Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/June 2011

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Fundraising Summit[edit]

The Fundraising Summit is currently the hottest topic at Wikimedia Österreich. Manuel has received all the registrations, we had to change the hotel on short notice but everything should be set by now. Registrations have been confirmed and the public transport tickets bought and forwarded.

Start-up Help for Wikimedia España[edit]

Wikimedia España signed the letter we sent them for the conditions of the money transfer, the money was transfered after that. Now we wish our friends in Spain success and fun with their projects.

Wikimania 2012[edit]

James, the lead organiser of Wikimania 2012 in Washington D.C. contacted us and all other chapters concerning scholarships. We have outlined how we set up our scholarships and how this was adopted by Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Deutschland. Though there is no board resolution so far (not even a discussion yet) chances are high that we will provide the same scholarship also next year. The arrangement with the Wikimania team to have only one scholarship application process and only handle the payments individually seems to be a good one.

Photographic Equipment[edit]

As reported in earlier months we have bought a photographic equipment, mainly for Wiki Loves Monuments right now but also for any other project. So far we still lack clear rules how to borrow it and we need to plublish the whole project on the mailing list.

Cooperation with BikeCityGuide[edit]

BikeCityGuide is an idea by a few young men in Graz who want to mash up data from OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia and bring it to mobile devices. They want to offer special tours through cities which can be done on bicycles in order to explore the cities. They think that bikes are the perfect transportation to explore a city and using the mobile devices as navigation systems they could offer optimized tours for tourists and other target groups, along with information from Wikipedia about certain point of interests.

In the long run rental bike companies or tourism bureaus could be interested in using this system commercially.

The BikeCityGuide team contacted Wikimedia Österreich, visited a meetup in Graz and talked to several people from us afterwards. They are interested in learning more about the technologies in order to develop their product.

Manuel invited two of them to Wikimania to get the right networks and to be able to speak to other technicians and understand whom they have to talk to about the various topics they need to discuss.

One person was offered a chapter scholarship for Wikimania by Wikimedia Österreich while the second, interested in the offline storage of the data, may participate at the Offline Developers Meeting and could get travel support from the openZIM budget.

As a result Wikimedia Österreich received beforehand three membership applications, two persons from the BikeCityGuide team and the newly established company - the first legal entity to be member of Wikimedia Österreich.

Getting a legal Opinion concerning scanning Austrian Stamps[edit]

Kurt / Karl...

Providing Access to digital Archives[edit]

Denis...

New Treasurer[edit]

Due to personal reasons our current treasurer resigned from his duties. We were able to find a new treasurer - a new member - who has experience in financial controlling and worked several years as authorized signatory at a major Austrian authority. The changes will be effective after July 1st.

New Members[edit]

In the last several weeks we received 12 new membership applications which we have formally approved and welcomed now. One of the new members is a company, that's our first non-personal membership. Wikimedia Austria has now 78 members in total.