The reason we applied for the Hackathon was to grow our local tech community, to create a momentum that sparks interest to volunteer for Wikimedia in like-minded tech communities in Austria, but also the DACH and CEE regions. Our vision was to create a welcoming atmosphere with learning spaces, which enable newcomers and old hand Wikimedia developers to learn from and with each other. Since we had two years of intense preparation, we could not only develop a deeper understanding of what makes a good Wikimedia Hackathon, but to create a vision for this event that goes beyond what has been done so far, that supports our goals and provides innovation and best practices for the the wider movement. To prepare our newcomers, we hosted two preparation workshops (one for female and non-binary coders only, and one for all genders) in Austria but also encouraged and supported pre-events in four CEE countries (Greece, Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and invited newcomers from all those communities to join us for the main Hackathon in Vienna.
The heart of our main event was a mentoring program which was inspired by successful similar approaches of like-minded tech communities and paired experienced Wikimedians with developers new to the Wikiverse and provided concrete ideas and guidance for projects to work on. The results exceeded our expectations: An overwhelming number of Wikimedians were willing to commit to spending their Hackathon mentoring others. Despite of the fact that it was one of the biggest hackathons regarding the number of participants, the atmosphere was cosy and intimate, with an all-time high percentage of female/non-binary participants. At the same time it was the most productive Hackathon in terms of numbers of projects showcased, showing that inclusivity vs productivity at an event is not necessarily a zero sum game. The biggest compliment however, was the positive feedback from newcomers and old hands alike, with some of the newcomers who have high standards regarding inclusive events and communities they would like to invest their time for proactively reaching out to thank us for the successful weekend and some quite seasoned Wikimedia Hackathon veterans claiming that this has been the best Wikimedia Hackathon so far. A detailed report on the outcomes can be found on our hackathon report page.
We put a lot of work and effort into an extensive documentation of our concept and experiences by reorganizing existing materials and creating a handbook for hackathon organizers. We believe future tech events, but also other hands-on events such as edit-a-thons, can and should build on the things we tried at the Vienna hackathon, and further refine it.
Of the 257 participants (without organizers) 197 (76%) were male, 51 (20%) female and 9 others (4%) or preferred not to say . 42 (16%) were Austrians and 215 (84%) foreigners. 10 (24%) of the 42 Austrian participants were female. 5 of 6 organizers were female. 230 (88%) of 262 participants and organizers were either female or Non-Austrians or both. 56 people participated in the mentoring program, 20 of them were new users.
1203 new media files were uploaded into the event's category on Wikimedia Commons; they are used on 23 different pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects (date: 2017-06-30). During the hackathon (from 19 May 2017, 10 am UTC+1 to 21 May 2017, 5 pm UTC+1) the participants created 2216 new pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects.
WMAT is part of a lively open data scene in Vienna which emerged around the Open Data Portal and our regular data meet-ups. Hosting the Wikimedia Hackathon gave us the opportunity to introduce this community to the international Wikimedia community, especially it's open data enthusiasts. Hence we planned our regular data drinks event for the evening before the main Hackathon started and invited international Wikimedians who already arrived in Vienna to this as a fringe event on Thursday evening. It was also an opportunity to visit the well-known Hackspace metalab and get to know local coders. The program was a mixture of introductory presentations about Wikimedia and Wikidata, a current data science project around Wikidata and many spontaneous lightning talks by the participants.
The "Wartungsbausteinwettbewerb" is a contest for removing cleanup templates in the German-language Wikipedia. It is held four times a year. WMAT supports the contest by donating prizes, e. g. Wikipedia chocolate bars. The Spring 2017 edition had 34 participants who edited in teams or by themselves. The competition resulted in 777 improved Wikipedia articles.
The edit-a-thon in the city of Eisenstadt was part of a university course by Dr. Herbert Brettl at the Burgenland University of Education (PH Burgenland). The participants were 18 students, all of them were new users and 11 of them were female. During the edit-a-thon, which was organized and conducted by the Wikimedian K@rl, the students improved the Wikipedia article de:Kurt-Werner Schulz about the last fatality of the Cold War.
The event at WMAT's office was a follow-up to the Art+Feminism edit-a-thon in Graz and an attempt to keep the participants and newcomers involved in Wikimedia activities. The retention rate of 20% which was satisfying given that the edit-athon took place in another city. Many participants who could not join this time also expressed interest to come to a future follow-up event. We were also happy to see that the topic attracted exisiting community members from Vienna - both male and female - who did not attend the Graz edit-a-hon and wanted to contribute to gender gap related activities. As the CEE spring was still in full swing we made articles about notable CEE women (e.g. Türkân Akyol, Leyla Yunus, Teresa Feoderovna Ries) the focus of this evening.
The event was organized by Wikimedian Ki7sun3. It was attended by 5 participants. 3 of the participants and organizers were female. The evening resulted in 3 new articles and 22 improved articles in the German-language and French-language Wikipedia.
Techniques of historical science (Geschichtswissenschaftliche Arbeitstechniken in German) is course for future historians at the University of Vienna, held by Prof. Christopher Treiblmayr and Prof. Andrea Brait. We were invited for a lecture on Wikipedia and its similarities and differences with (historical) science. It was attended by 22 students, 8 of them were female and 14 were male.
Wikimedia CEE Spring is an annual competition for articles about every country in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region on every Wikipedia. It is an initiative by Wikimedians and Wikipedians who joined the Wikimedia CEE partnership. As in the past years, it lasted from 21 March to 31 May. For the first time, WMAT acted as its fiscal sponsor and provided the competition's back office. The international organization team consisted of the Wikimedians Лорд Бъмбъри, Алиса Селезньова, Papuass, Philip Kopetzky, Magalia, Ата, Base and Wittylama. In addition, local teams joined the international initiative with Local competitions.
335 users participated in the contest. 45 of them were new users and 26 declared to be female users. 5726 Wikipedia articles were created or improved (new articles: 5395, improved articles: 331). The following 23 Wikipedia language versions were concerned (descending by number of articles): uk, hy, pl, bg, ru, sr, ba, be, be-tarask, el, lv, myv, eo, ka, tr, lt, mk, az, ro, de, crh, sq and tt.
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.
Video of focus stacking made at the workshop at WMAT's office
Topic: Focus stacking with WMAT equipment: workshop (resulting in 7 new files on Wikimedia Commons used on 11 different main namespace pages in Wikimedia projects) and creation of a guide
We support Wikimedia Commons contributors with equipment from our tech pool, accreditations for events, travel grants, post-processing software and skill transfer activities.
Selected files
Monument photography in Brandenburg
Photography in Germany
Soccer: ÖFB Women League: SKN St. Poelten vs SK Sturm Graz
Atrium
Hacking in Room Heuriger
Group photo
Hacking in Room Gurkerl
Hackathon Party
Monument photography in Brandenburg
Photography in Germany
Soccer: ÖFB Women League: SKN St. Poelten vs SK Sturm Graz
Athleticsgala Linz 2017
Festivalsommer
