Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/August 2014

VOLUNTEER SUPPORT PROGRAM

Because the communities carried out so many funded activities in August, this monthly report gives a brief overview only. A detailed report can be found in this separate blog entry.

Photography projects

In August, the Festival Summer project was still in full swing: The photographers took their cameras to 28 events in August to document festivals and get photos for the Wikipedia articles of musicians of all genres. Other events organized by volunteers and funded by Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) were:

• 20 to 24 August: Visit to Rally Germany in Trier and the surrounding area
• 23 to 24 August: DFB Beachsoccer Cup in Warnemünde]
• 29 to 31 August: WLM photo tour through Erfurt as kick-off event for this year’s Wiki-loves-Monuments photo competition
• 31 August: Photo project in the Saxony state parliament

Community spaces and events

The regional community space Lokal K in Cologne also invited people interested in Wikipedia to visit in August. The OK Lab is now also using Lokal K as a meeting point. The call for submissions of program proposals for WikiCon 2014 closed. Feedback can still be given to the submitted program proposals until September 10. The organizers of the WikiCon evening event met in Herne on August 18 to plan. The following list gives an overview of the community events funded by WMDE in August:

• 27.08.: August 27: Oberlausitz meeting on expanding and improving Wikipedia content and other issues
• August 29 to 31: Guide Camp for non-administrative conflict resolution in Kassel
• August 30 to 31: Workshop in Lüneburg, aimed at increasing the number of videos in Wikipedia
• August 28: Open Edit in TU23
• August 6: Meeting of female Wikipedians Women Edit to work on articles and prepare the second Edit-a-thon
• August 30: 2nd Edit-a-thon Women Edit, to expand and improve Wikipedia on the topic of “women in science”

Wikimania

WMDE awarded grants for Wikimania. A total of 47 of the 58 people that applied were awarded a grant, 43 of those actually took up the offer. Members of the German community took part in a range of workshops and spoke on topics including “Which Law Applies to Wikipedia”, “Structured Wikiquote – the future of the free quote compendium that anyone can edit” and “Wiki Loves Parliaments” The videos-at-Wikimania project was initiated by js who started off Wikimania with a workshop on the topic and then went on to take videos together with other volunteers. Reports on Wikimania are available in the Kurier special edition. The Volunteer Support Department also attended Wikimania. Alongside the obligatory discussions with people at various times and events, the team organized, as part of the Pre-Conference in particular, the Volunteer Support Workshop and held two talks: “Community empowerment through professional Community involvement” (for short: “The Community is your friend”) and “Engineering volunteering – what’s this volunteer support all about anyway?”.

Charting Diversity

Charting Diversity has now been published. It was written in the course of the Wikipedia Diversity project, which was carried out together with Professor Ilona Buchem, visiting professor for Digital Media & Diversity at the Gender and Technology Centre of the Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin. The publication sets out the current status of research on topics related to gender diversity and Wikipedia, the key areas of action and measures to make Wikipedia more diverse. Charting Diversity is available in German and in English. A printed copy can be requested by sending an e-mail to bildung@wikimedia.de.

GLAM networking events in Vienna

Preparations are currently underway for the second German-language GLAM meeting 2014 which is taking place on the weekend of September 12 to 14 together with Wikimedia Österreich. Current and planned projects will be reported on in the premises of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The agenda is being prepared by GLAM (GLAM=galleries, libraries, archives, museums) participants. Alongside a cultural supporting program in collaboration with the Austrian Federal Monuments Office, there will also be a joint excursion to the MS Wissenschaft which is mooring in Vienna in September. Registrations for the GLAM meeting are welcome.

INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIPS PROGRAM

Coding da Vinci

The WMDE contribution at Wikimania also included presenting the culture hackathon Coding da Vinci to an international public. The team of organizers travelled to London together with two of the competition’s winners to hold a session in which they reported on the event and its results. The session was carried out as part of the GLAM track (overview available here) and drew the attention of many international Wikimedians working on cultural partnerships and data.

GLAM on Tour

The next GLAM on Tour station, which is currently being prepared will take Wikipedians to the Sauerland in October. Around 20 GLAM participants will have talks, excursions and writing workshops in the museum Haus Hövener in Brilon together with staff of the museum and its association of friends on the topic of mining in Sauerland. Furthermore, following the GLAM on Tour station in the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn in May, the preparations for the exhibition “Outer Space” is being documented photographically; more information is available on this project page.

Science Year 2014

As part of the Science Year 2014, WMDE is holding the event “Science and free knowledge – engine of progress and commons of the information society” on September 15 on the MS Wissenschaft in Vienna together with Wikimedia Schweiz and Wikimedia Österreich, the Open Knowledge Foundation Österreich and the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland. With the panels Open Science, Open Data and Citizen Science, we want to discuss increasing openness and free knowledge in science together with scientists, political representatives and other interested people.

LEGAL AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK PROGRAM

Data Pump

The Data Pump was also taken to Wikimania in London to illustrate the concept of free data and open licenses to interested Wikimedia contributors and members of the public. The Data Pump was translated for this occasion, and now also has English-language navigation.

Monsters of Law

Is that art or can it be thrown away? – This is a serious question in the context of copyright considerations. Lukas Mezger (user:Gnom), lawyer and member of the Wikipedia editorial team on law, will be providing an insight into the conflict between copyright law and creativity at the next “Monsters of Law” event on legal issues related to free knowledge on September 25. He will be talking about the current debate on where to draw the lower threshold for copyright protection in areas such as applied art and design.

Reuse tool

The reuse tool, supervised by WMDE, celebrated its first public presentation at Wikimania. The tool is designed to enable the legal use of Creative Commons licensed images from Wikimedia Commons and provides re-users with the necessary information on authors and links to sources. The tool is permanently available under an open license on Wikimedia Labs for free use and further development. So far, the tool is only available for use in German in Germany, adaptations to other languages and jurisdictions may need to be legally reviewed.

Position paper on copyright law

In response to the copyright consultation results published by the European Commission and in anticipation of their white paper on copyright law, we have compiled a position paper to popularize our concerns at the EU level and bring it onto the EU agenda. The position paper was initially drafted by WMDE and then reworked in collaboration with the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU and other volunteers. The position paper was also presented at Wikimania and discussed with international volunteers, chapters and WMF Legal. The first chapters have already signed it. We aim to collect as many signatures for the paper as possible by mid-September.

GLAM on Tour

Different strategies to establish local encounters between Wikipedia contributors and cultural institutions were presented at the Wikimania session “The secrets of local GLAM outreach” . Lars Alvik, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Norway, Axel Pettersson, project leader of GLAM outreach at Wikimedia Sweden, User:Raymond and WMDE presented their projects and shared results and experiences. The conclusion was that clearly defined topics, allowing sufficient time to get to know the staff and commitment from the institutions themselves and in their own interest were the most important prerequisites for successful collaboration.

GLAM evaluation

The workshop “Best practices for the evaluation of GLAM-Wiki cooperations” was about the increasingly important challenge of evaluating the diverse activities in the cultural sector to an adequate and consistent level. WMDE contributed with an input on the main areas of focus in the GLAM sector and examples of information that has been collected and evaluated so far.

Liquid Lobbying

There were two Wikimania Sessions on our work at EU level and the concept of a collaborative representation of interests. First, the work of the Free Knolwedge Advocacy Group EU of the past 18 months was presented, with several projects, obstacles and questions. After the presentation, these were then discussed in a 90-minute discussion round with speakers from WMF, WMDE, WMIT and EFF. The principle conclusions of the discussion were that Wikimedia should try to discuss its positions and inner contradictions as openly as possible, even if this is difficult. Although this could lead to problems in the short term, most speakers agreed that it would be beneficial in the long term. Conference participants came forward after the presentation offering to help us with this project.

OER Conference 2014

WMDE has managed to gain a number of important guests for the OER (OER=Open Educational Resources) Conference taking place on September 12 and 13. Keynote speakers at the conference will include Dirk van Damme (Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division of OECD) and Nicole Allen (SPARC, U.S.). Mark Rackles, State Secretary for Education in the Senate Administration for Education, Youth and Science, will take part in a podium discussion at the conference. The working group of the Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs currently drawing up recommendations on Open Educational Resources for all education ministries at federal and Land level will also attend the conference and meet with Wikimedia representatives. In August, activities focused on spreading the word about the conference, for which purpose the conference's media partner, werkstatt.bpb, produced a conference trailer. Wikimedia broadly distributed information about the conference, sending it to its partner organizations, to associations and parties and also posting it on social media channels.

The Free Education Alliance

On August 18 the Free Education Alliance started on the process of drawing up recommendations for political action on OER. A number of OER experts have been invited to participate and will meet several times to compile a paper by the end of 2014. Ten people attended the meeting. A total of around 20 partners and supporters will be taking part in the process. The first meeting on August 18 centered on making basic decisions on which topics to focus on and working procedures. The Alliance aims to first compile a paper on recommendations for action and then to publish it. The Free Education Alliance has also submitted a short critical statement on the Presentation of the Digital Agenda by the federal government. The Alliance is disappointed with the specifications of the Digital Agenda, because there is no mention of Open Educational Resources even though the coalition agreement of fall 2013 had addressed this issue.

International Issues

The International Affairs Unit spent August preparing and following up on Wikimania. The main activities here were networking with key people of the movement and completing the Chapters Dialogue project which [blog.wikimedia.de/2013/08/21/chapters-dialogue-beginnt/ started officially] exactly one year ago at Wikimania in Hong Kong In the run-up to the conference, Nicole published the extensive final dossier in Meta-Wiki which contains a detailed documentation of the project’s findings and experiences. A German-language summary of the final dossier is available on the WMDE blog Auf dem Pfad der Dämmerung. In her presentation at Wikimania, Nicole addressed the findings and the tough, decisive issues involved and presented a 30-minute film. The film is an audiovisual documentation of the project and is now available on Wikimedia Commons and Vimeo (with subtitles!) It was also an opportunity to talk with many people (including Wikimedia Foundation staff, members of the Board of Trustees, member of other Wikimedia organizations) about the project and explore possible next steps. The “Tough Questions” which were identified in the course of the project are extremely important for the further development of the Wikimedia movement and must be addressed urgently and in a coordinated manner. The video of the Chapters Dialogue project, by Dominic Ernst, CC-BY-SA 4.0,Vimeo

PERSONNEL

Heny Laurisch, student trainee in the Fundraising Team, left the team as of September 1.