Wikimedia South Africa/WLMMeeting1

Find below the report of our meeting with Western Cape heritage officials on Friday, 4 May 2012.

WLM Report 1

Lourie presented the ZA chapter, Maarten presented the competition, and Scott explained a preliminary GLAM type project.

The board was very interested in the competition itself. Of course they appreciate a competition that promotes and highlights monuments in the Western Cape. They will give us an endorsement. We can use this to secure the grant, make contact with other organisations and firms and so forth.

It was less sure if they were interested to consider the WLM competition as one of their activities during Heritage Month. This also means it's not sure if they want to help in organising "real life" events like the upload marathon on Heritage Day. However, Andrew Hall, our contact with the organisation was on our side and he was pushing the board to make this decision. So we guess this will be okay. We will know the exact details after our next meeting, which is still to be scheduled.

It was also not sure if they wanted to help us convincing other provinces and the national agency (SAHRA) to get involved in the project. This means that we need to extend our action outside of the Western Cape, and we have to start this ourselves. We would therefore need members from the other provinces to go and see the heritage departments of their provinces. Luckily Andrew said that they will provide us with the contact details of the other provinces, and Dumisani Ndubane already volunteered to talk to the Gauteng representatives.

But hey, these are only extras. The board was really interested in the competition and what we can accomplish. We have their full support; they committed to a formal partnership with Wikimedia ZA should this proposal get approved by the board. We believe that this partnership will ease the task of securing funding from other entities and support in general. We have a really positive feeling about this project!

Below are the project management details:

• WLM (Competition itself and project lead): Lourie and Maarten.
• External (Talking to cellphone companies, trying to get sponsorships, and promotion of the event): Big responsibility, Isla and Dumisani.
• Social Development: Dumisani already volunteered. We will also ask Charlene.
• GLAM: Douglas.
• Offline events: Tbd, but this could be Andrew Hall? We will discuss this with him next time.