Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/April 2011

Press inquiries

In April we had some inquiries about the recently published results of the editor-report. Catrin gave some background-interviews with national dailies, online-media like heise and radio stations, including mdr-info, BR and Deutsche Welle. Aside from that, Catrin was also very busy with the follow-up work on the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin. Together with representatives of the foundation a press conference was planned and then canceled at short notice. This lead to Catrin directly organizing interviews and conversations for Pavel and representatives of other chapters with individual news agencies.

Wikimedium

In April we had almost 100 new subscribers for our chapter's newspaper. Thus the number of single subscribers and multi-recipients is now around 900. All in all the chapter now sends out around 2000 copies to subscribers and interested parties. After publishing the Wikimedium in March the next issue was already being prepared. Catrin was able to win the print shop MegaDruck as sponsors for printing costs for another year. Focal points of the next Wikimedium will include the introduction of the newly elected board as well as international topics and first reactions to the campaign 'Wikipedia for world cultural heritage'. Catrin is currently collecting contents and main topics. However, not only staff members are to write about their work and projects, we also wish for guest authors (like readers and users of Wikipedia) to relate their experiences and activities. Therefore, we invite everybody to submit their ideas and articles directly to Catrin or the [redaktion@wikimedium.de] until May 25th.

Information material

Over the last month Michael received substantial feedback from the community on the information brochure about Wikimedia Commons. This enabled him to adapt the manuscript, which will be printed shortly, in some points. The next information brochure will be dealing with the project Wikisource. Michael worked through the existing material and will presently be exchanging information with Wikisource-activists concerning content and layout of the brochure. In the beginning of April we supported the Senior Computer Club Berlin-Mitte by printing flyers for the club's regular 'Wikipedia-Meeting'. Layout and printing were carried out by WMDE in accordance with the SCC. We are working on a detailed presentation on the project page on wikipedia.de and on an information flyer. It is a very pleasing necessity concerning public relations to adapt numbers and facts in our information material to the fast growth of Wikimedia projects. The monthly update of the Wikimedia factsheets, which are also included in our chapters website and sent to journalists, are part of the daily routine in press relations. Another similar task – and basis for PR – is the completion of data in our PR mailing list. Michael has developed conceptual ideas for a brochure about the work of the German chapter, after compiling a production line about individual Wikimedia projects, which still has to be completed. It is the intention of this brochure to convey the goals and principles of the chapter to interested persons and furthermore to provide an insight into the practical work of the individual departments. Ranging from the Wikipedia school project and the technical support of the Toolserver to events and public relations. Such a brief brochure can accomplish what the Annual Report with its extensive size cannot: to give a broad and fast overview of the chapter's work for non-members.

New Management Board and new staff members

Michael has organised the printing of business cards for everyone after the election of the new board and the hiring of new staff in the last weeks.

Press releases

In preparation of the milestone of ten million data files in the free media archive Wikimedia Commons a press release has been prepared and was sent out on time for the anniversary.

World Cultural Heritage

Currently a lot of individual conversations are being held with journalists and co-operation partners. In addition Catrin is talking to potential media-partners in the context of panel discussions, expert talks, talkshows or the like. Amongst those are ZDF, the WAZ-Group and DRadio Wissen. Currently an action plan is being devised, which includes organizing the accompanying PR-measures.

Initiative 'Wikipedia for World Cultural Heritage'

After discussing the topic with the community and the Chapters Sebastian Sooth and Catrin Schoneville presented the initiative 'Wikipedia for World Cultural Heritage' at the re:publica to the public for the first time. There the idea was accepted with considerable interest and was also presented to the press afterwards. In April Catrin and Sebastian conducted some talks with representatives from the UNESCO environment and other potential supporters. Furthermore Sebastian and Catrin started to organize events which will accompany the initiative as of May. These will include expert talks, but also a BarCamp 'Free Knowledge' in the second half of the year is currently being planned. We want to hold discussions there and also demonstrate the significance of the collection and free distribution of knowledge by tens of thousands of volunteers and how this influences society, education and people‘s way of thinking. Information about any new developments can be found on the project‘s page, which also contains a FAQ about this idea. The next step will be the start of the petition in May. http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Weltkulturerbe http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Weltkulturerbe

The Wikipedia Book

Thanks to the wonderful participation of the volunteering authors, the size of the manyscript grew larger than was originally planned for. Concluding structural refinishing was conducted by Boris, wherein he was supported by Michael amongst others. Preparations for accompanying PR measures concerning the publication of the book are in full swing. Together with Boris, Catrin has worked out a variety of ideas and prepared a meeting with the publisher. Schemes and activities around the Wikipedia book like a Book Release Party (with everyone who was involved), a press conference, readings etc. are in the planning stage and will be substantiated in the next report.

Book Project

April was the last month remaining for finishing up the manuscript. On the one hand we talked to the publisher's editor and adopted a lot of his advice. On the other hand some details had to be resolved – starting with cover design, the content layout (keyword foot- and endnotes) as well as the observance of license terms. To ensure the last point another mailing campaign was undertaken, where all parties concerned (over 100 people) were asked to countersign the license terms in form of an 'author‘s declaration' and review and approve of possible amendments of their articles. Finally, it was necessary to finalize the illustration of the book considering production modalities (like format and especially black and white print).

Events

After the member‘s open space meeting Catrin and Sebastian Sooth presented the idea 'Wikipedia for World Cultural Heritage' to interested Wikipedians and Wikimedians and discussed it afterwards with the approximately 20 participants.

Wikimedia Chapters Conference

During the conference in Berlin Catrin presented the PR activities surrounding the anniversary to the chapters and explained what other activities will accompany Wikipedia's 10th anniversary. Amongst those were the book project and the World Cultural Heritage idea. The latter was met with especially positive approval by the circa 60 international Wikimedia representatives. The international activities are being planned and organised by Catrin in collaboration with the Chapters. Particulars concerning this can be found presently in a separate blog post.

re:publica

The idea 'Wikipedia for World Cultural Heritage' was presented by Catrin and Sebastian to a critical audience consisting of net-activists and journalists at the re:publica. They were surprised by the positive feedback. This resulted in some co-operation proposals and interesting further discussions with counselors and experts from the Unesco environment. Project CommunitySpace Sebastian Sooth inspected and investigated a number of commercial properties to find a place where the idea of a shared space for the Community of Free Knowledge could be realised. He conducted talks with some potential partners and co-users. The search still goes on, because we haven‘t been able to find a place which meets our demands. Sebastian specified what we are looking for in another blog post. We would be happy about further relevant suggestions which lead to finding a space of at least 750 sqm, separable into event and office space, close to the city center with good access to public transportation, sufficiently good technical infrastructure esp. fast internet access and the possibility to host events in the evening and on weekends. http://blog.wikimedia.de/2011/04/29/wikimedia-sucht-raum-fur-freies-wissen-in-berlin Preparation for participating in the OpenKnowledge and OpenData events Sebastian Sooth is preparing the participation of Wikimedia Deutschland in the OpenKnowlegde and OpenData events. On the 18th of May the first Berlin OpenData day will take place, where we will present Commons and the linking of OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia. On June 30 and Juli 1 the 6th OpenKnowledge Conference is taking place with WMDE as a partner. We are supporting the event e.g. with interesting contributions. http://boddy11.wordpress.com http://okcon.org/2011

Hackathon 2011

In April Daniel, Nicole and Cornelius have attended to the further preparations of the Hackathon which takes place in Berlin from May 13 to 15. Registration is closed, a first version of the schedule is online, the list of topics gets ever longer, travels and accommodations have been booked for all participants. 100 hackers have signed up, amongst them representatives of the European competition Wiki Loves Monuments and the Language Committee as well as staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Hackathon will take place during the Berlin Web Week, where the digital economy 'will present strategic, economic, technical and creative possibilities of online-media'. On Sunday evening a cosy hacker lounge can be attended in the c-base to which hacker friends and anyone interested is invited. Right now, we are looking for helping hands, who would like to assist us during the event with documentation, sightseeing and on-site help. If you have any questions or wishes simply contact Nicole or Daniel at [hackathon@wikimedia.de].

Wiki Loves Monuments

In the Europe-wide photo contest 'Wiki loves Monuments' everything focuses on the meeting in Berlin taking place during the Hackathon. Anybody from the community of this project for historical preservation, who is interested in attending the meeting, is cordially invited to contact Nicole [nicole.ebber@wikimedia.de]; there are still some vacancies remaining. On the mailing list dedicated ideas are brought forward, legal and organizational issues are resolved and new partners are presented. In the beginning of April Nicole gave a preview of the project in the blog. Furthermore, the logo contest has been successfully concluded and we now have a pretty new Logo!

Wikipedia Meets Ancient History

A project directly from the community! At Whitsun Marcus Cyron, Martin Rulsch and Jonathan Groß are organizing the conference 'Wikipedia Meets Ancient History- Free Knowledge, new media, popular knowledge transfer and encyclopedia in ancient history' at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen. It is the aim of this conference to bring together experts and Wikipedia members of the department ‚Altertumswissenschaften‘ in order to discuss the current status as well as problems and future developments in this area. Contrary to the four previous Wikipedia Academies this conference is aimed at a specific field. Detailed information can be found in the corresponding blog post. Wikimedia Deutschland supports the event financially, organizationally and with logistics. Currently we are preparing the information flyer, which also serves as an invitation, are booking lodgings and making travel arrangements for the participants, and are standing by for all questions concerning budget and accord with everyone involved. Our contact person is Nicole.

WissensWert (WorthKnowing)

In April Nicole wrote the first article of the monthly series „Bericht aus den WissensWert-Projekten“. Here we provide information about the current state of affairs, progress, setbacks and tips for other projects. In the first post all the projects are listed together with their responsible contact persons at WMDE as well as a short status report of the project. The participants are asked to give a monthly update about the progress of their project (this is also one of the requirements for the sponsorship). In addition to the collected statements they are also invited to write exclusive reports about their projects e.g. if a big success has been achieved, a milestone has been set or if the project was mentioned elsewhere. The next report will be published in midmonth.

Wikimedia Conference

The wrap-up and accounting for the conference lasted until April, even though we were able to optimize procedures distinctly compared to last year. The moderators and documentalists made a good job of it: all notes and results have promptly been made available on Meta. The - especially good – visual documentation is online as well as the many nice pictures of the event. We evaluated the feedback from the participants (in short: great location, but where was the meat?) and compiled a long list of lessons learnt for us. If you have any further inquiries about the event, please contact Nicole.

RENDER

Evaluating Wikipedia is our most extensive task in the first year of the project. We hope to increase trust and Wikipedia's quality by the tools and extensions developed by RENDER. To measure and validate those changes we worked intensively on the development of a quality measurement for WP-articles this month. A lot of research and discussions concerning this topic took place over the past years. Starting from that basis we identified a number of measurable and calculable features, whose implementation, dependencies and weighting in a quality model still have to be investigated. A more detailed report will follow. If you have questions or suggestions please contact [angelika.adam@wikimedia.de] or [render@wikimedia.de]. Angelika and Mathias attended the quarter meeting in Ljubljana (Slovenia) at the Institute Jozef Stefan on the 19th and 20th of April. During this meeting all project partners presented the status of their current work packages and worked out requests for the corresponding partners. Wikimedia presented some use case scenarios for Wikipedia and discussed conditions for the technological partners. Reports about the finished work packages may be found under http://render-project.eu/resources/deliverables/.

Taz congress

On the 9th of April the media congress of the daily newspaper 'taz' and the weekly paper 'Freitag' took place in Berlin, where Mathias was invited to a panel on Free Licensing. The panel focused on practical applications and the significance of Free Licensing and between Mathias, Markus Beckedahl and Nils Dagsson Moskopp there was no one who doesn't work directly for Creative Commons or isn't on close terms with this licensing system.

3rd Collaboratory on Intellectual Property Rights ('Immaterialgüterrechte')

On April 12 the Collaboratory, initiated by Google, presented its report about 'Governance Models for Intangible Goods'. If you feel this term to be too bulky, you can replace it with 'copyright', the collaboratory also used the bad 'C-word' on its website for reasons of readability and to save space. Part of the report is a longer document detailing modules for a future governance model for intangible goods (read: copyright) which Mathias helped to write and which is published at http://collaboratory.de/reports/initiative_3#99 . The pdf can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/colabdev30000/presse/downloads/IGCollaboratory-Abschlussbericht-Urheberrecht-fuer-die-Informationsgesellschaft.pdf?attredirects=&d=1. Wikimedia became a member of the Collaboratory in April.

collab

Sebastian Sooth takes part in the 4th expert circle of the collaboratory initiative 'Internet and Society' which deals with the topic 'Privacy and Public'. The kick-off workshop took place during the Base_Camp in Berlin in the beginning of April. Initiated by Google Deutschland people are working together on solutions concerning social issues regarding the internet. [1]

Redaction support

Two larger requests from the community for support of departments have reached the office. One is an application for purchasing photo equipment, which has been worked out by attending photographers at the photoworkshop in Nuremberg, and the other was submitted by the department of biology for the acquisition of a photo microscope. The microscope is to be used during the next meeting of the biology department. Both applications are in their final stage.

Literature Grant

In April another seven literature grants could be 'delivered' by Denis Barthel. Thus, already 15 monographic grants were awarded this year (and that's not counting the eight chemistry eLitGrants), a number which we reached last year only in September. This clearly shows that the literature grants are adopted more intensively than ever before – a great development for the quality of Wikipedia. But that is not enough: We would like to encourage authors to make use of this offer even more intensely. Please tell us what you need at [litstip@wikimedia.de] . What is especially awesome in this context is that the winner in the section Culture in the Wikipedia writing contest, an article about organs in Hesse, made use of a recently assigned literature grant as its key source. We too congratulate the user Wikiwal!

School project

The month started right away with a highlight of the year: the third SchoolCamp with our instructors. The Camp provided an opportunity to discuss experiences among instructors and conversations about the further development of the project. A couple of new instructors participated, got a general overview and are now ready for action. Here we would like to thank all instructors for their active participation and their great commitment to the project! The school project now has about 20 instructors available, based all over Germany. We constantly receive new applications and they are always welcome. In April we held five workshops. Thus we were able to continue the positive trend from March. Among those was our first workshop in a Waldorf school in Düsseldorf, which made us very happy. We are also pleased that other educational institutions like universities and media centers inquire about our workshops. The next focal points will be assisting instructors in their work and planning the next SchoolCamp in fall. Personally addressing schools and introducing the project in specialist newsletters and at conferences makes a definite impact and leads to an increased demand. It is still not easy to make it from the school's interest to an actual workshop, though. Concerning this matter we increase our assistance in anwering teacher's questions and gladly help them through the planning phase. If you have any comments about or ideas for the project, please write to schule@wikimedia.de. We are looking forward to it!

Silver knowledge / TAO

From April 15 to 17 we organized a workshop in Frankfurt am Main together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Post- und Telekommunikationsgeschichte e.V. [www.dgpt.org] (German Society for the History of Postal Services and Telecommunications). For Wikipedia Elvira Schmidt attended the event. It was the aim of the meeting to inform especially the older 'postal service historians' about the manifold possibilities of contributing to Wikipedia and assist them through the first steps. Henriette (Wikimedia) as well as Isabell Koch and Mario Kaspar (DGPT) prepared the workshop excellently. In the Museum for Communication in Frankfurt a perfectly equipped room was provided. The 'new guys' assessed those three days as interesting, busy and exhausting. The intensive assistance of the instructors/mentors brought about the desired results. Almost all participants (around 10 to 15) had very precise notions about contents, photos or their own articles they want to add to Wikipedia in the next weeks and months. Everyone created their own user page and tried their first steps there. At the end the instructors met for a short evaluation. A number of suggestions concerning the organization of future workshops and the preparation of presentations were made. Those have been noted and will be further developed during the experience exchange planned for the end of June. Furthermore, we contacted other possible partners for the realization of presentations and workshops.

'From the engine room'

In addition to preparing the Hackathon (see Nicole's report) we were trying to find new members of staff for software engineering. Together with Sebastian Daniel advertised a position for a web developer and the development project GraphServ. Applications for web developers are open until May 10th, the development project is already assigned. Sebastian Sooth is assisting Daniel Kinzler in the search for a web developer and for new partners for hosting and support of the Wikimedia Deutschland servers. Aside from that Daniel wrote a chapter for the Wikipedia book: under the heading 'Hardware – running Wikipedia' a review of the history and the current state of Wikipedia's operative side is presented.

Fundraising

In April I mainly attended to three areas. First of all I gave a speech at the Deutscher Fundraising Kongress, which is the most important event for fundraisers in Germany. On that Congress I presented our fundraising campaign focussing especially on the community involvement and the test-oriented approach. In doing so it became obvious that a systematic approach is exeptional in German online-fundraising. Secondly, together with Tobias and Merle I worked out a donor survey, which is to be sent to donors of Wikipedia in June. With this survey we want to better become acqainted with our donors and their motivation for donating to Wikipedia. The third area concerns our donor database project. We arranged meetings with three other agencies concerning the further development of CiviCRM. Currently the agencies' offers are being evaluated; a decision about assigning the contract is to be made in May.