedia Nederland attended Wikimania 2011 in
Haifa. Among them several members of the board: Ziko van Dijk, Austin Hair,
Siebrand Mazeland and Marco Swart. Some of the Wikimedia Nederland members
gave presentations:
- State of Glam in the Netherlands
(slides<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_GLAM_in_the_Netherlands.pdf>)
by Maarten Dammers
- Wiki Loves Monuments
(|slides<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLM-Haifa-wikimania_cc-by-sa.pdf>)by
Lodewijk Gelauf and Maarten Dammers
- wm2011:Submissions/Wikimedia
Chapters<http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Chapters>Wikimedia
Chapters (
slides<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Chapters_-_Wikimania_2011.pdf>)
by Lodewijk Gelauff
Cultural heritage
The preparation of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) went on. On August 20th there
was a meeting in the Utrecht office.
Meetings etc.
- WCN meeting 18 augustus
- Stamtafel Utrecht 17 augustus
- Wiki Loves Monuments meeting 20 augustus
The board has decided on a "WikiSaturday" every second saturday, for an
experimental time of two months. Those saturdays volunteers can come
together at the WMNL office and collaborate on Wikimedia related subjects.
Press and outreach
Begin August, there was a little wave of "Wikipedia loses authors" stories
in the Dutch media.
Greetings, Cyriel
Hi all!
WMNL is catching up on our Chapter reports. They've been published on Meta
for a while now, but not yet send here.
So here goes!
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for March
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
* Wiki Loves Monuments
In 2010, WMNL arranged a photo competition around monumental buildings and
objects ("rijksmonumenten"): Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM). In September 2011,
the photo competition will take place in several European countries, in
collaboration with the Wikimedia chapters in concern. WMNL members Lodewijk
Gelauff and MaartenD travelled to other countries to explain the concept.
On March 18th-20th Lodewijk attended the Wikimedia Conference in Wroclaw
(Poland), on March 20th MaartenD gave a workshop at WMDE's General Meeting
in Berlin (Germany). In March, for about ten countries confirmed that they
were going to participate.
In the Netherlands it was arranged that Cultural Heritage institution
"Heemschut" will sponsor WLM 2011 with PR and other help in the Netherlands
itself. Stichting Open Monumentdag, that organizes the general day of the
open monument, will help too.
Chapters Meeting in Berlin
On 25-27 March, Paul and Siebrand represented Wikimedia Nederland at the
Wikimedia Chapters Meeting in Berlin, Germany. Lodewijk presented Wiki
Loves Monuments in a seperate session.
Donation to Wikimedia Foundation
The Dutch chapter sent 75,000 EUR to the Foundation with regard to the
Fundraising of 2009/2010, and 150,000 EUR with regard to the Fundraising of
2010/2011.
Professionalization
Professionalization is an ongoing process. An office space has been rented
starting April 1 in the city center of Utrecht (a city centrally located in
the country).
5 years Wikimedia Nederland
On March 27, Wikimedia Nederland existed exactly 5 years. Since this was
the last day of the chapters meeting in Berlin, we celebrated this with our
international collegues with cake:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:VWN5jaar.jpg
Meetings & Conferences
On 28-29 March, Lodewijk and Siebrand attended Global Melt (workshop about
exchanging knowledge in organizing events for Global movements) in Berlin,
Germany
*
This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for April
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
* Wiki Loves Monuments
In April some progress has been made in finding good partners for the Dutch
edition of Wiki Loves Monuments. Also the first meeting of all volunteers
(in the Wikimedia Nederland Office) took place to coordinate things.
Lodewijk visited the Portuguese chapter to give a workshop on Wiki Loves
Monuments and help brainstorm on how to organize it most effectively.
General assembly
On April 2nd, a General assembly elected a new board (see in English
[1]<http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Mededelingen#Greetings_from_the_new_…>).
Lodewijk Gelauff, Jose Spierts and Marianne Korpershoek left the board.
Marco Swart, Paul Becherer, Maarten Brinkerink and Siebrand Mazeland
remained on the board, while Ziko van Dijk, Jane Darnell and Austin Hair
joined. On April 7th, the new board elected Ziko van Dijk the new president.
The General assembly also commemorated the 5th anniversary of the Dutch
chapter with a cake. There was also a discussion about work groups.
Consequently, those were arranged newly.
Cultural heritage partners
According to a press release of Nationaal Archief and Spaarnestad Photo,
the photographs released in September 2010 are often viewed on Wikimedia
projects. Those are ca. 1000 photographs of Dutch contemporary history.
Wikipedia articles with these photographs have been viewed nearly two
million times in August-December 2010. On average, a photograph on
Wikipedia has been viewed 500 times more often than on the page of the
original database. See
http://beeldenvoordetoekomst.nl/sites/default/files/NA_SPP_effectmeting_0.p…
Professionalization
Since April 1st the Dutch chapter has dedicated office space at Mariaplaats
3 in Utrecht: two rooms, and we can use a conference room for our board
meetings.
Since April 16th the Dutch chapter has its first professional staff. Former
board member Marjon Bakker works part time and occupies the office usually
two days a week. She is hired as a freelance for six months. Her tasks are
to accompany the further professionalization, to build up the office and
support the communication of the chapter.
Conferences etc.
Lodewijk presented Wikipedia/Wikimedia on "Demystifying Digital", organized
by Hill & Knowlton in Schiphol/Amsterdam Airport.
Ad Huikeshoven initiated the plannings for a new Wikimedia Conferentie
Nederland, a group met on April 6th in Utrecht. The last regular WCN
happened in 2008. 2010 saw at least a mini conference where amongst other
things we presented the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments. The 2011 edition
is scheduled for November 5th.
Wikipedia Ten in Dutch (WPNL10) is an event to celebrate ten years of
Wikipedia in Dutch. Ciell took the lead, and together with Ziko she visited
some locations in Den Bosch. This southern city has been chosen in order
not to be always in Holland/Utrecht and to move towards Flemish
Wikipedians. The event will happen on June 18th, a Saturday. The real
birthday is Sunday.
Press attention summary
The chapter sent out a press release on the occasion of the first ten
million files on Wikimedia Commons. Some minor professional magazines and
one larger Belgian online newspaper reported.
*This is the chapter report for Wikimedia Nederland for May
2011.<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederla…>
*
Hackathon and Wiki Loves Monuments meeting, Berlin
A number of WMNL board members and volunteers attended the Hackathon that
took place in Berlin, Germany. Both Maarten Dammers and Lodewijk Gelauff
attended a parallel Wiki Loves Monuments European meetup there to
coordinate efforts around Europe and share experiences, see
commons:Commons:Wiki
Loves Monuments 2011/May
Meeting/Notes/Results<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/May_Mee…>for
a report.
Cultural heritage partners
Maarten Brinkerink reported in the May board meeting about a extraordinary
number of contacts. Frequently a contact does not necessarily mean that it
will result in something, but he could already report confidentially about
some very promising initiatives on the way.
Press and outreach
May 2011 was the month of some catching-up with regard to outreach
materials: two roll-ups, stickers, buttons etc. The new website, replacing
the old wiki (which will remain for the chapter itself), was still in beta
phase.
Greeting, Cyriel Brusse
