Our Community IdeaLab (Ideenwerkstatt), introduced as a format in April 2014, is a regular workshop for incorporating community ideas into WMAT's short-term and mid-term planning. Four new ideas were presented, discussed and shaped in that way:
New ideas on how to continue our work on Austria's cultural heritage after we discontinued the (classical) Wiki Loves Monuments contest
Collaboration with the Federal Monuments Office around Monuments Day in September
Focus on cultural heritage beyond WLM and listed monuments: central theme for 2016 "cellar alleys" (matching the theme of Monuments Day)
New photography projects and required equipment, ideas for more skill sharing among volunteers in this field
Workshops for interior photography (e.g. churches)
Equipment for microphotography, possible incubator project with volunteers from Germany
Another important topic was the discussion of candidates for the affiliate selected board seats of the WMF. Following this, WMAT board and staff got together for the first strategy meeting of 2016 and the last one before the next board elections. The meeting consisted of a self-assessment of the board and a comparsion with the last assessment two years ago, identfying areas of progress and continuous challenges. Also, the elections and formalities for the general assembly in June were prepared together with a rough agenda for the next term.
Individuals involved: 16 (active editors: 14 [engaging 1 editor who has formerly not been or very rarely been an active WMAT volunteer into the planning and/or executing]
, WMAT staff: 2). - WMAT support: Coordination, small catering, external venue (in-kind).
WMAT is proud to announce that we will be hosting the MediaWiki Hackathon 2017 in Vienna! We attended this year's hackathon with a small delegation of staff and volunteers from Austria and Germany who will support the organization of the event in Vienna, in order to get an impression of how a hackathon works and to learn from the experiences of WMIL and other former hosting chapters and individuals. We also talked to many participants about what they like about our hackathons and their ideas for improving the event in the future. We also met with the WMF teams which support international hackathons for the first planning meeting. In a next step, our goals for the hackathon will be discussed at WMAT's next strategy meeting to serve as a guide for our future plans concerning the event.
As last year, WMAT supported the Wikimedia Conference by allocating staff time to its preparation and by sharing our experiences and know-how. We co-hosted a session on volunteer support, one of our core areas of expertise. We are also working closely together with program coordinator Cornelius Kibelka from the hosting chapter WMDE in order to document the results for the wider movement and to support the follow-up process in the months after the conference (Wikimania among other occasions).
The conference was also a great opportunity to present WMAT as a host for the 2017 Hackathon and to build partnerships concerning (tech-)community building with other interested affiliates (e.g. from the CEE region).
First editing steps on Wikipedia during the volunteer fair 2016Our booth at the Young Volunteers fair
The first volunteer fair which specifically aimed at young volunteers (students and pupils) took place in April in Vienna. As WMAT had good experiences with participating in the general volunteer fair, we decided to get a WMAT booth for this one. In preparation, we also refined our booth concept: we had a clear focus theme (Wiki Loves Earth, as the competition was about to start shortly after the fair) and provided the possibility to get some first Wikipedia experience directly on the spot. We had a big screen and prepared articles around environmental topics that needed minor clean-up (e.g. fixing typos) in order to let visitors fix them and get some first-hand experience on how to edit Wikipedia, hoping that this would lower the barrier for them to edit themselves the next time they come across some error.
While this worked pretty well and we will adopt the concept for other similar outreach occasions, the overall satisfaction with our engagement in the Young Volunteers Fair is fair to middling. One challenge were organizational shortcomings on the side of the event organizers which had severe impact on the work of all organizations that were located in our part of the fair, resulting in us having severely less quality traffic of the 1700 visitors than other parts of the fair. Another challenge was one that we recognized from our work with schools and universities: many young people are lacking some genuine interest and only attend because it is part of a class excursion or they get credit for it (writing an assignment about their visit). This makes the fair distinctly different from the classical volunteer fair, where people are genuinely self-motivated and are really looking for promising ways to invest their volunteer time.
Among the more positive outcomes of the fair was the networking with other like-minded or potential partner NPOs, such as the organizers of the 2017 Special Olympics in Styria, which whom we started a cooperation around photography accreditations with after the fair.
Individuals involved: 150 (active editors: 5, WMAT staff: 3). - WMAT support: coordination, information material, registration fee, small catering for volunteers at info booth.
The WikiDienstag (“WikiTuesday“) is a weekly meet-up in the WMAT office. Volunteers share their knowledge and work together on improving the content of Wikimedia projects.
Topics in April 2016:
April 5th: Preparation Young Volunteers event at the Vienna University of Economics and Business
April 19th: Preparation Austrian film project
April 26th: Coordination of current projects and events
The Writing Competition ("Schreibwettbewerb") is a traditional contest for high-end articles in the German-language Wikipedia. WMAT supported the 24th edition by donating three powerbanks with engraved Wikipedia logo and user name as prizes. 35 editors participated in the 24th Writing Competition. 43 articles were nominated, 19 of them were new and 24 improved articles.
After the competition, many of these articles were nominated as featured or good articles. Here is a list of articles which were recognized as featured or good articles (until 2016-06-30):
We support Wikimedia Commons photographers with equipment from our tech pool and with accreditations for events. This gallery highlights some of the activities in April 2016.
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