Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia France/2011-03

Chapter report of Wikimédia France for September, October, November & December 2011.

Projects

Wiki Loves Monuments

The chapter organised the French part of this european contest, which ended in more than 25 000 pictures uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. Among the judges was Yann Arthus Bertrand, famous French photographer. The results were published in early November.

The award ceremony was held on December 9 in the National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris. It began with a private tour of the museum, led by two curators, after the opening hours. Rémi Mathis, president, opened the awards ceremony in a speech recalling the importance of the contest and the interest for Wiki Loves Monuments and heritage in the Wikimedia movement. The winners the received their prize from judge Benoît Evellin, and shared with the audience the story behind their picture. The evening finished with cocktails.

The evening brought together around forty people: Wikimedians and others, including several people from the Ministry of Culture (including the manager of the Mérimée database - the database of historical monuments in France) and officials from heritage preservation associations.

See the dedicated website : http://www.wikilovesmonuments.fr/

GLAM

Taken from the French reports in This Month in GLAM newsletter for September, October, November, December.

September

Earlier this month, Rémi Mathis and Adrienne Alix attended a seminar "Heritage and Web data" in Paris.
The GLAM working group followed an effort to make links on Wikimedia Commons from the category of people to authority files on library catalogs - referring to the project with the French National Library. The project page for this partnership can be found on Commons.
In the margins of the Creative Commons Summit in Warsaw (Benji was at the summit, representing Wikimedia France) there was held a study day "open GLAM" to raise Public Domain and open data to the cultural institutions. This initiative includes Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative Commons and Communia. Thinking began to coordinate with the projects who goes align with the association.
Adrienne Alix, director of programs, identified the chapter's GLAM projects past, present and future, in order to assess actions and start new projects.
September 29, Lena and Pierre-Selim, two Wikimedians from Toulouse, conducted a workshop for the staff of the Museum of Toulouse. The workshop was part of a partnership begun last year (Project Phoebus) which has already provided over 700 high quality pictures to Wikimedia Commons. The museum posted a very enthusiastic report on their blog (in French).

October

Adrienne Alix, Program Director, went to meet with several cultural institutions to prepare future partnerships: Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the Mémorial de Caen (Second World War Memorial), Municipal Library of Toulouse, the French Society of Photography (one of the biggest and oldiest society about photography in France), the Musée de Cluny (national museum of Middle Ages) etc.

Phoebus project

The Wikimedians of Toulouse involved in the Phoebus project resumed photo sessions at the Museum of Toulouse. Archaeodontosaurus, Pierre-Selim and Lena convinced two other photographers (not wikimedians) to accompany them. They just have 2 million objects to photograph! The museum is ambitious about this project... :-)
We were informed that thanks to the Phoebus project and beautiful photographs taken in 2010 and widely disseminated on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, several foreign museums were informed of wealth of the Museum.
The exhibition that was the reason for the start of this project is going to travel in Europe, thanks to Wikimedians. The museum will get royalties by exporting its exposure. This is an excellent argument for free culture that can generate wealth, even indirectly!
On an other hand, the city of Toulouse in the Novela Festival organized an art competition in which participants were asked to remix photos Phoebus Project to create artistic works.
Adrienne gave an update of the Phoebus project after one year during a conference about open data / open content hosted by the City of Toulouse for the opening of its open-data portal.

Centre Georges Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art)

The project with the Centre Georges Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) continues : after the first workshops in June, Xaviateur, a french wikimedian, participated in the test of Blinkster, a mobile application of "augmented visit" for visitors of the museum: with this application, visitors can "flash" Artworks of the museum and will have access to information from Wikipedia articles.
Adrienne is working to develop a series of workshops throughout the year 2012 with the Centre Pompidou. These workshops focus on contemporary art in Wikipedia.

A seminar about Museology co-organized by Wikimédia France

Wikimedia France is co-organizer of the 2011-2012 seminar of the Institute for Research and Innovation (IRI), entitled "Museums: privileged places of articulation of the semantic web and social web. Museology, museum and new forms of address to the public. " On 18 october, Adrienne participated in the first session, relating to "The Challenge of structured data and metadata for the convergence of the Semantic Web and Social Web," and gave a presentation entitled "Wikimedia: Semantic Web or social web? " (video here)

November

During the month of November work continued on projects with various museums. Adrienne Alix is currently finalizing partnership agreements with several major museums in Toulouse and Paris. Several Wikimedians had appointments or contacts with cultural institutions that are likely to result in partnerships or joint actions.

Some metrics about the Museum of Toulouse

Among the partnerships that work well, we can do an update of the work at the Museum of Toulouse with some numbers: Today we have 842 pictures from the Museum of Toulouse, all made by Wikimedians.

The aim of this project is to take photos of high quality. Of these 842 photographs, 140 (16%) are QI on Wikimedia Commons, and 112 (13%) are VI on Wikimedia Commons.

The pictures are disseminated on a large number of Wikimedia projects, whether Wikipedia, Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikinews etc.. : 533 (63%) are used on a project, there are 7691 uses in total. The images are present on 193 different projects. 95 projects contain at least five images from Phoebus Project.

There is still a lot of work, but the group is highly motivated and the result is enjoyed by all, especially by the Museum of Toulouse.

All the photos are available on Wikimedia Commons.

Museomix

The 11-12-13 November, Jean-Fred and Benoit Evellin (Trizek) participated in a museographical experimentation: Museomix.

The principle of Museomix was to bring together all actors in the digital cultural world and museums to experiment concretely "the museum of the future". The event was organized in the «Musée des Arts décoratifs» (Museum about decorative arts and design in Paris).

Wikimedia France decided to participate in the experiment. This was an opportunity to meet many interesting people for our actions in museums, but it was difficult to link the projects developed during Museomix with the content of Wikimedia projects(and vice versa). People were there to set up to mount « funny » exhibition concepts and there was not enough space for the contents (and thus deep connections with the Wikimedia projects). This brings us to think more about what should be our place with cultural institutions: working about the content and not necessarily about new and « funny » digital experiences.

The conclusion is mixed but Benoit and Jean-Fred do not regret having spent three days in this very intense experience.

The website of Museomix is available here : http://www.museomix.com/

December

A group of five from Wikimédia France was in Amsterdam for GLAMcamp. Jean-Frédéric and staff Sylvain also attended the debriefing of Wiki Loves Monuments, later joined by Benoît Evellin (Trizek), Adrienne Alix and Rémi Mathis.

Education

In early September, Carol Ann was at Ludovia, the summer convention about e-education and play and pedagogical multimedia applications, in Ax-les-Thermes (Ariège).

The workgroup worked on a booklet “Wikipedia in the classroom”, which is available on Wikimédia France website (PDF)

On November 23 to 25, staff Carol Ann and five members held a booth at the Salon de l'éducation (“Education show”), where they unveiled the booklet to the attending teachers.

Higher education and research

Carol-Ann met the Paris URFIST (Unité régionale de formation à l'information scientifique et technique − Regional group for training in scientific and technical information) to wrap up an offer of training for higher education staff. The first session is planned for November/December.

The chapter signed an agreement with the pôle de recherche et d'enseignement supérieur (PRES) of Lille, to train PhD students in training on Wikimedia projects. Two sessions were held on December 5 and 12, given by Rémi Bachelet and convened by staff Carol Ann, with 23 students from various fields.

The project of a “Wikimedia France Research award”, imagined in 2009, is worked on again. Carol Ann et Rémi Bachelet are discussing the idea with Dario Taraborelli, in charge of research projects for the Wikimedia Fondation.

Francophony

États généraux de la promotion du français dans le monde − October, Paris

On October 19, Adrienne Alix presented the state of the French language on Wikimedia projects, as part of the États généraux de la promotion du français dans le monde (“Convention on promoting the French language in the world”), organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This talk was a follow-up to a report produced last Spring for the Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France (DGLFLF − “General Delegation for the French language and the languages of France”, part of the Minister of Culture) The event was attended by 400 people from more than 80 countries of the Francophony. The good health of the French language on the Wikimedia projects impressed the attendees.

The report is available on Wikimédia France website: « La place des projets Wikimédia en français dans l'environnement linguistique mondial de l'internet » (PDF)

États généraux du multilinguisme dans les outre-mer − December, Cayenne

Following the aforementionned report, which met very positive review in the Ministry, the DGLFLF asked Wikimedia France to join their work on overseas languages and invited the chapter to the États généraux du multilinguisme dans les outre-mer (“Convention on multilinguism in the overseas”). To prepare this, Guillaume produced another report about the overseas on Wikimedia projects.

On December 14−18, Adrienne Alix and Guillaume represented Wikimédia France at this event in Cayenne. Adrienne opened the “numeric” track of the convention, and both held a Wikipedia workshop. The event was also an opportunity for networking.

The report is available on Wikimédia France website: « L'Outre-mer sur les projets Wikimédia » (PDF)

Freedom of panorama

In France there is currently no freedom of panorama. On November 23 a law was debated in the French National Assembly, in which two deputies have submitted an amendment to introduce freedom of panorama in France.

This amendment is a direct result of the actions of Wikimédia France. Rémi Mathis, president of the chapter, was very active to defend freedom of panorama and explain to these deputies the importance of introducing freedom of panorama in the French law to value the cultural richness of France.

The amendment was unfortunately not accepted. It was dubbed during the session “Wikipedia Amendment”. We are disappointed that it was not adopted, but this passage in the National Assembly has given high visibility to the problem among politicians and we are now able to explain to each political party the importance of this issue.

See the video of the debate at the National Assembly and the transcript.

Presentations - Conferences - Workshops

Multimedia library José Cabanis − September, Toulouse: On September 24, eight Wikimedians from Toulouse held a workshop in the multimedia library as part of Wiki Loves Monuments − presenting Wikimedia Commons, giving advice for photographers, tackling copyright issues.
Museum de Toulouse − September, Toulouse Editing workshop at the Museum de Toulouse − PierreSelim, CC-BY: On September 29, Caroline, Pierre-Selim, Didier, and museum webmaster Samuel, organized a workshop at the museum of natural history of Toulouse. It consisted of a presentation of the Wikimedia projects, of GLAM projects including the ongoing Phoebus project with the museum, and an editing workshop. See the report on the Museum blog
Association française d'astronomie − October, Paris: On October 1, Florence (Anthere) gave a short presentation of Wiki Loves Monuments as part of the annual symposium of the French Astronomy association. The event was not widely attended, but not only by astronomy enthusiasts but also staff from museums.
Rencontres régionales du logiciel libre − October, Angoulême: On October 8, Françoise (Rosier), Nathalie (Natma) and Rémi held a booth at the first Free software regional meetings of Poitou-Charentes. Few people came to the event, but it was the occasion of connecting with other free knowledge groups from Poitiers, Angoulême and Cognac, who took all was left of the documentation brought by the wikimedians.
Booth − La Celle-Saint-Cloud (Yvelines): On Saturday 15 October, at the Maison des jeunes et de la culture (MJC) of La Celle-Saint-Cloud (Yvelines), David (Crochet.david), Benjamin (Benjism89), Johann (Nojhan) et Sylvain (Ash Crow) held a booth during an Ubuntu meeting organised by free software advocates from the company Thales.

Social Media Club − October, Paris: On October 18, Benjamin (Benjism89) presented the working of Wikipedia during a Paris meeting of the Social Media Club, a groups of social media professionals. The public was interested in Wikipedia and amused by some of its internal workings. Concerns over self-promotion were raised and discussed.

Rencontres nationales du Crédit coopératif: On October 20, Florence (Anthere) took part in the Rencontres nationales du Crédit coopératif, on “Commiting and cooperating: which place for trust in common project?” . After two presentations by academics, a round table lasted for two hours, during which were discussed the engagement of youns people and the lack of women in our projects, as well as Wikimedia business model.

Novela − October, Toulouse During the workshop − PierreSelim, CC-BY: As part of our partnership with the City of Toulouse, Wikimédia France took part in the Novela festival, “festival of shared knowledge”.; On October 21, Wikipedia workshops were held at the museum of modern art for first-grade pupils, and discussions occurred with librarians about common projects; The day after, Wikimedians held a workshop for the general public. Adrienne Alix talked about opening cultural materials during a round table on open data organised by the City, as part of the opening of the Grand Toulouse open data portal.

Ubuntu party − November, Paris: On November 11, 12 and 13, the chapter held a booth during the Ubuntu Party at the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in Paris.

Brest en biens communs − November, Brest: As part of the Brest en biens communs (“Brest as the commons”) on October 3 to 15, Pierre-Yves and staff Sylvain Boissel heldtwo Wikipedia workshops, shared their experience in a round table called “The Commons: what is at stakes and what are this issues in expanding the shared cultural goods?”.

Capitole du Libre − November, Toulouse Guillom conference during Capitole du libre 2011. − PierreSelim, CC-BY: On November 26, as part of Capitole du Libre (Free software days of Toulouse), Guillaume (guillom) held a conference titled “10 years of Wikipedia” to an audience of one hundred people. Three other wikimedians held a booth to present the Wikimedia projects.

Premier samedi du libre − December, Paris: On December 3, David Crochet held an information point at the « Premier samedi du libre » (free culture event) at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie, organised by free software group Parisnux

Agence France Presse training − December, Paris: On December 9, Adrienne gave a training session about Wikipedia to the Agence France-Presse, the French news agency.

Conference − December, Grenoble: On December 13, Aude gave a conference in Grenoble titled “CC licenses, photography and Wikimedia Commons”.

Booth at Thales − December, Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine): On December 16, Benjamin (Benjism89) and staff Sylvain and Carol Ann held a booth at the Thales Communication works council, at the invitation of employees advocating free software. 700 Wikipedia leaflets were given.

Arts festival − December, Paris: On December 17 and 18, David Crochet held an information point at the Arts festival of Paris.

Media interventions

September 6, La Montagne: this daily newspapers in Clermont-Ferrand, published an interview of Florence Devouard (Anthere).
Wiki Loves Monuments: several media outlets covered the event, with explanations by Adrienne Alix
- September 20, Libération
- September 35, RFI, with a short report on air
- September 28, Revue française de généalogie
- December 8 and December 9, France Info (public French radio station of continuous information): interviews of Adrienne Alix around WLM, the first focused on free licenses and the seconde about the contest itself.
September 27, Le Monde: Rémi Mathis published a column about freedom of panorama
October 16, radio channel France Culture: Rémi Mathis was the guest of the emission Soft_Power_ from 19 to 20.
November 16, radio channel RFI: Rémi Mathis talked about the fundraising.
November 19, radio channel France Culture: Adrienne Alix was one of the guests of the Place de la toile emission, as part of a special for the ten year anniversary of Framasoft, a French free software and free culture network.
December 6: Rémi Mathis was interviewed in video by scholar and writer Luc Fayard on his blog infotekart.com to talk about Wikipedia/Wikimedia.

Attending international free knowledge events

Creative Commons Global Summit 2011 - Warsaw

Benjamin Smith (Benjism89) was at the Creative Commons Global Summit, an international summit meeting of the Creative Commons movement, which took place in Warsaw from September 16 to 18. Moving to 4.0 versions of Creative Commons licenses and promoting education were the major themes of the summit. Impressive progress has been noticed for the last years in educational resources and publishing scientific articles on open licenses, among others. The summit emphasized actions (out of the legal field) of some national organizations affiliated to Creative Commons (photographs exhibit, online newspapers...) and Creative Commons links with other organizations, like Wikipedia.

Open World Forum 2011 - Paris

Florence Devouard (Anthere) organised the knowledge commons track during the Open World Forum which took place from September 22 to 24 in Paris. On that occasion she got to come Ting Chen, Wikimedia Fundation current president and Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons vice-president as keynote speakers, and Renata Avila, lead of Creative Commons Guatemala as a participant of the panel afterward. Their visit was made easier thanks to the CC Global Summit in Warsaw.

Adrienne Alix was asked to take part in a panel about the lack of women in open source technology. Thus Wikimedia France was present and represented during this event.

Conference on public data openness − Brussels

On October 20, Benjamin (Benjism89) attended a conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels about opening public data

Workgroups actions

Photographs & accreditation

The chapter helped with getting accreditations for Fabrice (Thesupermat) for:

the Paris motorbikes fair (salon de la moto), 500 pictures ;
the children’s book fair (salon de la littérature jeunesse), 59 pictures.

On November 4, Coyau, Pierre and Thesupermat went to the “Internation Heritage Show” (salon international du patrimoine culturel) at the Carroussel du Louvre to network with cultural heritage stakeholders, relating to Wiki Loves Monuments, some of which were invited to the awards ceremony.

The Canon EF 70-200mm lens purchased by the chapter.
− Channel 49, CC-BY

Following requests to the micro-funding committee, the group now own several photographic equipment:

two cameras Canon PowerShot SX230 HS, which may be used to train new photographers or lent at request ;
a Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM II lens, which will be lent to photographers at request.

The Canon EF 70-200mm lens usage is tracked on Wikimedia Commons.

The usage of the equipment is logged on Meta.

Promotion & communication

Staff Sylvain has begun to recreate the chapter promotional material in the SVG format.

Technique

Staff Sylvain updated the members wiki to MediaWiki 1.17, checked the various extensions used and installed LiquidThreads to help with the discussions. The group discussed a lot about the tools that would be useful for the chapter (e-mail, conference call, notes taking, projects management).

Communication

Pres releases

This Month in GLAM

Blogposts

September

October

November

December

Wiki Loves Monuments awards ceremony

Contributors

Contributors to the monthly newsletter in French (from which this report is derived) in September, October, November, December : Anthere, Ash Crow, Bapti, Benjism89, Carol Ann, Crochet.david, David Berardan, Floflo, Gfily, Jean-Frédéric, (:Julien:), Léna, Moyg, PierreSelim, ~Pyb, Pymouss, Rémi Mathis, Seb35, Serein, Symac, TCY, Thesupermat, VIGNERON, Wikinade, Zetud.
Contributors to this newsletter: Cha Matou, Jean-Frédéric.

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