Nordic Wikimedia/Oslo December 2013 Meeting

Sunday, December 15, at Hotel Bondeheimen, Oslo.

• Goals and objectives of our Nordic cooperation - which areas to cooperate on, and which not. What to achieve, and for whom.
• Wikimaps Nordic, get a walkthrough of the project at organisational level, and how to cooperate along that initiative among chapters. (Susanna)
• GLAM - create a Nordic community of Wikipedians-in-residence? We presently have five WiR's in Norway, and they would probably have much more motivation by regularly having contact and get inspiration With WiR's of the other Nordic countries.
• Common events for members, maybe especially important for those who live rather close to each other (Copenhagen-Skåne, Göteborg-Oslo, Stockholm-Helsinki, etc). For example ferry seminaries. Takes up this idea for renewed discussion.
• Wiki Loves Monuments 2014. We should discuss how we can make this a bigger success in the Nordic, maybe make a common infrastructure so that Denmark and Finland can more easily "hook up" to the competition, maybe common juries, and first of all that we market the event more professionally and make the barrier to participation lower.
• Nordic dimension on Greenland, Faeroe, Iceland, Saami, Lappland, etc. We haven't done anything on these remote areas together, but it is worth discussing. WMNO will most probably go for a New Saami Project With state funding, most relevantly by employing an outreach officer.
• Any other business

Meeting minutes

Sweden: Mattias Blomgren (chairperson). Finland: Susanna Ånäs (employee). Norway: Erlend Bjørtvedt (vice Chair), Jarle Vines (Board). Denmark: -.

1 Goals and objectives of our Nordic cooperation - which areas to cooperate on, and which not. What to achieve, and for whom.

• Best practice sharing is very important across the Nordic. Yesterday's academy arouse a lot of important discussions and ideas. One other issue is how to further utilize the Yearbook. Estonia is a country that should be more involved, probably adopted into "Nordic". Also, it is highly relevant to study how Iceland, Faeroe Islands, and Greenland could be better included into the Wikimedia projects.
• Finland: Education, GLAM, topics. We also need assistance in strengthening the chapter and learning from our Sweden and Norway. It is our strategy this year to work on the topic of Education (high school, colleges and universities).
• Norway: For example, let the WiR's meet together with their institutional mentors, to a Nordic event where we can both share best practice, discuss impact, and invite institutions who do not yet have a WiR to attend the event and find out about the concept. Another important area of cooperation in the medium term, is to expand strategic scope into Education. Maybe try to adopt and enlist a university, and appeal to their academic pride in order to make them "adopt the Wikipedia" as their arena of sharing knowledge.
• Sweden: Our Education scope has so far been aiming towards high schools. We get a new Education manager from January.
• It would both more effective to do things Nordic, and probably preferable to the WMF that we do not do the same things all of us. That would induce travel costs but it will be outweighed by the reward of cooperating more and getting more benefit of scale.
• we must make it default that each chapter who have a relevant, good event or project, invite the members of each Nordic chapter as a membership offer. To attract ordinary members to events across border, one would have to cover travelling expenses. It is clearly easier and more effective to issue travelling mini-grants directly from the chapter budgets if there is room for that.
• As discussed in earlier meetings, Nordic Council funding is very important to aim at.
• We should exchange names of resource persons, both for our own projects and also for their own matching and potential cooperation.
• We will seek a secure, Nordic board room at board.chapters.wikimedia, and start a quick project to feed in information about resource persons in our boards, among members, etc related to key topics for the chapters (education, GLAM, WIR's, etc).

2 Wikimaps Nordic, get a walkthrough of the project at organisational level, and how to cooperate along that initiative among chapters. (Susanna)

• The project groups has monthly online meetings, both for the project group and for a technical group. We should have 2 steering groups. one for the content provision/input, and one for the administrative processes, contracts, etc. The most important steps now are to finish the list of participants. It could be vital to have a LOI from the chapters, and a standard contract with the GLAM institutions. The project is funded for Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia (I.e., 3 countries except Finland). There is a 6 month FTE for organizing, a 5 month FTE in addition, and a 1 month FTEs for each of 3 chapters for local coordination. There are travel costs for 2 people from each of the 3 countries. The local employee (1 month FTE) will typically assist institutions, and co-ordinate content inputs, OSM environments, etc.
• Contact persons are Susanna, Tommy (Fin), Jan Ainali (Swe), Harald Groven, Lars Alvik? (Nor), Ole Palnatoke? (Den), Rauvere (Est). We have GLAM contact persons from Denmark (2), Finland, Sweden. Each chapter should contact and mobilize each GLAM institutions. The kickoff event should be probably February 21 in Helsinki.
• The GLAM institutions should first test some case to solve technically, and thereafter develop the working tools. After this stage, the donation of maps from the institutions is vital.
• Wikimedia Norway will apply for local funds to hook on to the project.
• Wikimedia Sweden has a standard contract which is very useful towards the GLAM partners.
• Each chapter should consider to enlist a group of Wikipedia or OSM activists who are interested in maps, who could have some role further on in the project.

3 GLAM - create a Nordic community of Wikipedians-in-residence? They would probably have much more motivation by regularly having contact and get inspiration With WiR's of the other Nordic countries.

• Sweden: We aim at having more WiR's in the coming years.
• Ideas: Establish an online documentation and a network of WiR's. Share presentations and experiences on a wiki (probably META or GLAM-wiki).
• It would be preferable if we could include the indigenous peoples aspect in the cultural heritage work. There are processes among minorities for example in the Arctic to establish remote education for non-sedentary populations. The University of the Arctic is a top-down initiatives between the universities of Anchorage, Tromsø, Rovaniemi, etc. But there is also bottom-up initiatives to collaborate more between the cultural minorities around the Arctic.
• It could be possible for Nordic chapters to "adopt" language minorities in the northern areas, Arctic, northwestern Russia, etc.

• Wikimedia Norway considers to make the gender issue a strategic issue to all projects and approaches next year. The gender composition of editors is low, in the last 30 days among gender-registered users, it was 2-3% in Danish, 3-5% in Swedish, 8-10% in Finnish, 10-12% in Bokmaal, and 30-40% (Nynorsk).

4 Common events for members, maybe especially important for those who live rather close to each other (Copenhagen-Skåne, Göteborg-Oslo, Stockholm-Helsinki, etc). For example ferry seminaries. Takes up this idea for renewed discussion.

• We discussed this at FSCONS last year. One good idea is to offer members and activists an event to come together and edit, exchange ideas and tell about their Wikipedia-projects, learn about bot-production, uploading, etc. Maybe some sidetrack with WiR's, all in all a kind of "fair" or "marketplace" for wikipedians and friends. This could be in Gothenburg (incl Oslo-Copenhagen).
• We can also organize a GLAM event in Stockholm to offer for members and activists, but most relevant to Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and partly Norway (Oslo area).
• Wikimedia Sweden can be a natural hub for co-ordinating all-Nordic GLAM processes.

5 Wiki Loves Monuments 2014. We should discuss how we can make this a bigger success in the Nordic, maybe make a common infrastructure so that Denmark and Finland can more easily "hook up" to the competition, maybe common juries, and first of all that we market the event more professionally and make the barrier to participation lower.

• Finland did not join this year because we did not have the resources and agreement to throw resources into it. We do not have a washed list of heritage sites, so there was too little time to plan.
• Sweden marketed it, but the number of participants decreased, but not the number of photos. We hade a web page, postcards, some media, invitations to photo clubs, and some glam sector marketing.
• Norway's experience was a decline in participants, but not in the number of photos. The lists are very good and it makes sense to go on with WLM next year without expecting too much from it. The infrastructure is now in place so organizing is not too difficult. We consider to make the participation more open, so that one can also shoot objects that are not in the cultural register lists. This could increase participation by lowering the hurdle and effort to identify objects.
• Idea: Stage a separate childrens' category to the WLM, and try integrate that into history teaching etc, in schools.
• Idea: Stage a separate mobile phone category, uploaded by the mobile app.
• Idea: Stage a Nordic category for those countries who do not have their own competition, or a Nordic Artic category (Greenland, Iceland, Faeroe, ...).
• Idea: Do a "white spot map" of municipalities and rural areas that lack images.
• Wikimedia Norway is a natural hub to co-ordinate all-Nordic WLM processes.

6 Nordic dimension on Greenland:, Faeroe, Iceland, Saami, Lappland, etc. We haven't done anything on these remote areas together, but it is worth discussing. WMNO will most probably go for a New Saami Project With state funding, most relevantly by employing an outreach officer.

From other items above:

• It would be preferable if we could include the indigenous peoples aspect in the cultural heritage work. There are processes among minorities for example in the Arctic to establish remote education for non-sedentary populations. The University of the Arctic is a top-down initiatives between the universities of Anchorage, Tromsø, Rovaniemi, etc. But there is also bottom-up initiatives to collaborate more between the cultural minorities around the Arctic.
• It could be possible for Nordic chapters to "adopt" language minorities in the northern areas, Arctic, northwestern Russia, etc.
• Idea: Stage a Nordic category for those countries who do not have their own competition, or a Nordic Artic category (Greenland, Iceland, Faeroe, ...).
• Idea: Do a "white spot map" of municipalities and rural areas that lack images.

Separate discussions:

• Saami: WMNO will most probably apply for public funds on a Saami project, employing a project manager. There is a post-student in WMFI who edits at the Saam (user:Yupik). She also edits at Swedish and Finnish Wikipedia. The most relevant way is to approach the teachers, and encourage editing about their own culture. Wikimedia Norway and Wikimedia Finland are natural hubs to co-operate on this. In Sweden, Bengt Oberger is a contact person, he already held a training course for employees at the Saami Museum/Center in Jokkmokk, Norrbotten.

7 Any other business.

• January 1 is the "Public Domain Day", because new data and works come to the public domain at that date. That is the expiry data of IPR. There is an english Wikipedia and an external site. Wikimedia Finland would like to approach museums to donate the relevant material which now becomes free.