Name of the Association: ASOCIACIÓN CIVIL WIKIMEDIA ARGENTINA
Legal Address: Av Díaz Vélez 4140 3rd Floor Apt. 26 - Autonomous City of Buenos Aires
Balance Sheet at December 31, 2010 REPORT OF ACTIVITIES
Dear members of the
Civil Association Wikimedia Argentina,
We are pleased to inform you our activities during 2011:
The year featured the celebration of 10 years of Wikipedia, which began with celebrations globally by the international community of Wikimedia. In Argentina, we believed that January was not the most appropriate month for celebration in the country, so we decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia in Spanish in May, with an event at General San Martín Centro Cultural (venue of Wikimanía 2009). The event was attended by journalists, teachers, educators and wikipedians who joined the day for talks, lectures and celebrations. In this context, we presented the Wiki-contest about Ibero-American women (Mujeres iberomericanas).
As is also usual, in April we participated in the Latin American Festival of Free Software Installation (FLISOL), organized by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires. Together with partner organizations like Vía Libre Foundation, Creative Commons Argentina, Argentine Consumers, the Association of Graduate Librarians of Argentina, and FM La Tribu, participated in seminars and activities of the Intellectual Property World Day in the Cultural Center of Cooperation in the City of Buenos Aires. In coordination with colleagues from Chile, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Bolivia, we participated in the virtual meeting EducaRed, an activity designed to respond to concerns of educators throughout Latin America on the use of Wikipedia in educational environments.
As part of our work in the education sector, we are now part of the Advisory Council of Conectar Igualdad (a nationwide program of digital inclusion). At Buenos Aires Province, we signed a cooperation agreement with the Department of Culture and Education of the Province, with the aim of promoting joint research projects, technical assistance and training of human resources.
For the first time since our founding as a Civil Association, we made the decision and moved forward in the hiring of an Executive Director to design and carry out the strategic plan of the organization work.
We were present and participated in the open discussions organized by the Market of Cultural Industries of Argentina, which conducted a seminar on Copyright in the Digital World and talks about Creative Commons, free culture and collaborative production.
Alongside the High Social Studies Foundation and the support of the Office for the Southern Cone of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany), with contributions from researchers from the National Council og Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and the University of Buenos Aires, National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS), National University General San Martín (UNSAM) and the National University of Quilmes (UNQui) among other institutions and jointly with Fundación Vía Libre, Wikimedia Argentina contributed a paper with policy proposals in the digital world, given to candidates for legislators and policy makers at the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires in the days prior to the election of city authorities.
In June 2011 we held the first meeting Ibero-American Wikimedia Summit, which was attended by wikipedians of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Uruguay and Venezuela. The meeting served to strengthen the bonds of regional work and articulate a common agenda of objectives, visions and goals for the region.
We participated in the campaign against the implementation in Argentina of the so-called "digital canon", for which we sent a letter to the Senate of the Nation; in the letter we discussed our views on the issue and the reasons why this initiative of "compensation to authors for private copying" directly affect the Wikimedia projects.
As every year, several members of our organization actively participated in Wikimania 2011, held in Haifa, Israel. There, they became involved in various meetings with other Wikimedia chapters worldwide and offered talks on activities in Argentina, including a presentation on the Initiative for Ibero-American Cooperation in which our organization is strongly committed.
In the month of September, we also participated in the Global Creative Commons Summit, a network of organizations where Wikimedia Argentina is part in cooperation with Vía Libre Foundation. The meeting was held in Warsaw, Poland, where we also participated in the OpenGLAM meeting organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation.
In the same month we participated in the Summit for a Free Education, where once again we presented the work done by Wikipedia en el aula (Wikipedia in the classroom).
For the first time, we designed a strategic plan for 2012 that was approved by the General Assembly of Members in its entirety. Thus, we close the year 2011 with a program of activities with a definite and planned work schedule for the entire year. For its implementation, we requested a Wikimedia Foundation grant that evaluated the feasibility and estimates of the program and decided to financially support their realization.
Workshops and seminars in coordination with educational institutions were conducted. Among them, we gave a workshop on Wikipedia en el aula at the National University of the North-West Province of Buenos Aires, at no cost for teachers of the same institution. We also carried out activities in cooperation with the CUI (University Language Centre), in relation to our native Latin American native languages. We participated in the Open Access Week at the Library Prof. William Obiols,Faculty of Humanities and Education at the National University of La Plata.
Under the Bicentennial Project, we delivered copies of our book to different parts of the country, including the town of Taco Pozo in Chaco and in the city of Ushuaia in the south. This project has the cooperation of APAER (Association of Godparents of Rural Schools) and the NGO Coincidir. In addition, copies of the Bicentennial audio CD with Braille tags were given to the Popular Library Rafael de Aguiar, in San Nicolás, Buenos Aires Province. Two more copies were given to the Braille Library of La Plata.
Near the end of the year we started a process of cooperation with the area of adoption of technologies (InTec) of the Ministry of Education of the City of Buenos Aires. In this framework, we were part in the Seminar about Collaborative Knowledge: "Responsible use of Wikipedia in teaching and learning practices" under the Digital Education Forum organized by InTec.
We also conducted a Wiki-meeting at the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, where we offered a workshop about Wikipedia and other about book scanning with use of a scanner of Derecho a Leer organization, being used also in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Buenos Aires, with whom we began a process of cooperation for 2012.
Our best wishes,
The Steering Committee.
A. C. Buenos Aires, April 3, 2012
