CEE/Newsletter/October 2018/Contents/Austria report
Austria report: "#WikipediaVorOrt" – Simultaneous open house events in Austria, Germany and Switzerland
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Wikimedia Austria, Germany, and Switzerland share the support of the communities behind the German language Wikipedia and her sisters projects. While the community support has been a well coordinated effort for years, there haven't been joint efforts for outreach and newbie recruitment so far.
This year we wanted to change that and co-designed a common campaign for all three countries, promoting simultaneous local open house events in many cities across the region, where interested Wikipedia readers can meet our communities, and learn how Wikipedia & Co. work. The events were advertised with prominent banners on Wikipedia, as well as posters and flyers. The campaign was a major success - the events were packed with interested visitors from Hamburg, to Stuttgart, to Zurich. In Austria we hosted two afternoon events in Linz and Vienna with about 100 visitors in total and interested journalists from newspapers and radio. The banner achieved 587,837 page views in ten days.
Perhaps the campaign could be an interesting idea for a similar future event series between some of the CEE communities. Even without a shared language Wikipedia it is a nice way to reach out to the general public raise awareness for our work.