Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Österreich/April 2011

University for applied sciences of Dornbirn

A german Wikipedian started a cooperation with the University for applied sciences of Dornbirn. They plan to set up a platform where the articles and thesis of economical studies will be published so they can be used for Wikipedia articles for source and reference.

Wikimedia Österreich has been included in this cooperation as a supporting organisation in the background, so we are not actually involved directly. We sent a letter of support advertising the project to the rector's office and hope that the project will happen.

Wiki Loves Monuments

There are several ideas around "Wiki Loves Monuments" and several people in the community working on it. We are trying to find out about those efforts and their goals to streamline the activities a bit. Many thinks use the name "Wiki Loves Monuments" but are actually different things than the international WLM project.

Our goal is to find a project manager from the community who will coordinate the local projects with the international project. The challenge is to stop people from doing their other projects that don't fit into WLM but still manage to seperate the things a bit to avoid confusion. We also need to concentrate on the WLM project a bit to make it happen within the timeline of the international project.

• http://mitglieder.wikimedia.at/Projekte/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

The domain wikilovesmonuments.at has been registered by us. Nico Ray from Wikimedia CH provided us with the code of their website which has been slightly adopted to Austria - lists and maps are still missing.

We are thinking about renting or buying photo equipment which can be used to take professional pictures of the monuments.

• http://mitglieder.wikimedia.at/Projekte/Communitybudget_Fotoausr%C3%BCstung

User Generated Content Workshop in Vienna

The Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) invited us to their EuropeanaConnect Joint Workshop on User Generated Content for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (UGC4GLAM - http://dme.ait.ac.at/ugc4glam). The workshop will take place on May 16th and 17th in Vienna.

They were in contact with Liam Wyatt, the GLAM project manager by the Wikimedia Foundation who was travelling through Europe after the chapters meeting in Berlin. He also visited Switzerland for several days which was mainly coordinated and organized by Manuel Schneider. Liam was invited to this congress and asked who he could recommend, he asked Manuel who suggested that the organisers should seek contact to the Wikimedia Österreich board.

Christoph Breitler and Beppo Stuhl will both visit the conference, Christoph will present the Wiki Loves Monuments project there.

Science Talk: Open Access

There will be a panel discussion on May 5th in Graz where Christoph is invited to talk about open access. The audience are mainly students and scientists from the University of Graz where Christoph is currently studying.

Online Access the Austrian National Library

A member of the community pointed out that it is possible to get a subscription at the Austrian National Library for only 10 EUR which also allows to access databases and other information sources of the library.

We were trying to get such a subscription and make it available to our members (like a proxy). Denis has contacted the library in order to get that done but the result was that they require someone to show up physically and bring a photo for the pass. They also insist that the passes are only for personal use, they also refused in having a representative of Wikimedia Österreich to show up and get the passes for other members.

In consequence we have communicated this on our mailing list, recommending that if someone comes to Vienna he or her should go to the library in order to get that pass.

Administrative Challenges

Regular Board Meetings

Even though we as a board have improved much compared to the former years by daily mail exchange through the new board mailing list and by having regular Skype meetings, we found out that it is getting harder and harder to find time for regular meetings.

Therefore we have defined now Tuesday evening, 20:00 as the regular chat time. We will meet every week now at the same time. Topics will be collected at any time in the wiki. Those will be discussed at the chat meetings and then removed while there are minutes of every meeting in the wiki. If there are not enough people participating in the chat the decisions can be approved (or turned down) on the mailing list later. These decisions will be recorded in the minutes as waiting for circular resolution, every board member can then add his or her vote later.

Face-to-Face Board Meeting

There have been early plans already right after the general assembly to have a meeting of the board for one weekend, to have time to sit together and make plans and strategies. While we were communicating about these plans we received some negative feedback - quite a lot, but only from two people on our public mailing list - so we cancelled that idea. The complaints pointed out the costs and asserted that the board is spending too much money for travel costs "paying free holidays to the board members". It was also hard to find a date all would be available for a whole weekend.

Several board members are part of the biology project in german Wikipedia. The project members meet at June 1st for a journey to go out into the nature to find some interesting plants and animals. This year they meet in Vienna before they continue together.

There will be now a small board meeting (only those who are going on the biology tour) on June 1st (the day after is a holiday in Austria).

Fundraising Invoice

Wikimedia Österreich received the fundraising invoice by the Wikimedia Foundation over almost 18.000 USD. The money has been transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation consequently. Bank fees where 0,5 % (0,25 % by each involved bank).

Vienna Convention Bureau

They contacted us out of the blue, stating that they would like to work with us and would be happy if we could organise Wikimania together in Vienna.

We were a bit surprised how they found us and that they know about Wikimania. We found out that this company is subsidiary of the Vienna Tourist Office which is owned by the municipality. We are still a bit sceptical about them as they offer their services for free (they claim in their first e-mail). We agreed to try their services for the Fundraising Summit.