Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/April 2015

April 2015 Report

The GLAM-WIKI conference took place in Den Haag from April 10th to 12th. Organized by WMNL, it attracted almost 200 delegates. Austria was represented by two Wikimedians who were leading figures concerning GLAM activities supported by WMAT. The presentations, formal and informal discussions helped them to sharpen their approach towards GLAM projects – which, according to one participant, is contrary to the opinions of most of the GLAM-Wiki activists:

“	Wikimedia projects and servers shouldn't be a repository for the civil society in terms of mindless collecting and sharing knowledge which is already available in a restricted way via other institutions. Our mission should comprise the promotion of free access but not the production of copies of small sub-stocks. […] That's just nonsense and can't be regarded as success. We should focus on the content which we need for encyclopedic purposes (not just any collections which are of no use for articles) while leaving the rest to the civil society by demanding from institutions to ensure free access to their holdings.	”
— Hubertl

Individuals involved: ~ 200 (active editors from Austria: 2). – WMAT support: 2 travel grants, information material.

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

→ GLAM-WIKI 2015 on Wikimedia Nederland's website

→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Our Community IdeaLab (Ideenwerkstatt), introduced as a format in April 2014, is a regular workshop for incorporating community ideas into WMAT's short-term and mid-term planning. Four new ideas were presented, discussed and shaped into feasibilty:

• Revising the 2014 Denkmal-Cup for 2015
• Project management: promoting simple and replicable projects
• Project management: towards a better management of human resources and responsibilities
• Testing a small and portable book scanner

Individuals involved: 17 (active editors: 16, WMAT staff: 1). – WMAT support: organization, snacks and drinks, renting a room, technical equipment.

→ Community IdeaLab in members wiki (in German)

The "Fotoworkshop" is sort of a regular family meeting of German-speaking Wikimedia Commons photographers. The 15th edition took place in Nuremberg, Germany from April 24th to 26th. 3 of the 16 participants came from Austria. Whereas they regarded this edition's knowledge transfer activities – which focussed on proprietary software and which neglected project management skill transfer – as weak, the meeting was still useful for them in order to plan a common Austrian-German photography project scheduled for July 2015.

Individuals involved: 16 (active editors: 16). – WMAT support: 3 travel grants for Austrian participants.

→ Report in members wiki (in German)

→ Commons:15. Fotoworkshop (in German)

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 April:

• April 7th: Improvement of the Wiki Loves Earth prejury tool.
• April 15th: Preparatory meeting for Wiki Takes Nordtiroler Oberland (scheduled for June).
• April 21st: Preparatory meeting for the Upper Austrian Townscape Fair (scheduled for August).
• April 28th: Preparatory meeting for Wiki Loves Pride (scheduled for June).

Individuals involved: 21 (active editors: 20, WMAT staff: 1). - WMAT support: infrastructure, co-organisation, promotion.

→ WikiDienstag in the German-language Wikipedia

WMAT entertains a good partnership with the Austrian Semantic MediaWiki community and this year they offered to represent Wikimedia and Wikipedia at the Linux Days in Graz with a shared information booth and a Wikipedia workshop - activities that we wouldn't have been able to do ourselves in terms of resources. The event was very well frequented with more than 800 visitors over two days.

Individuals involved: ~ 800 (active editors: 1 (retaining 1 active editor who became a new active WMAT volunteer in 2014 into the planning and/or executing)). – WMAT support: information material.

→ Wikipedia workshop at Grazer Linuxtage (in German)

WMAT is revising its 3 year strategy this year. In order to have a sound basis for this process we decided to collaboratively create a vision/mission statement with our community and launch a discussion on what is the main purpose of our charity, what we want to achieve and how we want to do it. For this purpose we established a working group consisting of community, board and staff members who were assigned to prepare a draft document for discussion and further development with the wider community. WMAT organized a workshop in order to facilitate the process with professional help by an experienced external consultant. The results of the day were further refined online and during subsequent skype calls and will be presented in a workshop with the community in early May. The aim is to pass the final draft of the vision/mission statement during our general assembly in June. More details on the process and what we have learned can be found in the respective learning pattern (see link below).

Individuals involved: 8 (active editors: 5, WMAT staff: 2, external facilitator: 1). – WMAT support: organization and coordination, travel costs for volunteers, room and catering, external facilitator (pro bono).

→ Project page in members wiki (in German)

Everything we do - on- and offline - is based on the passion and enthusiasm of our volunteers. However, the amount of time that our volunteers can invest in chapter activities is subject to change and highly dependent on their personal circumstances. Our long-standing trustee Michael Kranewitter became a Dad of twin daughters recently which makes it difficult for him to meet all the demands that come with being a WMAT board member and very active Wikipedia editor. Hence, he decided to step down from his post as WMAT's deputy treasurer. We thank him for all his hard work over the past few years and are happy that we will still be able to work with him in many of our on- and offline projects. Arno Grumbeck was co-opted by the board to replace Michael and we are looking forward to work even more closely with Arno, who has been a very active member of our community for a long time and whose expertise is highly valued by our volunteers.

→ Announcement in members wiki (in German)

• Please find more information on what we have learned in the process of creating our mission statement in our related learning pattern.

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