The annual Wiki Loves Monuments award ceremony at the Federal Monuments Office has become a family gathering of the Austrian community. Photographers and monument enthusiasts from all over the country come together to celebrate and exchange and to introduce the many new contributors to our existing community on a more personal level. Like last year, we combined the award ceremonies of our two photography contests, presenting the winners and highlights of both competitions. This year's ceremony had more attendees then ever before and also many new faces, mainly due to the fact that all WLE winners this year were newbies. Like in the last years we could see from the feedback, that apart from the actual prices and winner's certificates, the ceremony in a special and exclusive venue is an important aspect of appreciation for our volunteers. We also conducted a press campaign to promote the results of WLM and WLE in Austria.
The WikiDienstag (“WikiTuesday“) is a weekly meet-up in the WMAT office. Volunteers share their knowledge and work together on improving the content of Wikimedia projects.
Topics in December:
December 2nd: Wikipedia writing session about Weinviertel (a region in Lower Austria)
WMAT supports the WikiCup in the German-language Wikipedia with prizes. 51 editors participated in this year's competition. The WikiCup 2015 resulted in 2905 new articles and 659 revised articles.
The following articles were recognised as featured articles or good articles (articles in brackets were written within the context of the 22nd or 23rd Wikipedia Writing Competition):
The Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU) has engaged in collaborative advocacy around EU copyright reform, involving additional Wikimedia contributors and volunteers, and working closely with WMAT and other Wikimedia chapters organised in the FKAGEU and other net policy allies. One of this year's focus areas was the Freedom of Panorama (FoP) campaign: it has been one of the most engaging discussions in the legislative process so far. After the #saveFoP campaign we believe that we managed to keep it in the legislative draft, currently revised by the commission. To ensure a positive momentum around this exception remains within the European Commission and units a more targeted and personal approach was needed and a return to a more academic tone was deemed most efficient. We wrote a mini-study explaining why this is a cross-border issue for the EU and had several in camera meetings with the relevant units. Other central activities of 2015 were:
We provided an EU advocacy contact database for Wikimedians.
We established 37 new working contacts to MEPs, which resulted in ongoing consultations by volunteer Wikimedians (as qualified by meetings, email conversations, phone calls).
FKAGEU participated in all relevant EU copyright dialogues, meetings and consultations (203 events) and played an active role in all opportunities.
Additional working partnerships on EU consultancy were established and existing ones were deepened (as qualified by shared vision and goals, joint projects, joint policy statements, 2 collaboratively organized events, 20 additional volunteers engaged in advocacy activities). The 10 working partnerships included: OKFN, Creative Commons, Kennisland, Right to Research Coalition/SPARC, Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, EDRi, Amnesty International, Mozilla Foundation, EDiMA, OpenStreet Map Foundation.
Volunteer Wikimedians from EU chapters participated in the “Wikimedian in Brussels” work stipend and our EU advocacy activities: 1 volunteer Wikimedian from WMIT participated in the “Wikimedian in Brussels” work stipend. The #saveFoP campaign reshuffled the priorities and there was lack of sufficient funding for a second stipend. Therefore Romaine from the Southern Netherlands visited Brussels several times to help with activities. We also helped Robin from WMBE get a traineeship in the European Parliament.
In December the WMAT board and some staff met for the last strategy meeting of the year in Vienna. As the next WMAT board elections are only a few months away, one central topic of the meeting was the evaluation of the past term of office. The results of the analysis were subsequently compared to the last evaluation 1,5 years ago and we could see major improvements in some important areas such as the collaboration with the other chapters in the German-speaking wiki world or the general meeting productivity. Another positive outcome was the insight that we also successfully managed to keep the good things working well, i.e. the board-staff relations and the good image of the chapter within our community. However, there is also still enough room for improvement, especially concerning a clearer distribution of tasks and responsibilities within the board. Another threat is the growing number of projects and initiatives and the limited number of volunteers willing to take responsibility and ownership for them.
The presentation of the community support programs of WMAT, WMCH and WMDE in the German-language Wikipedia is perennial and rather elaborate. Editors of smaller sister projects such as Wiktionary seeking chapter support had to go to Wikipedia or to the chapters' websites in order to find information and to start a communication with the chapters' representatives. On one hand the German-language Wiktionary was a no man's land for all three chapters presence-wise, on the other hand there were established contacts with very active community members (e. g. by WMAT's hosting of the Wiktionary Conference in March 2015).
Finally WMAT, WMCH and WMDE created a clearly arranged Wikimedia support hub page in German-language Wiktionary together. This was a new and rewarding experience - starting such a collaboration from scratch helped to understand each other's processes and approaches better. The hub page consists of contact and support program information important for Wiktionary volunteers: project support, technical equipment, literature grants and travel support.
