We are glad to resume (or rather start?) the habit of posting short monthly
reports about our activity to this list. They will also be cross-posted to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Israel.
This is the report for August 2011:
== Wikimania 2011 ==
We hosted Wikimania 2011 in Haifa. The conference was attended by over 700
attendees hailing from over 50 countries. It consisted of two pre-conference
days devoted to various meetings and workshops, three main-conference days
and a tour day. Also included were three parties. The conference got very
wide press coverage in the international and local media, and we got
excellent feedback from attendees about their satisfaction with the
conference.
== GLAM cooperations ==
* Our ongoing relationships with the National Library of Israel and the
Israel Museum (both based in Jerusalem) were boosted by Wikimania and the
special meetings we held there with Liam Wyatt as a guest. Both institutions
are now interested in having Wikimedians-in-Residence, sooner than we first
anticipated. We are now finalizing the details of these internships with
both institutions.
* We are also making progress with the limited trial of the Schwadron
Collection at the National Library of Israel, a unique collection of over
3000 portrait photographs of prominent personalities in Jewish and Zionist
history, for many of whom there are no freely licensed portraits available
at all. We received a first small batch of digitized scans from the library
and will soon start uploading and integrating them in the projects.
* Meetings were held with activists in the Haifa Historical Society, and we
hope that they will release various unique collections that they hold under
free licenses.
== Academic cooperations ==
* The Faculty of Humanities at Haifa University is interested in assignments
involving writing and expanding Wikipedia articles for its students. A
couple of courses, specifically in history and in archaeology, are scheduled
to have such coursework in the coming semester. We will provide workshops
and guidance both to university faculty and students, as well as online
tutoring of these student editors, to guide them in the specific style of
Wikipedia, and the differences between regular academic assignments and this
wiki-based one.
== Israeli Arab sector ==
Also boosted by Wikimania, are a first few connections between WMIL and Arab
Israeli like-minded organizations. We have held a couple of meetings. A
first-of-its-kind lecture/workshop about Wikipedia in the Arab Israeli
sector is planned to be held in Nazareth in the coming weeks.
== Gender gap ==
Following the participation of the deputy mayor of Haifa at the WikiChicks
lunch at Wikimania, a meeting is scheduled for this week with the mayor's
adviser on gender issues, and we hope it will yield some real-world
projects.
== Secretariat ==
* Three new members joined WMIL, inspired by Wikimania. A few more expressed
interest and have joined our mailing list.
* We are moving our chapter wiki and our blog to a new server, and
refurbishing both.
Sincerely,
Harel Cain
Secretary, Wikimedia Israel