Wikimedia Polska/Reports/2017

Wikimedia Polska report for 2017

Summary

The year of 2017 was busy for Wikimedia Polska: the chapter hosted the regional conference in Warsaw while continuing its programmatic activities in community support, GLAM partnerships and other areas found to bring greatest opportunities to outreach, bring new content, educate and keep the community vivid and creative.

Per our plans, from December 2016 till December 2017 we managed to accomplish following items:

In terms of our support for content creation

• We successfully organized, as planned, the following contests:
  • Summer Photo WikiContest – Wikiwakacje – which was also part of Wiki Loves Monuments (4,000 uploads and 263 participants)
  • Thematic Weeks contest (35 thematic weeks, resulting in the creation or improvement of more than 2,100 articiles)
  • Polish edition of CEE Spring 2017 (766 new or improved articles)
  • A new contest called "WikiChallenge" (1,166 new articles)
• We continued the Wikigrants program (47 microgrants funded, resulting in over 2,800 pictures uploaded and 950 articles written or expanded, as well as 11 books scanned and relevantly recreated in Wikisources).
• We finished one audio-recording project (18 audio files uploaded).
• Our GLAM initiative continued to expand. The cooperation with 25 cultural organizations (15 continued, 10 new) resulted in over 20,000 GLAM images, of which 13,000 are reused in various Wikimedia projects. The uploaded pictures were viewed almost 17 million times per month.
• Although originally planned, there was no Wikiexpedition this year, mainly due to the lack of volunteers willing to organize it and run. This long established franchise might have needed some rest.

In terms of outreach/promotion

• As planned, we continued organizing wikiworkshops and edithathons. 20 Wikipedia related workshops/lectures or edit-a-thons organised with different instututions (including universities in Warsaw, Wrocław and Poznań). The exact number of trained persons as well as retention of new users is unknown. As it was decided not to hire a workshop coordinator, the vast majority of workshops were organized by our press officer and volunteers recruited by him.
• As also planned, we maintained the activity of our PR team consisting of a press officer and a communications officer responsible for maintaining social media profiles, official Wikimedia Polska blog, publishing the newsletter and maintaining contacts with mainstream media, especially during crises.
• We printed/created a selection of new promotional materials as planned, and they were used in our other activities as needed.

In terms of meetings and conferences

• Winter retreat meeting was repeated. It was attended by 57 wikimedians who provided 17 workshops, panel discussions, and lectures.
• Polish Wikimedia Annual Conference was organized as scheduled. It was attended by 63 participants who provided 26 lectures and workshops.
• We organized 4 local meetings - 3 in Poznań and one in Warsaw
• A new idea was the organization of Polish Wiktionary and Wikisource Meeting - Źródłosłów 2017 - which was attended by 18 participants.
• We also organized a strategy dinner for 17 experts during the second cycle of global Wikimedia strategy process.
• A planned meeting for donors was not organized this year.

In terms of International support and collaboration

• We organized, as planned, a CEE Meeting in Warsaw. It was attended by 104 wikimedians, of which 41 provided lectures or workshops.
• As planned, Wikimedia Polska funded 4 scholarships for Polish Wikimedians and 1 foreign Wikiperson from the region for Wikimania 2017 in Montreal.
• As planned, Wikimedia Polska financially supported Free Knowledge Advocacy Group (FKAGEU).
• Wikimedia Polska funded scholarships or reimbursed travels for: Wikimedia Conference 2017 in Berlin (3 people), Wikimedia Russia Conference (2 people), Wikimedia Ukraine Conference (2 people), and one person for each: 2017 European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting, Wikimedia Hackathon 2017, WikiWomen Camp, WikidataCon 2017, and Berlin Volunteer Supporters Network meeting.

In terms of overall budget and operational costs

As in previous years, the main source of income for Wikimedia Polska were 1% tax donations made by individuals. Income from this main source was down 61 153.99 PLN (10,9%) comparing to 2016. Overall income was up by 90 019,24 PLN (12,8%), mainly due to income from WMF grant for organizing CEE Meeting.

The structure of expenses was very close to the plans. The major differences were: a substantially smaller amount spent on promotion/outreach (36 000 PLN instead of 145 000 PLN) and a much higher than planned cost of the international support. The overall expenses were slightly higher than planned - however still slightly lower than the annual income.

Detailed report

Financial report

Structure of income

The main source of income for Wikimedia Polska are 1% tax donations made by individuals. According to Polish law, physical persons can choose one NGO with a state-recognized tax deductible status to donate 1% of their income tax to. The deduction is made via the state tax form, which taxpayers have to fill each year between January 15 and April 30 and where they are allowed to indicate a court-approved organisation number which will receive 1% of their income tax.

Income from this main source decreased by 61 060.89 PLN (10.9%) comparing to 2016. Overall income was up by 44 107,43 PLN (6,68%), mainly due to a substantial income from a WMF grant for organizing CEE Meeting.

Source	Amount (PLN)	Amount (USD)	%
1% tax deductible	499 283,19 PLN	$ 143 418,61	70.85%
other donations	14 934,94 PLN	$ 4 290,05	2.12%
membership fees	3 136,87 PLN	$ 901,06	0.44%
other	3 206,05 PLN	$920,93	0.45%
WMF Grants	184 192,13 PLN	$52 909,01	26.14%
Total	704 753,18 PLN	$ 202 439,66	100%

1 USD = 3,4813 PLN (29.12.2017)

Structure of expenses

The structure of expenses was very close to WMPL's plans. The major differences were: substantially lower amount spent on promotion/outreach (36 000 PLN instead of 145 000 PLN) - as several planned outreach and promotion cost were covered from project's and conferences budgets. The other difference is much higher than planned cost of the international support - due to showing there all costs related to the CEE Meeting 2017. This shift can be also explained with an opportunity to win some local publicity and outreach while organizing the international event, and the staff&volunteer resources redirected to this major and infrequent endeavour.

In result, while the overall expenses were slightly higher than planned - they were still lower than income, so the balance in 2017 was +10 449,94 PLN (1.48% of entire budget).

	PLANNED			SPENT
Description	Amount (PLN)	Amount (USD)	%	Amount (PLN)	Amount (USD)	%
Projects	200 000	57 450	30,5%	181 912,27 PLN	$52 254,12	26,20%
Promotion/outreach	145 000	41 651	22%	36 296,16 PLN	$10 426,04	5,23%
Conferences/meetings	90 000	25 852	13.7%	99 974,95 PLN	$28 717,71	14.40%
International support	70 000	20 107	10.7%	195 286,44 PLN	$56 095,84	28.12%
Operational	150,000	43 087	22.9%	180 833,42 PLN	$51 944,22	26.05%
Total	655,000 PLN	188,147	100	694 303,24 PLN	$199 437,92	100

1 USD = 3,4813 PLN (29.12.2017)

General infrastructure

Wikimedia Polska is a registered association run under Polish law and having a legal personality. It was established on November 15, 2005 in Łódź and obtained its tax-deductible status on March 28, 2007.

Number of members: 132 (as of December 31, 2017), with 15 new members accepted by the Board in 2017 and five members removed from the list the same year.

• Number of regular employees: 5 (secretary running an office, accountant, GLAM coordinator, Volunteer Support Specialist, Press Officer)

Structure and governance

• The Executive Board consists of seven active Members: the President, Vice-president, Treasurer, Secretary and three regular Members.
• The Audit Committee consists of three active Members including its Head.
• The Arbitration Committee consists of three active Members including its Head.

Present members of the Executive Board, Audit, and Arbitration Committees were elected in June 2016 for a period of two years and no personal changes were made in 2017. See: Władze

Office and maintained infrastructure

Wikimedia Polska runs one physical office. The headquarters is located in Łódź, 15 Tuwima Street. Rented facility of approx. 20 m² is equipped with 3 computers and an MFP.

The Chapter has been maintaining one dedicated server and an E-mail service

Dedicated server rented from OVH ([1])

The server is being used by 40 people (40 shell accounts), mainly for the operation of bots and for holding source photographs and scans. The server holds 3 wikis (Polish Wikipedia ArbCom wiki, internal wiki of WMPL Board and an open test wiki for checking if Polish Wikipedia templates and scripts are compatible with new versions of MediaWiki), 1 Wordpress-based service: the main blog of Wikimedia Polska, and 6 static html-5 based pages: official page of Wiki Loves Monuments [2], official page of Wiki Loves Earth [3], official page of E-textbooks contest [4], official page of WikiWakacje contest [5], offical page of CEE Spring blog: [6], landing page for wikipedia.pl domain [7] and landing page for our 1% tax action [8]. The server also holds a dozen of mailing lists [9] (see also: Listy dyskusyjne).

nazwa.pl E-mail service

This is a secure paid E-mail service for maintaining official chapter E-mail boxes (in wikimedia.pl domain). The E-mail boxes are used for official correspondence only. See list of them.

Operated Internet domains

WMPL pays for holding 27 domains (see UZ 2016-6). Most of the domains are simply redirected to the relevant Wikimedia projects and are mainly held in order to avoid squatting. http://www.wikipedia.pl points to the search engine in order to avoid direct legal responsibility for Polish Wikipedia content. Several domains: http://wikizabytki.pl, http://wikiprzyroda.pl/, and http://ceespring.eu point to the official pages of the contests we were organizing. http://www.koed.org.pl points to the official page of Coalition for Open Education. See detailed list of domains: Domeny

Activities

Content Creation

Micro Grants

Budget 8000 PLN

This year we held another edition of our micro-grant program. From January 2017 to December 20th 2017 there were new 53 grant applications (47 were approved, 3 rejected and 3 withrdrawn). 28 have already been successfully finished, other are in progress and will be continued in 2018. The results are about 2800 pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, more than 900 new or improved Wikipedia articles, 11 books scanned for Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons and 14 audio files (total results will be even better - many grants are still ongoing and have quite a long timeframe declared)

GLAM initiatives

GLAM-Wiki basics, visual note

WMPL GLAM activities of 2017 included continuing collaborations with the National Museum of Ethnography, National Maritime Museum, Małopolska Institute of Culture and other institutions. WMPL was awarded for its 2016 Faras project with a museum sector award, Sybilla, and received considerable support from the ethnological community for ethnography-centered wikiprojects.

Throughout 2017 WMPL has been receiving many requests for training and collaboration from GLAM institutions across the country, which resulted in several new projects, most notably the cooperation with the Museum of the City of Łódź, KARTA Centre, Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice and several others. Further new collaborations and file uploads have been planned for 2018 with the National Library of Poland, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the National Digital Archives.

The GLAM coordinator supported employees of institutions wishing to begin sharing their collections through Wikimedia and receive state funding -- it was granted in mid-2017 to the Museum of the City of Łódź and the KARTA Centre. The Carpathian Ethnography Project saw international collaboration with Wikimedians and museums from Slovakia, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

• Over 400 articles were written within the 2017 GLAM projects;
• Out of the total 21 000 files from GLAM partnerships, roughly 5000 were uploaded in 2017;
• The overall Polish GLAM file usage in Wikimedia projects is 13 211;
• The overall global number of monthly views of Polish GLAM files is close to 17 million.

GLAM file statistics

Institution	Files in Wikimedia Commons	Reuse in WM projects	Monthly views in WM projects
Central Archives of Historical Records	2 260	598	2 682 601
European Solidarity Centre	71	117	321 064
Institute of Ethnology (Burszta Archives) AMU	7 829	480	352 540
KARTA Centre	95	239	6 970
National Museum in Warsaw	865	2 702	2 976 427
National Museum of Ethnography	3 442	1 539	815 294
Małopolska Institute of Culture	1 653	60	107 361
Mazovian Digital Library	27	277	5 643
Museum of Art, Lodz	41	54	36 917
Museum of Motor Vehicles, Nieborów	127	26	43 499
Museum of the City of Łódź	1 024	133	147 259
National Maritime Museum	300	135	19 407
Museum of Polish History	30	5	5 570
Pijarowski collection	355	621	1 241 238
Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice	119	33	10 763
Senate of Poland	1641	5 422	6 547 228
State Archive in Poznań	671	370	1 321 546
State Archive in Lodz	137	108	101 339
Tatra Museum	75	86	54 674
Zachęta National Gallery of Art	203	206	177 821
Overall	20 965	13 211	16 975 161

Carpathian Ethnography Project

Project page | Files on Wikimedia Commons

Hutsul cimbalom (Ukraine)

The Carpathian Ethnography Project was carried out according to its schedule for 2017 with three international wikitrips and collaborations with Wikimedians from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine.

• In 2017, over 2000 images were taken and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons,
• 30 short films were made available via Wikimedia Commons,
• Over 130 articles were written or expanded,
• Images and media were reused on 1090 pages and are viewed approximately 700 000 times per month.

Community and feedback

The Carpathian project and continuing collaboration with the National Museum of Ethnography generated considerable interest. The Polish Ethnological Society endorsed Wikipedia as a medium for sharing ethnographic knowledge and runs editing events. The Carpathian Project team was invited to present the results of its work at the Digital Cultures conference in Warsaw, the Digital Humanities conference in Tartu and a number of ethnography conferences. Two university-based groups from Wrocław and Poznań continue to contribute to both the Carpathian project and have created the active Ethno Wikiproject on Polish Wikipedia, where editors from universities and the Museum all contribute and expand content.

Wikipedian in Residence at the Museum of the City of Lodz

Project page | Images in Wikimedia Commons

Ignacy Płażewski, Textile workers of Łódź around 1950

A new collaboration with the Museum of the City of Łódź started in June 2017 and resulted in an upload of three collections of images from the museum archives – at the time of writing, over 1000 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, including both public domain images and 1950s and 1960s photographs released on a CC BY-SA license. The Museum began digitising its ran a public competition to hire a Wikipedian-in-Residence for a three-month period. The selected WiR helped train the Museum staff regarding licensing of images, Commons infrastructure, upload, the reuse of images and other issues.

• Over 1000 historical photographs of the city and its inhabitants taken from the 1900s to 1960s were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with extended descriptions and metadata;
• The museum published informative leaflets and brochures for its visitors informing them about the availability of images on Wikimedia Commons and inviting the public to reuse images;
• Once uploaded to Commons, images were extensively used and presented in the local media (selections of images uploaded to Commons were published in online editions of local newspapers, staying 'most read' for several days);
• The museum ran workshops for both adults and children during which members of the public made creative remixes of the Commons images, such as screen printing and cut-and-paste collages of the Commons photographs.
• The images have been reused in Wikipedia on over 130 pages this far.

The Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice

Project page | Files in Wikimedia Commons

Prezydent winding tower, 2017

The Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice began a formal collaboration with Wikimedia Polska in spring 2017 and is systematically running small scale workshops on editing articles aimed at members of the public as well as staff of other local cultural institutions. The RIC now functions as a know-how hub for the region and runs weekly meetups, and contributes images of events and monuments taken by its staff.

Maritime Museum in Gdańsk

Project page | Files in Wikimedia Commons

The Maritime Museum collaboration continues and is based on museum staff working with a local experienced Wikipedian who uploaded 300 images of collection objects, exhibitions at branches, and helps interested students write related articles.

KARTA Centre

Project page | Images

A new collaboration with the KARTA centre has been ongoing since April 2017. The project, done with over 20 historical public and private archives in Poland and resident Wikipedians, resulted in over 200 new Wikipedia articles and 100 images from a cross-section of private archives across the country. Wikimedians have also helped KARTA run trainings for interested archivists on open licenses, copyright matters and technical issues related to Commons uploads.

Małopolska's Virtual Museums

Figurine of sitting ibis

A mass upload from the Małopolska Institute of Culture has begun and files are exported from the Institute's archives to Commons via Pattypan. The first batch of files – images from the Archaeological Museum in Kraków – were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and new batches are waiting for upload in 2018.

Open Culture Workshop

The Open Culture Workshop is a collaboration between WMPL and Centrum Cyfrowe. The project started in 2017 and will be run in 2018. 4 museums will be trained in semi-automatic uploads using Pattypan and upload items from their collections to Commons while also checking Wikipedia for missing topics and helping fill in these gaps together wth their volunteers and visitors. The participants are: The Museum of Warsaw, Museum of Polish History (see uploaded files), KARTA Centre and the National Museum in Warsaw.

Pattypan follow-up

Further improvements continue to be made to Pattypan, which has been widely used by institutions from a wide variety of countries. The number of uploads done via Pattypan has grown from 20 000 in 2016 to over 100 000 in late 2017.

Upcoming collaborations

Visitors are learning about reuse by printing Commons GLAM images on bags and clothing during a workshop at the Museum of Łódź

National Library of Poland

The National Library in Poland is working on a 2018 partnership project based on using article and category statistics to select the most popular and valuable topics on the history of Polish literature in order to provide illustrations to Wikimedia Commons and train its volunteers and staff to contribute to related articles.

National Digital Archives

The Digital Archives are preparing an export of over 1000 historical images to Wikimedia Commons and selecting images relating to the 2018 centenary of Polish Independence in a joint project with the National Museum in Warsaw.

Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

The MoMA in Warsaw are planning to upload several hundred works of modern art from their collections into Wikimedia Commons along with exporting their metadata to Wikidata. The project is also going to include monthly volunteer editing meetings at the museum throughout 2018.

Editing Contests

Thematic Weeks

Budget: 3011,07 PLN

The aim of the Thematic Weeks project is to support creation and improvement of Wikipedia articles on various topics - from geology to Egipt and from sicence to Oceania and keeping the editing fun, challenging and motivating experienced editors. The project is almost entirely curated and organised by the community who decides on topics and manages all project pages. But to support greater participation WMPL funds prizes for the participants. In addition to the main prize (for person who created or improved most articles by adding to them 5kB) this year we added two more: the prize drawn from among all the people who created articles during the Thematic Week and a special prize for the person who added to..... The prizes are books or other sources of the winners choice. This way the prizes not only motivate participants but also can be used by them to create content after the contest.

In 2017 35 thematic weeks were organised, resulting in the creation of more than 2400 articles on different topics, for example on specific countries (including Russia, China, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy), on science, geology, religion, astronomy, phisics etc. Up to 24 users took part in a given week.

WikiChallenge

Budget 300 PLN

mały|Personalised Wikipedia mugs with usernames were an interesting and unique prize in Wikichallenge

The aim of the WikiChallenge editing contest was to encourage users to create new articles which exist in many different language versions of Wikipedia but have still not been created in Polish Wikipedia. At the same time we wanted to create a fun, challenging contest which would bring something new an exciting into editing.

The contestants received points for every created article. The number of points depended on the number of language versions in which the article already existed. The results were counted daily, which helped to create an excting atmosphere of friendly competition and to motivate participants on a daily basis. The winner received the main prize - a personalised printed book with his very own Wikipedia story and some of their best articles. In addition we gave away 6 weekly prizes for users who received the most points in the given week. The prizes were personalised Wikipedia mugs with the winners user names. Those one-of-a-kind Wikipedia prizes were interesting and desirable because of their uniqueness while at the same time were aimed to strengthened the users identification with the movement.

The contest lasted 30 days.

Results
Number of participants	46
Number of newly created articles	1166
Number of KB added to Wikipedia mainspace	5402
Number of newly created articles which existed in at least 30 other language versions of Wikipedia	268

CEE Spring 2017

Budget 1600 PLN

This year Wikimedia Polska also took part in CEE Spring 2017. Both at the international and local level.

Differently than in 2016 we did not act as a fiscal sponsor for the contest (this task was handled this year by Wikimedia Austria) but we assigned our staff member - Community Support Officer - to work with the organising team (mostly with commucation, writing blog posts etc.).

We also organised the local version of the contest and funded prizes for Polish participants. Prizes were given in the following categories:

• largest number of articles written in a week (10 weekly prizes were given) - books and other sources of information for up to 100 PLN (about 20 euro)
• largest number of articles about women from CEE region written during the whole contest - books and other sources of information for up to 300 PLN (about 70 euro)
• largest number of Featured and Good Articles - books and other sources of information for up to 300 PLN (about 70 euro)
• small prize (a diploma and some wiki-swag) for every user who created at least 10 articles in every 5 different contest weeks (3 users won that prize)

The prizes were designed to help achieve our main CEE Spring 2017 goals this year (work on closing the content gender gap and improve the quality of articles by havng more Good and Featured articles on CEE related topics). In result 134 articles about CEE women were created or improved by the contest participants (36 of them by the prize winner). And 2 articles reached the Featured Article status and 14 became Good Articles.

Total results

Results
Number of new articles	638
Number of improved articles	128
Total number of new and improved articles	766
Number of participants	47

We also worked on connecting CEE Spring with our other CEE related project - Carpat Ethnography (see also GLAM activities section). For that purpose we created a special Carpathians Challenge which resulted in creation of 28 new articles (related to CEE and ethnography) in 5 languages.

Full, excellent, international CEE Spring 2017 statistics can be found here.

Audio recordings

Budget 7 710 PLN

We continue supporting the creation of free-license professional recordings of important literature works. The recordings are made by professional actors in a recording studio and put on Wikimedia Commons.

This year we recorded the poetry of one of the most important Polish Romantic poets - Cyprian Kamil Norwid. The project resulted in 18 recordings of different poems, made by 4 professional actors (including a very well known and appreciated actor Jan Nowicki. All files are available on Commons.

WikiWakacje

Budget 5000 PLN

We organised the second edition of the WikiVacation photo contest. The aim of the contest was to gather photographs of Polish monuments, nature and art exhibited in public spaces. Overall 5213 photos were uploaded by 307 users (which is a better result than last year when we had about 4000 uploads and 263 participants).

The contest took place from Augut 1st to September 30th. The main contest partner was the Polish Heritage Institute. We also worked with our GLAM partners who helped us to organise 5 guided photo walks in 4 different Polish cities. The walks were an opportunity to promote the contest and the idea of GLAM cooperations.

The winning photos were selected by a jury consisting of professional photographers, journalists, wikimedians and a representative of the National Heritage Institute of Poland. They chose 20 best pictures of the whole contest and 3 best pictures in two thematic categories (Monuments and Nature). The jury decided not to award any pictures in the Public Monuments category.

All the winning monuments photos were submitted to the international finale of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017. One of the pictures won 24th place in WLM.

Wikipedia też jest kobietą

Budget mostly in kind

WMPL supported the pl.wiki campaign w:pl:Wikipedia:Wikipedia też jest kobietą (Wikipedia is a woman too), dedicated to creating and improving articles on women.

Outreach and promotion

Communication

• we managed our profiles in social media channels related to Polish Wikipedia, Wikimedia Polska, and GLAM Wiki and assisted volunteers managing Polish Wiktionary and Polish Wikisource and Polish Wikiquote profiles (e.g.). Our strategy is to show interesting content on Wikipedia's profile and to promote activities hosted by Wikimedia Polska and some interesting GLAM content.
• We host a blog where we write about Wikipedia, and projects and activities organized by Wikimedia Polska.
• We publish a weekly newsletter dedicated to our members and for wikimedians, in which we inform the readers about the goings-on, interesting events, projects, and initiatives. You can find all issues here.
• since November we participate in the creation of CEE Newsletter. We take part in the work of the international publishing team and publish our monthly reports
• We promoted some events and projects in the media and issued press releases related to those happniengs (including Public Domain Day, Wikipedia's birthday, our GLAM cooperations, WikiVacations photo contest etc.)
• We worked with the media to cover important topics related to Wikimedia projectst (for example in March we gave tv and press interviews related to our work in fighting the content gender gap)

see more: Polish Wikipedia press coverage.

Workshops/Edithathons

In 2017 we organised 20 Wikipedia related workshops/lectures or edit-a-thons. Some of them were related to our existing GLAM projects. One of the most interesting was a series of Wikipedia workshops for KARTA Centre and private archivist - partially organised in a form of a webinar (see more about this project in the GLAM section).

We continued with our project with the Faculty of Biology of Warsaw University. The project aimed to improve biology related content at Polish Wikipedia was started in 2016. In 2017 we organised another series of workshops for the faculty students, attended by 89 people and resulting in creating and improving dozens of articles (you can see the project results here). We also worked with German philology students on the Wrocław University and Ethnography students from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

We also organised editathons dedicated to covering specific topics. Firstly, in February and March we held/supported a few events dedicated to the content about women, co-running a Femine Element of the Wiki mini-campaign, focused on notable women biographies (see also w:pl:Wikipedia:Wikipedia też jest kobietą/2017/Dziewczyny w Wikipedii IKP UW). In June, we were invited by Malta Festival Poznań to organise on the topic of migrations.

The complete lists of workshops and edit-a-thons can be found here.

Meetings and conferences

See also Meta Events page

Winter Retreat 2017

The Winter Retreat Meetup was attended by 57 people which is more than in the previous year. Interestingly for 7% it was the first ever live wiki-meetup

Budget 20 370 PLN

The Winter Retreat was a meeting aimed to create a space for the Polish Wikimedia community for sharing ideas, learning, and discussing future projects. It took place from January 27 till January 29 in a form of a weekend retreat in a small village Tworzyjanki. It was attended by 57 participants (which was 18 more than in the previous year). The program included 17 presentations and discussion panels and 9 workshops, as well as a series of informal activities and icebreakers. The meeting was mostly dedicated to Wikipedia but there was some workshops on the topic of Wikidata and some space specifically dedicated for sister projects.

According to the post-meeting survey (filled by 77% of the partcipants) the retreat proved to be a good learning experience - 82% people stated that the meeting let them to better understand the challenges that Wikipedia faces and 75% declared that the knowledge they gained will be used by them in their work in the projects. Interestingly, many comments noted that the participants got introduced to Wikidata thanks to this meeting and that it was very valuable to them. This is why we scheduled to put more emphasis on Wikidata during Winter Retreat 2018.

See more: here.

Wikimedia Polska Conference

Budget 50 000 PLN

Our annual conference combined with the general assembly took place from June 2nd to June 4th. 63 people participated. Apart from the general assembly there were discussions and presentations about Wikimedia Polska projects, challenges and future introduces both by Wikimedia Polska board and staff and by Wikimedia Polska volunteers. There were also some workshops and discussions on topics related to Wikipedia and it's sister projects and a 2 hour long discussion about Movement Strategy.

The main goal of the conference (apart from the General Assembly) was to inform our members and volunteers about what we do and to motivate them to join our initiatives. According to our post-conference survey 82% of the participants gained more knowledge about Wikimedia Polska and 57% feel more motivated to engage in Wikimedia Polska projects. The survey also showed that the participants gained more knowledge, skills and motivation related to their activity in Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Polish Wiktionary and Wikisource Meeting - Źródłosłów 2017

One of the Wikisource users prepared a special printed book based on a Wikisource text. The book was given to all the conference participants. It was meant not only as a unique souvenir but also as a practical way of showing how we can use Wikisource materials

Budget 9912.23 PLN

The Źródłosłów conference took place on 27th-29th October. It was the first live meeting dedicated to Polish sister project since 2010 Sabat conference. We wanted to help communities of the two most active, vibrant and growing sister projects to connect, work on challenges their projects face and opportunities they face. We also wanted to give these volunteers a proper opportunity to work very closely with the chapter and to shape the event according to their needs. This is why volunteering community members worked very closely with the staff in organising the event, and projects communities were almost entirely responsible for shaping the programme.

Results

• 18 participants (11 Wikisource editors, 4 Wiktionary editors and 3 users active in both projects)
• number of participants for whom it was the first ever live Wikimedia meeting - 2

According to the post-event survey our goals were met. 86% of participants declared that the event improved their motivation to work within the project and 93% that they feel more connected to their community. 93% state that their knowledge about the project they work with was increased and 78% that they gained new skills useful in their Wikimedia work. Overall 86% of participants who filled the post conference survey would like to take part in a similar event next year.

Strategy dinner for experts

Budget 2933.70 PLN (806.83 USD) - fully paid from WMF grant

As a part of our engagement in Global Strategy Process, during its second cycle, we organized a dinner for 17 external experts, which is reported here: Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Cycle 2/Wikimedia Polska Strategy Dinner - Warsaw June 5, 2017.

Local meetings

Wikipedia Day was celebrated in Poznań by having Wiki-cupkaces

There were 4 local meetups. 3 of them were organised in Poznań, and one in Warsaw:

• Wikipedia Day meeting (budget: 481 PLN)
• Wiki Barbecue - an informal meeting of local wikipedians partially supported by Wikimedia Polska (support: 108 PLN)
• Polish Wikipedia Birthday - the main celebrations were organised before the CEE Meeting (see CEE Meeting 2017 section) but the local community also decided to meet (budget: 746 PLN)
• Wiki afternoon in Warsaw (no budget, only organizational support)

All meetings were attended by 10-16 people.

Meetings and conferences attended by our members, staff and volunteers

• Marta Moraczewska (WMPL GLAM staff) took part in 2017 European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting in Paris.
• Paweł Marynowski (User:Yarl, author of PattyPan) participated in Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 in Vienna.
• Tomasz Ganicz (WMPL President) participated in Big Fat Brussels Meeting (FKAGEU meeting) in Brussels.
• Małgorzata Wilk (WMPL Board) participated in WikiWomen Camp in Mexico City
• Tomasz Ganicz took part in Krynica Economic Forum
• Julia Koszewska (WMPL member) attendend Ukrainian Wikimedians Meeting in Cherson
• Paweł Marynowski (Yarl) was invited and participated in WikidataCon 2017 in Berlin
• Janusza Dorożyński (User:Ency, WMPL member) and Anna Nowikowska (User:Krokus, WMPL member) met Russian Wikimedians during RU Wikiconference in Moscow.
• Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL volunteer support staff) was present at Volunteer Supporters Network meeting in Berlin.
• Klara Sielicka-Baryłka was invited and participated in "Open licences, open content, open data: tools for developing digital humanities" conference in Tartu, Estonia

International support

CEE Meeting 2017

WMCEE people in WMCEE Newsletter - one of the outcomes!

Budget 176,644.74 PLN (46,845.43 USD, according to the exchange rate of the date of grant approval) of which

40,101.79 USD (145,661.74 PLN) was donated by WMF (see: meta:Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Polska/CEE Meeting 2017)

5421.56 USD (19,692.73 PLN) was donated by Wikimedia Polska

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017 was the sixth annual meeting of Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe and focusing on the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia and similar projects) in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The meeting took place in POLIN Museum in Warsaw, Poland, from September 22nd until September 25th 2017. The conference was attended by 104 people instead of planned 90. Altoghether there were representatives of 31 local chapters/user groups from 25 CEE countries + invited speakers from WM The Netherlands, WMUK, Wikidonne and the WMF. Out of 26 lectures and workshops at least 20 were devoted to the sharing experience/skills, and good/bad practices. Out of 104 attendees 41 provided lectures or workshops, of which 38 were people from the region. See: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017/Programme. According to the survey, 87% of participants agree with the statement that the conference did provide information useful for them. 73% approve that it contributed to the understanding of the future of the open knowledge and 75% that it increased their understanding of the Wikimedia movement. The conference was accompanied by 2 GLAM activities and several social events. See report: Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Polska/CEE Meeting 2017/Report and a conference main page: Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2017.

Wikimania 2017 scholarships

Budget 28 000 PLN + 16 000 PLN

Wikimedia Polska awarded and funded 4 scholarships, which covered most participation costs (accommodation, travel, insurance, conference fee) in Wikimania 2017 conference in Montreal. Three of those were awarded to volunteers from Wikimedia projects in Polish language, but one scholarship had been set aside for someone from the wider CEE community. For the first time ever the Scholarships Committee was international, as it was chaired by Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama). Total budget of the scholarships programme was 28000 PLN. On top of that, two WMPL Board Members were sent to the same conference as our official representatives. The cost of that was 16000 PLN.

See: Wikimania_2017

FKAGEU support

As in previous years FKAGEU was donated 2500 EUR for the maintenance of the FKAGEU coordinator office in Brussels. This effort is funded by several European chapters.

Advocacy

Dziwny ogród by Józef Mehoffer, in PD since January 1, 2017. Upload by our partner, National Museum in Warsaw

Public Domain Day

Polish Public Domain Day was organized by Wikimedia in Erazm Ciołek Palace in Kraków on January 20, in cooperation with Kraków Branch of State Museum and Modern Poland Foundation (Nowoczesna Polska). The main theme of this celebration were Józef Mehoffer's (1869-1946) (a Polish painter and decorative artist) works which entered Public Domain on January 1st, 2017, as well as Gertrude Stein and Herbert George Wells. The event was attended by circa 40 people - mainly empoloyees from Kraków GLAMs. More information: WMPL wiki

FKAGEU

Two people from Wikimedia Polska: Tomasz Ganicz and Szymon Grabarczuk, are active members of FKAGEU. The works of FKAGEU in 2017 concentrated mainly in Digital Market Harmonization Directive and related legal issues - such as freedom of panorama, exclusive journal rights, database directive and others. Tomasz Ganicz participated also in the Big Fat meeting in Brussels.

KOED

Wikimedia Polska continued its activity within the Coalition for Open Education (Koalicja Otwartej Edukacji) - a semi-formal platform for cooperation and advocacy of NGO and educational organizations interested in creation and promotion of open-licensed educational materials. Among others, we participated in: a preparation and signed our opinion about proposed change of law regarding copyright collective's organizations; translated and signed a petition "Right copyright for education" petition page; and participated in a KOED meeting in Jabłonna. press release.