This week the Foundation is excited to be releasing four separate videos shot at the recent Wikimania Conference in Gdansk, Poland. The first video 'Username' is now posted on the WM Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_User_Name_MEDIUM.ogv
Later today the Foundation will be releasing the videos on a few other platforms as well, specifically to increase public visibility:
http://www.facebook.com/wikipediahttp://identi.ca/wikipediahttp://www.youtube.com/wikimediafoundationhttp://vimeo.com/wmfoundation/
I'll be posting more about the links on the Wikimedia blog later this morning (San Francisco time) blog.wikimedia.org
And maybe some others.
What are these videos?
They were originally produced to complement the public outreach work going on now (and in the future) and to provide a short, energetic clip for folks to use in all sorts of presentations. A very good example of that would be in Sue's keynote presentation from Wikimania, which some of you may have seen. We hope everyone in the movement may find them useful, and we're particularly hopeful that they can be easily localized and shared even more widely. They shed a new light on the passionate people behind our projects.
Who made them?
The clips were created for the Wikimedia Foundation (led mostly by Communications and Public Outreach) by a team that's been working with the Foundation over the past year. They were directed by Jelly Helm, produced by Noah Stanik, shot by DP Reed Harkness, and edited by Sarah Marcus. The music is by Portland, Oregon based musician Matt Carey. The Germany-based film production crew Living Colour was an essential partner in bringing everything together at the shoot in Gdansk, Poland, and Fenton Communications, who have been supporting the Foundation over the past year, were our agency partners in pulling this project together. We also owe the organizers of 2010's Wikimania conference a great deal of thanks for helping us sort out the production on the ground and for letting us borrow participants for short interviews.
What's next?
The remaining clips will be posted on Commons and other video sharing sites through Friday. Once they're all announced we'll share another note with all of the links. You can follow the progress and hear what the public thinks on identi.ca and twitter. We hope to see the videos make an appearance in media and other blogs too.
Hope you enjoy!
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw
*Wikipedia Goes To Africa -- Israeli Students to Leave for Humanitarian Work
in Africa, Equipped With Portable Static Wikipedia*
*Ben-Gurion University's "Africa Center", Wikimedia Israel, and Hamakor
cooperate in making free knowledge accessible in Africa*
The Africa Center at BGU, headed by Dr. Tamar Golan, annually sends a group
of students on a three-month humanitarian expedition to developing countries
in Africa. This year's group is going to the Repbulic of Benin and the
Republic of Cameroon.
Learning about this while approaching the Africa Center for help with
developing Africa-related entries on the Hebrew Wikipedia, Wikimedia Israel
decided to equip the students with computers running free software and
containing an offline (static) version of the French Wikipedia, so that the
students can bring free knowledge to Africans without access to the
Internet.
Wikimedia Israel reached out to Hamakor, the Israeli Free and Open Source
Software NGO, and Hamakor helped obtain computer donations, refurbished them
and installed the Linux operating system on them.
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," explained Asaf Bartov, who coordinated the project in Wikimedia
Israel, "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.
Itzik Edri
Spokesman, Wikimedia Israel
FYI - see the link below for Wikimedia Argentina's September bulletin.
Highlights include:
* The chapter just celebrated its three year anniversary -- congratulations! :-)
* A new version of the outreach brochure "Wikipedia en el aula"
("Wikipedia in the classroom"), which can be downloaded from:
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Publicaciones
It's very nicely done -- I encourage you to check it out :-)
* The work done to recognize the bicentenary of Argentina's
independence revolution, which includes a PDF collection of articles
and many spoken versions:
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Bicentenario
* Ongoing efforts around policy advocacy and content partnerships/digitization.
All best,
Erik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patricio Lorente <patricio.lorente(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2010/9/9
Subject: [Wikimedia Chapters Reports] Fwd: report of Wikimedia Argentina
To: chapters-reports(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear friends:
You can find the english version of the monthly report of Wikimedia Argentina in
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Bolet%C3%ADn_informativo/Septiembre_2010/en
Patricio Lorente
--
Patricio Lorente
Mensajería Instantánea: patricio_lorente(a)jabber.org
Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar
_______________________________________________
Chapters-reports mailing list
Chapters-reports(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
FYI, also posted to the Wikimedia tech blog at:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/09/1033/
(EPM stands for Engineering Program Manager.)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Danese Cooper <dcooper(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2010/9/14
Subject: [Wikitech-l] [Announce]: Mark Bergsma promotion to Operations
Engineer Programs Manager
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Please join me in congratulating Mark Bergsma on his promotion last week
to Operations EPM. Mark has been a volunteer since 2004, and a paid
Network Engineer on our team since August 2006. He's been helping us
with our extreme scaling issues (by debugging and tuning our Squid
setup, creating our Netherlands caching center, and generally developing
our network strategy) since the very beginning. For some time now Mark
has been unofficially in charge of managing the entire Ops Team's
deliverables including designing and implementing our new Primary Data
Center in Ashburn, VA, and the other Ops activities mentioned at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_Projects>. Mark has expressed an
interest in gaining some experience with people management skills as a
logical next step in his career, and to that end we will gradually add
direct reports under Mark over the next year, starting with the Data
Center Ops crew. He will continue to report to me until we hire a
Director of Technical Operations.
I know you will do all you can to support Mark in his new role.
Danese Cooper
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
FYI, the report for Wikimedia Hong Kong for July and August. The
"education toolkit" referenced below is a media literacy project
targeting high schools in Hong Kong; you can read more about the grant
here (we funded it at a reduced budget of $10,000):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_HK/Education_Toolkits_For_Liberal_…
All best,
Erik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeromy-Yu Maximilian Chan <yuyu(a)wikimedia.hk>
Date: 2010/9/11
Subject: [Wikimedia Chapters Reports] Wikimedia Hong Kong Report for
Jul-Aug 2010
To: WM Chapters Reprots <chapters-reports(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Jul-Aug 2010 Monthly Report
Wikimedia Hong Kong
Ref: WMHK/DIR01/MM/001E
This is the chapters report for Wikimedia Hong Kong, Jul - Aug 2010. I
apologize for the perious long time silence. If you have any
questions, please approach us directly.
Anniversary Conference 2010
This is our third Anniversary Conference, an annual public outreach
event we maintained since 2007. This is year we set the event as a
kick start of our WMF-funded project, the Education Toolkits For
Liberal Studies. With the help and support from ISOC-HK and the Hong
Kong Council of Social Service, we are able to had such meeting in HRH
Duke of Windsor Service Building, a prime conference location in
town. In the meeting Dr. Chitat Chan, our chapter’s advisor, and John
Chan from our partner group in the LS toolkit project, 3 teachers
group. We had clarified our goal and defined the strategy for the
project.
Photos of the event:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeromyu/sets/72157624394600259/
Education Toolkits For Liberal Studies
This is a WMF-funded project, and from the anniversary conference, our
partners and us agreed that we should involved teachers who currently
teaching the subject. So we kept on the strategic preparation for the
platform to bring the teachers together.
Preparation for annual fundraising
Preparation for this years fundraiser had started much earlier this
year, and several things are in progress:
- unlock our Paypal account by gaining charity status
- moving bank account to HSBC
- seeking gov’t approval to set up fundraising stalls in downtown streets
- preparation for selling Alpaca(Caonima) stamp in the fundraising
period (special thx to Argentine Chapter)
Wikimedia Asia Conference
Negotiated with dot Asia organization and ISOC-HK, we may facilitate
an option for Wikimedia Asia Project, that we might collocate the
conference with their APRICOT-APAN 2011. We still need a consensus
from the Asian Chapters to make the conference a reality.
General assembly
4th General Assembly was held in June, 1st Council, which provides
check and balance to the directory, was elected. Councillors were
inaugurated in June, in their first assembled, when the annual plan
and budget of the chapter presented by the Directory was also
approved.
Coming up
18-Sept 5th Anniversary re-do of the First WIkipedian’s Meetup in Hong Kong
Sept,Oct Focus groups with liberal studies teachers
--
Jerry~雨雨
Jeromy-Yu Maximilian Chan, ARAD
President, Wikimedia Hong Kong
Member, Chapters Committee, Wikimedia Foundation
Member, Communications Committee, Wikimedia Foundation
User:Yuyu | zh.wikipedia | jeromyu.info
MSN: jeromyuchan(a)msn.com
also Jeromyu on twitter, plurk and most of places
Tel (Mobile): +852 9279 1601
Laudamus quae laudentur
Qui mollis et dissolutus est in opere suo frater est sua opera dissipantis.
Non clamatis hostilia, numquam esse vos accusatoribus.
_______________________________________________
Chapters-reports mailing list
Chapters-reports(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Sent on behalf of Zack Exeley, and cross posted to:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/15/wikimedia-foundation-fellowship-p…
>
> Today I am pleased to announce the Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellows program, a project of the Foundation’s Community Department. This program is partly something the Foundation has been considering for a long time and partly an outgrowth of the recent Community Department open hiring call. In reading through the nearly 2,000 submissions to the open call, we realized that there are far more qualified members of the Wikimedia community than we can ever hire at one time. We also realized that the most promising submissions came from people who were interested in working on specific problems or opportunities in the movement rather than looking for permanent staff positions.
> Therefore, the Fellows program is intended to create an environment where individuals and teams can concentrate full-time on important problems and opportunities in Wikimedia projects and the movement as a whole. Fellows will lead intensive, time-limited projects focused on key areas of risk and opportunity — projects that require the support of the Foundation to succeed.
> We are currently looking for Fellows among those who have already answered the open hiring call and we will also be posting a form for submitting new Fellowship applications soon. In addition to Wikimedia volunteers, we would like to engage outside academics and professionals who have expertise that could benefit our projects.
> Each Fellowship will have its own objectives that require a unique skill set. The length of the Fellowships at the Wikimedia Foundation will vary from weeks to as long as a year, depending on the requirements of the project. A handful of Fellows may eventually join the Foundation staff permanently. However, the purpose of the program is to take charge of vital work that may not require a long-term position but which volunteers have not previously dealt with successfully.
> Along with introducing what will be a continuing Wikimedia Foundation program, we’d like to welcome the first Fellow in the Community Department: Steven Walling. Steven represents exactly what we’d hoped to attract through this process: talented Wikimedians who have a knack for crafting clear theories about how Wikimedia communities operate and how they can be supported. Steven’s previous experience as a freelance writer, blogger, and community manager make him an excellent choice to pilot this program. Steven is beginning a year-long Fellowship, during which he will work on multiple projects. He will be blogging about his projects as he continues.
> We are deeply excited about the possibilities for the Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship program. Bringing in talented individuals who have specific projects in mind will allow us all to ask questions and solve problems that were previously out of reach for either volunteers or staff. I hope you’ll join us in welcoming Steven and more new Wikimedia Foundation Fellows as they are announced.
> Zack Exley,
> Chief Community Officer
FYI. Liam Wyatt has championed Wikimedia's relationships with cultural
institutions, and has led key initiatives like the British Museum's
"Wikipedian in Residence" program in June 2010 (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/BM ). Please see his
announcement below regarding an important event hat will take place in
London in November. Hope some of you will be able to make it there. :-)
Erik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2010/9/14
Subject: [cultural-partners] Announcing GLAM-WIKI:UK
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org,
chapters-cultural-partners(a)wikimedia.ch, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: board(a)wikimedia.org.uk, Matthew Cock <MCOCK(a)thebritishmuseum.ac.uk>
Dear WikimediaUK, Cultural Partnerships & Foundation-l mailing lists,
On behalf of Wikimedia UK I am pleased to formally announce the second
edition of the GLAM-WIKI conference - this time to be held in London at the
British Museum on the 26th and 27th of November. The purpose of this
conference is to bring the UK and European GLAM sector [gallery, library,
archive & museum] into direct conversation with the Wikimedia community so
we can build a better understanding of our common purpose - sharing culture
- and how to assist each to best do that. After all, we are here for the
same reason, for the same people, in the same medium so we might as well do
it together :-)
As the British Museum will be generously hosting this event, and today marks
the anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone (hence today's
Feature Article on the English Wikipedia), we thought it would be an
auspicious time to declare that registration is now open. The registration
price for Wikimedians is £20.
You can read all the details at:
*http://glamwiki.org* <http://glamwiki.org>
and the WM-UK blogpost just published:
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2010/09/announcing-registration-now-open-for-g…
Wikimedia France will be hosting edition three of GLAM-WIKI one week later
in December at the *Assemblée nationale* in Paris, and Wikimedia Australia
hosted edition one last year at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, so
we're in good company.
Keynote speakers at this conference will be:
- Author, activist, blogger and London local *Cory
Doctorow<http://craphound.com/>
*
- Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation *Sue
Gardner<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner>
*
- Director of the Columbia University copyright advisory office *Dr.
Kenneth Crews<http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/about/director-and-staff/>
*
And many other presenters besides! Some are already listed on the conference
page and many more will be announced by
@wikimediaUK<http://twitter.com/wikimediauk>
Wikimedians from the UK and further afield are invited to register for this
conference. If you are in contact with professionals in the GLAM sector,
please mention this event to them too. Moreover, if you would like to come
and moderate a session please write to me directly with your proposed
session.
If you have any questions you can write to me privately, leave them on the
event's talkpage or reply on the mailing list.
Sincerely,
Liam [[witty lama]]
Convener, GLAM-WIKI:UK & Wikipedian in Residence, British Museum
wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
_______________________________________________
Chapters-cultural-partners mailing list
Chapters-cultural-partners(a)wikimedia.ch
http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/chapters-cultural-partners
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi folks,
I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has just hired
its first-ever Chief Talent and Culture Officer. Cyn Skyberg will
begin work with us this coming Monday, September 13. She'll report to
me.
As CTCO, Cyn will have two major first priorities: to help the
Wikimedia Foundation's hiring managers recruit amazing staff
(including key new positions such as the director of operations [1]
and the national program director for India [2]), and to continue the
work of creating and entrenching a staff culture that fits inside the
bigger Wikimedia culture and shares its values of independence,
openness, community, transparency and diversity. In this work, she'll
be supported by Daniel Phelps, the Wikimedia Foundation's Human
Resources Manager.
This is a really important job, and as I worked through the hiring
process it became clear that I needed to find someone unusually
creative and flexible, with a real passion for understanding and
supporting people in voluntary online communities. Cyn stands out as
exactly that.
For the past five years, Cyn has worked at Linden Labs, the
organization behind Second Life. There, she held a series of
increasingly-responsible positions culminating in Vice President of
Partnerships -- all of which included responsibility for the Second
Life user community. Both the Second Life and Wikimedia communities
are known for being iconoclastic and independent of spirit – nobody is
exactly like us, LOL, but I think that Cyn's experience at Second Life
will nonetheless help equip her to do well in our world :-)
And, Linden is pretty much identical in age to the Wikimedia
Foundation, and went through a massive growth spurt during Cyn's time
there, which has I think enabled her to understand and navigate the
challenges and opportunities that come with growth and change. She has
done lots of recruiting, including outside the United States: during
her time at Linden she hired in the UK, Germany, Australia, the
Netherlands, France, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Singapore.
She also incorporated an outsourced group in Newcastle, and was the
executive sponsor of Linden's Brighton office. And, she worked with
other Linden executives to develop Linden's internal culture,
including its employee and mentorship programs.
Prior to Linden, Cyn worked in museums: first at the Santa Barbara
Museum of Natural History where she worked with the Anthropology
department and managed the retail operations, followed by running the
retail organizations (including managing both paid staff and
volunteers) at the Portland Art Museum and the San Jose Museum of Art.
Cyn has a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology from the
University of California (Santa Barbara). While at Linden she
developed an interest in helping organizations focus on individual
empowerment and collaboration, and she's now about to receive a
master's degree in organizational psychology from The Chicago School
of Professional Psychology.
I am delighted Cyn will be joining us: please help me welcome her. But
-- she doesn't yet have a Wikimedia e-mail address, and she's not yet
subscribed to our mailing lists. So maybe wait for Monday :-)
I'd also like to take a second to thank the people who helped with the
hiring process --- including Erik, Veronique, Barry, Danese, Zack,
Daniel, Jay, Bill, Tomasz, Sal Giambanco of the Omidyar Network and HR
consultant Jane Creech. And of course my thanks to our recruitment
firm m|Oppenheim, who –as always-- did a terrific job.
I also want to particularly thank Veronique, who's been handling the
HR portfolio, with Daniel, to date. When Veronique first joined us, a
lot of HR basics were missing -- such as health insurance and a
retirement savings plan, vacation allotments, and procedures for
hiring staff and evaluating performance. Veronique has done a great
job looking after the Wikimedia Foundation's HR needs, and I'm
grateful to her for it.
Thanks,
Sue
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Director_of_Technical_Oper…
[2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/National_Program_Director,…
--
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
<forwarding to the announce list>
Hello,
This is a quick update on recent and pending Board work. I intend to
send these out on a regular basis, including the work of Board
committees.
== Summer meetings ==
In July, the Board held its summer meeting in Gdańsk before Wikimania.
We discussed internal Board committees, movement roles, and the last
stage of the strategic plan. We agreed to try out a revised meeting
schedule this year, with additional IRC meetings and just three
in-person meetings, as well as a possible retreat (this would be the
first one in four years -- we would
finally need to disambiguate [[m:Board retreat]] ).
We said goodbye and a hearty thank you to Michael Snow, and welcomed
our new chapters-selected trustee, Phoebe Ayers. New officers were
elected. And the Trustees spent more time enjoying Wikimania than
has happened in recent memory - less overbooking, more time
participating in sessions.... a welcome change.
On August 31, we held the first IRC meeting of the fiscal year, to
review and discuss broad targets for the strategic plan. Minutes of
that meeting will be posted shortly.
At the same time, we also approved the formation of Wikimedia Eesti.
Welcome to the Estonian chapter! This chapter has the distinction of
having received approval without translating any of their core
documents into English. (While I like this, I hope that ee. editors
will find time to update the Estonian pages on Meta to reflect the
current state of the projects, in the language of their choice...)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Eestihttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_Estonian_Wikipedia
You can read the latest minutes and resolutions here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/July_8,_2010http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
== Upcoming meetings ==
The next meeting of the Board will be in San Francisco, October 8-9.
The agenda will include a review of the final version of the five-year
strategic plan, and the controversial content study facilitated by
Robert Harris. Comments and suggestions on this and future meetings
are welcome:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Board_meetings
Finally, there will be an informal open Wikimedia meeting Saturday,
September 11 on IRC, with our two newest Trustees.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_meetings#September_2010
On behalf of the Board,
Sam
--
Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj
Hello all,
sent on Sue's behalf. We're working through the April/May/June backlog
for historical completeness, but wanted to share this new report upon
completion. We should be returning to predicable production frequency
now.
I'd also like to invite you to help get the word out about this
report, to start disseminating it to a wider audience. There's a wiki
version at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_July_2010
which you can share, help improve, translate, wikify. :-)
All best,
Erik
WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION REPORT - JULY 2010
HIGHLIGHTS
1) Wikimedia community, staff and board attend Wikimania 2010 in
Gdansk, Poland. 70 travel scholarships were awarded to recipients in
39 countries.
2) Beginning of the new fiscal year. New hiring plan underway.
First-ever open call for community fellowship and residency
applications.
3) Catalyst grants awarded to Wikimedia chapter organizations in nine countries
4) Planning continues for new data center in Virginia
WIKIMANIA 2010
More than 300 Wikimedians gathered in Gdansk, Poland, for the sixth
Wikimania conference. The Wikimedia Foundation awarded 70 travel
scholarships to Wikimedians from 39 countries -- greatly expanding on
past years' scholarship programs. There were many side meetings in
which contributors to fledgling Wikimedia projects shared experiences,
encourgaged each other, and met with Wikimedia Foundation board and
staff, as well as like-minded organizations.
New Wikimedians, new board members, and new staff were welcomed by
Wikimania regulars. A great line up of presentations and discussions
delved into new and long standing questions about community health,
project governance, growth and new technology. Many Wikimedia
Foundation staff members gave presentations.
Our communications team carried our first major video production
effort focused on capturing the stories of Wikimedians on the
sidelines of Wikimania. They interviewed 35 people and the final
videos are forthcoming.
Wikimania 2010 program:
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule
Photos:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2010
Community report in the Wikipedia Signpost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-07-12/News_a…
DATA, TRENDS AND FINANCIALS
The monthly report card for July 2010 can be found at:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_07_detailed.html
Global unique visitors:
360 million (-5% compared to previous month / + 21.9% compared to
previous year)
Page requests:
13.1 billion (-6% compared to previous month / + 27.2% compared to
previous year)
July 1, 2010 is the beginning of the 2010-11 Financial Year. The
Annual Plan can be found at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports
Operating Revenue Budget: USD 20.4MM
Operating Expense Budget: USD 20.4MM
Operating revenue for July: USD 160K vs. plan of USD 188K
Operating expenses July: USD1.3MM vs. plan of USD 1.6MM
Unrestricted cash on hand as of mid August: USD 11.0MM
The underspend in July is primarily due to underspending in capital
expenditures and internet hosting (those were budgeted evenly over the
year but will actually start lower and increase throughout the year)
and underspending related to personnel. This was partially offset by
overages related to Wikimania funding and WikiSym sponsorship and
timing of Wikimania scholarships.
The review of global unique visitors and pageviews shows the normal
June/July seasonal drop during sommer months.
Wikimedia Foundation data analyst Erik Zachte has created a series of
new reports on revert trends (how frequently are changes undone),
which he also presented at Wikimania. The relevant blog post can be
found at:
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2010/08/wikistats-reports-on-article-revert-tren…
The data, for example for the English language Wikipedia, can be found at:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/EditsRevertsEN.htm
In coming months, we hope to gain a better understanding of the
relationship between revert trends and editing trends: Do revert
ratios predict editing activity? We invite the research community to
help us in the sensemaking process.
An additional set of reports was prepared by Erik Zachte to capture
pageviews and editing activity by country-of-origin:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportsCountriesLanguagesV…
Particularly noticeable is the relatively high percentage of edits
from European countries, as well as the strong correspondence between
the percentage of pageviews and the percentage of edits from the
Global South, which suggests that scaling our reach in the Global
South will also help us to gain more participants in those countries.
Other notes and obervations:
* It is instructive to review the "movers and shakers" section of page
requests, which shows that Indonesian, Korean, and Russian Wikipedia
have seen the strongest growth over the last year.
* A recent data loss issue on the logging server has been fixed.
Previously logged pageview data has been corrected based on an
estimate of the data loss. Months affected by the data loss are grayed
out in the report card.
* We've received more detailed reports from PediaPress about sales of
books using the book tool (compile Wikipedia articles into a printed
book), and will share some of this data soon. Highlights: From May
through July, PediaPress shipped 1,671 printed books to 981 buyers in
46 countries. 38% of books were sold to Germany and 28% to the United
States. The feature was also used to generate approximately 85,000 PDF
files per day.
HUMAN RESOURCES
In July, we added 1 permanent hire (Barry Newstead, Chief Global
Development Officer) and 2 temporary employees (Alolita Sharma,
Engineering Program Manager, and Arthur Richards, Fundraising
Engineer). Stewardship Associate Anya Shyrokova resigned from her
position with Wikimedia to attend graduate school.
The hiring of Barry Newstead as Chief Global Development Officer and
Zack Exley as Chief Community Officer was announced in June. Please
refer to the press release for more information:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/June_2010_Wikimedia_Foun…
Total employee count:
Plan: 51, Actual: 49
TECHNOLOGY
1) New Data Center
We are building out an additional data center location for safe
failover in the event that our current primary facility in Tampa,
Florida suffers a major downtime. In July, we've been collecting rough
bids from hosting vendors we met in our June visit to Ashburn, VA.
We have submitted requirements to a potential major equipment donor
and attended meetings to support their consideration of whether to
give us machines as an in-kind donation. We have enough budget
earmarked to purchase these machines, but are looking for donations so
we can repurpose any savings.
2) Project overview
A full overview of projects that the engineering team has been working
on through much of July and August can be found at:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/09/wmf-engineering/
Here are some highlights:
- Resource Loader - Planning and requirements gathering for an
enhanced capability to handle JavaScript loading in MediaWiki in
support of deployment of new functionality, including the new media
upload wizard for Wikimedia Commons.
- Article Assessment, AKA "Rate This Article" - Requirements gathering
for a pilot of this capability, tied to the Public Policy Initiative
- Pending Changes - Half-way through trial deployment of this feature
for the English Wikipedia, which was formerly called "Flagged
Revisions".
- Liquid Threads - A new discussion system. Working on UI redesign,
which was presented at Wikimania.
- Vector Phase V - Final rollout of new default look and feel for
Wikimedia properities (already deployed on all of the large sites)
scheduled for early September. This change will complete the rollout
of the Vector project.
Wikimedians interested in what we are working on should watch the wiki
pages mentioned in the tech blog entry.
3) Visits and planned meetings
- Student contractors - Over the summer, most of our student
contractors made visits to the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San
Francisco.
- Hackathon - Planning a 2-day public event to get together the WMF
Tech Staff with volunteer engineers for an old-fashioned face-to-face
coding sprint. This meeting will be formally announced in September
and will take place in October this year on the East Coast of the US.
- Data Summit - Planning an invitational meeting to discuss plans
related to how data is organized, displayed, captured and analyzed on
WMF properties. Keeping the invite list small, but interested parties
should apply to danese at wikimedia dot org for an invite.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
Overall, the Global Development (GD) team is still very much in its
formative stages with the CGDO coming on board in July. We are
focused on building the team with active or soon-to-be active searches
for key positions including Chapter Development Director, National
Program Director for India, Senior Research Analyst, Global Product
Merchandise, Movement Communications and Program Assistant.
In July, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees approved the
formation of a chapter in India. The Indian team is now moving forward
to secure the legal registration of the chapter.
We did make significant progress on the first stage of chapter grant
making with grants approved for 9 chapters (Argentina, Switzerland,
Hungary, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Czech Republic,
Ukraine, New York) and a grant to support the formation of a chapter
in South Africa. We have increased our budget available for grants
this year. For more information about the grant-making process and the
submitted grants and reports, please see:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index
The Wikimedia blog (http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/07/) featured
postings from volunteer Liam Wyatt on his internship at the British
Museum, updates to the Google translation toolkit, changes to the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the approval of the Indian
chapter, the first ever open call for community fellowship and
residency applicants, and a summary of a Wikimedia and free culture
community event in Germany called Skill Share.
COMMUNICATIONS
The communication team carried out Foundation's first major video
production project. The project interviewed over 35 wikpedians and is
the Foundation first series of videos intended to shed light on the
Wikimedia community. The videos will debut in September 2010.
* Major issues and media-interest topics:
** Gov't edits to Wikipedia articles rattle Canadian politicians (July 29)
http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/computers+used+alter+Wiki…
** Wikipedia tops in customer service (July 20)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-20/facebook-ranks-in-bottom-5-in-c…
** Wikipedia bottoms in collecting user-data (July 30)
http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk/2010/07/30/wikipediaorg/
Media contact through the reporting period:
July 2010
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#July_2010
Please also see the detailed weekly news summaries by the Wikipedia Signpost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-07-05/In_the…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-07-12/In_the…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-07-19/In_the…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-07-26/In_the…
COMMUNITY DEPARTMENT
The Community Department launched an "open call" for submissions by
people interested in working on community-facing projects. There were
almost 2,000 submissions, many very promising, who were and are being
evaluated for fellowship and residency positions at the Wikimedia
Foundation. The open call brought us in contact with many active
Wikimedians outside of the circle of well known voices and many women
and candidates from the Global South.
The public policy initiative held several in-person meetings, events
and trainings around the country of professors, student volunteers and
Wikimedians to build out the organization for the first semester.
Community staff working on the fundraiser established a volunteer
fundraising committee of Wikimedians from around the world to help
drive the 2010 fundraiser, as well as working through many other
preparations for the fundraiser.
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
During July, the Wikimedia Foundation received 762 donations, with a
combined total value of USD 64,292. July is the beginning of the
Wikimedia Foundation's fiscal year; this year's Community Give and
Major Gifts target is USD 16,500,000. Combined with the USD 3,500,000
goal for Partnerships and Foundation related activiteis brings the
total Fundraising related goal for the year to USD 20,000,000.
LEGAL
Mike conducted ongoing work identifying and interviewing legal
resources for Wikimedia UK, to support the process of obtaining
charitable status.
We've been in contact with both the Apple and Android app stores to
ask their assistance in policing trademark-infringing apps. We're also
working independently with Apple to conclude a pre-existing legacy
agreement and develop a new contractual relationship regarding
Wikimedia trademark use in Apple products.
In July we re-engaged a charity-specialist attorney, first to help
identify the right path to organizing fundraising and other activities
in India, and later to help with other fundraising/chapter issues. We
confirmed that there are ongoing structural issues, particularly in
Europe, with transferring charitable funds to WMF -- we're looking for
holistic, comprehensive ways of resolving these issues.
VISITORS AND GUESTS
In July, the following people visited the Wikimedia Foundation offices
for meetings and talks: Kathy Nicholson, Program Officer with the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Travis Kriplean and Jonathan
Morgan, HCI Researchers at the University of Washington, Craig Newmark
of Craigslist, and 20 attendees from a conference on direct democracy,
most of whom were visiting from Europe.
EXECUTIVE BLOG
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner launched her
personal blog in July, starting with two blog posts:
"Why Wikimedia’s new revenue strategy makes me happy"
http://suegardner.org/2010/07/17/hello-world/
"If You Have These Five Characteristics Wikimedia Wants to Hire You"
http://suegardner.org/2010/07/25/if-you-have-these-five-characteristics-wik…
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate