Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Deutschland/June 2011

POLITICS AND SOCIETY

4th Collaborative Initiative on “Privacy and Public”

In June, the third workshop of the 4th collaborative initiative Internet and Society took places at the premises of the Deutsche Telekom’s main office in the capital city and in Brandenburg, there was a weekend workshop where participants worked intensively on scenarios, theses and graphics for the report. Sebastian is part of the expert group. On September 16th, the final workshop will be held with invited guests. At http://collaboratory.de/ all dates, reports and documents of the first three panels of experts can be found and they are available under open licenses.

Kick-off of the Ohu on Copyright Issues

Following up on the third collaborative initiative on control systems for informational goods, new topics will now be identified to the study group level for a reinvigoration of the copyright debate. At the kick-off meeting on June 28th, Jan represented Wikimedia Germany and voiced his opinion, advocating a deeper engagement with the topic of "Using toll-funded content." For additional project proposals and new participants, the Ohu (Maori for the study group) remains open. Application here.

OKCon – OpenKnowledge Conference

On June 30th and July 1st OKcon 2011 took place in Berlin’s Kalkscheune, which is supported by Wikimedia Germany as a partner Sebastian Sooth supervised the cooperation. Mathias Schindler presented several Wikipedia research projects in one session and Daniel Kienzler showed what can be done with the tool server.

German Digital Library / Europeana

On the 9th and 10th of June in Berlin, the Federal Cultural Policy Conference was held, to which Mathias was invited as a substitute for Pavel to take part in a panel on the future of libraries. In preparation for this panel, Mathias attended the presentation of the current state of the "German Digital Library" (DDB) at the Librarians' annual meeting a few days earlier. Based on the information shown there, two recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation concerning the licensing policy of Europeana and DDB were quickly written, which we are now publishing. At the core lies the question of whether the metadata of the objects shown in the DDB and Europeana will be made available under the terms of CC0 or a similar model. After several years of discussion, we have finally reached the point with Europeana where there is now a CC-0-publication route. The DDB still has to discuss this matter. At the panel of the Federal Cultural Policy Conference, the question about licenses was also one of the topics being discussed. As a declared friend of libraries, we also took a position on the matter.

Photo Project Hamburg City Parliament

On the 22nd and 23rd of June, a dozen Wikipedians moved into temporary quarters in Hamburg’s city hall, the seat of the parliament of the free, Hanseatic city. This (and this is a totally neutral description) holiday parliament held session from three in the afternoon till ten at night. The goal of the activity was to take photos of the deputies in order to be able to provide images for the relevant, articles in Wikipedia. Despite a tight agenda and a voting marathon that required almost constant presence in their time-honored parliamentary chamber, the representatives of all factions managed to find time while not being photographed to be given valuable practical tips for using Wikipedia. Words do not really suffice to thank the volunteers and helpers (notably and not exhaustively Olaf Kosinsky, Peter Weis, Ralf Boesch, Henriette Fiebig, Sven Teschke ...) that propped up this event in a professional and pleasant manner. The results are available on Wikimedia Commons.

PUBLIC RELATIONS & PUBLICITY

Wikimedium

The second edition of our association’s magazine for 2011 was published in June and is now available online or as a print edition. The Wikimedium as always can be ordered free of charge by emailing redaktion@wikimedium.de. Catrin and Michael worked together on this edition with a series of guest authors. It contains contributions from active members of Wikipedia and dedicated users from other Wikimedia projects, insights into the everyday life of volunteer contributors and even an interview with the 1,000th association member of Wikimedia Germany. A big thanks goes out for all the great contributors! We are delighted to announce the increasing number of interested people who want to communicate news and experiences from their commitment to free knowledge through the Wikimedium. Be courageous! Your ideas for topics to write about we gladly will accept by emailing us at redaktion@wikimedium.de.

Informational Material

In June, Michael ordered a series of give-aways. These include Wikipedia pencils, fabric bags and postcards, whose different subjects should draw attention to Wikimedia Commons and the project “Wikipedia does school”.

Press Releases

In June, Catrin and Michael published accompanying press releases for four events directly related to Wikimedia Germany and the Wikimedia community. You can find the announcements concerning Wikipedia meets Antiquity, the experts talk “Why should Wikipedia become world heritage?” the public registration for Wikimania Haifa 2011 and the Open Knowledge Conference in the press area of our association’s website.

Press Conferences / Media Cooperation

In June, Catrin conducted several talks with potential cooperation partners for various projects including media such as dradio wissen, the WAZ-Gruppe and Zeit. Talks were held and ideas exchanged that hopefully will shortly be presented as actions. Preparations for the media reports on the television station 3sat (The True Lugworm, June 10th, 2011 ) and at Deutschlandradion Wissen (The Edit Wars of the Know-it-alls, June 10th, 2011) took place in close coordination with Catrin. Thanks to the support of and cooperation with Wikipedians, the results are worth seeing and hearing. Catrin handled numerous requests for background information and interviews concerning the initiative “Wikipedia has to be world heritage.” The event “Wikipedia meets Antiquity” was the focus of some coverage in the media. The reports about this and other examples of the daily press work can be found in news coverage.

Internet Presence

In June, there was a revision of the association’s blog. A little more clarity in navigation, better search functionality and a consistent integration into the association’s website were the first measures taken. In addition, a re-categorization of the old content was necessary in order to improve the outline structure. As a result, there was a new addition; namely, a menu on the right side, which allows users to easily search through categories and years. This revision seamlessly merges with the gradual renovation of one of our various Internet sites, which have been under way since late 2010. As nice as a real "relaunch" of the association’s website or blog might have been, we have carefully opted for an "evolution.” In this way, we can take into account the many scattered sites pertaining to the work of Wikimedia Germany and, at the same time, continue to better fulfill our mission of information.

Wikipedia-Book

When we considered what we could still do on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, the idea occurred to publish a book. In order to develop the concept and content, Catrin and Boris received a strong level ofsupport from the Wikipedia authorship and other user groups on Wikipedia. And the work is now nearing completion: in June, the publishing house based in Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe announced the new books to be published in the autumn and the Wikipedia book is one of them! Currently, Catrin is coordinating with the publishing house the activities planned for the Frankfurt Book Fair as well as readings which will be held throughout Germany around the release date of the book. Preparations for the book release party will start in July, since this event is going to take place in late September. But for the time being the editors at Hoffmann und Campe are spending a lot of time working closely with Boris compiling and editing the contributions. Unfortunately, not all contributions will be included in the book and thus Boris is currently also busy creating an online publication on our association’s website.

German Museum of Technology

The German Museum of Technology was not only a beautiful venue for the first panel discussion “Why should Wik-ipedia become world heritage?” In the closing meetings, Catrin gained an interesting partner. Whether exclusive tours for Wikipedia photographers and authors (all photographs of the exhibits offered under a free license), workshops with Wikipedia editors and museum department heads and possible cooperation within the framework of the program “Wikipedian-in-residence” are just a few ideas for collaborations that were thus created and will be implemented in the upcoming months. For further information, please contact Catrin.

Initiative “Wikipedia for World Heritage”

By now, there are over 28.000 signers and more than 3,300 fans on the Facebook page belonging to the initiative. Jimmy Wales supports the initiative not only through the video appeal that Catrin had produced in May. In June, a letter was written (German / English), which serves mainly to help Jimmy appeal to celebrities worldwide to support the initiative. Altogether, the petition has been translated into over 36 languages. Currently, the campaign logo is being designed by the pro bono agency Leo Burnett in 10 languages for the time being - the participation of the chapters will be accompanied by flanking support of Catrin and Sebastian. Some ideas for national and international community activities were compiled in June and should be scheduled in July in cooperation with volunteers. On the Italian Wikipedia, there has been since late June a site notice referring to the petition. In June, Sebastian Sooth accompanied the online presence of the initiative on the petition site and at Facebook. He also supervised the subtitling of the videos in additional languages. Sebastian is currently preparing the next events that are probably going to be held in Cologne / Bonn, Frankfurt and Hamburg. In early July, there will be a meeting with the German UNESCO Commission, during which possible further steps will be spoken about. In Sebastian will report about it here on the blog.

The petition form and all information about the initiative can be found at http://wikipedia.de/wke

Wikipedia School Project

This month, the school project took pleasure in having more than twenty requests from schools and educational institutions for workshops. In particular, the workshops for pupils were in great demand through the end the school year. We were able to organize a total of six workshops for pupils of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Brandenburg and for the autumn we were able to plan our first series of workshops at trade group conferences and fairs. Also from the press there were reports this month in several newspapers. A summary can be found in our media coverage. The summer holidays have now partly begun and some teachers seem to be using the time now to schedule workshops at the beginning of the school year. All of this makes us quite happy. Especially in light of the current debate about plagiarism, the issue of copyright law is now high on the agenda even in schools. This topic, of course, our speakers were able to bring up and discuss in their work. A teacher told us that after one workshop his pupils were still even discussing the workshop one day after it had taken place. So some progress was actually made this month! In addition, this month we were able to gain two new speakers for our project. We met with the applicants on June 17th in the Unperfekthaus in Essen. We all got to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere and this especially became a successful event due to insights provided by one of the speakers about his line of work. Other candidates are expected to come to our camp in August. For this purpose, the planning began this month. In the current issue of the Wikimedium, you can read the article about one speaker’s work in the school work on page 2. Does this interest you? Then apply or support the project by sending your ideas to schule@wikimedia.de.

FUNDRAISING

This year’s fundraising summit took place between the 17th and 19th of June. A total of 18 participants from 11 Chapters and the WMF met for three days in Vienna in order to discuss all aspects related to fundraising for Wikimedia / Wikipedia. Tobias and Till represented Wikimedia Germany. The main themes were the fundraising agreement, last season’s and the upcoming on-line fundraising campaign, CiviCRM and general aspects of fundraising. Till gave a presentation about the fundraising of Wikimedia Germany, in which he emphasized the importance of the year-round fundraising activities for Wikimedia / Wikipedia. The presentation can be viewed here. It was exciting to discuss the experiences other chapters have had and which way the chapters as well as the WMF would like to take in terms of future fundraising efforts. Here you can view the notes of the summit, which are unfortunately not totally complete due to Internet access problems, Furthermore, our donor survey was created in June. In July, the survey will be conducted. The results we will present both on the blog as well at this point. Incidentally: last year, the WMF conducted an international donor survey, with quite surprising insights that can be read here. Finally, in June the preparations continued for the fundraiser 2011. On the project page you can become updated. In this context, we would like to draw attention to the Test of WMF on June 16th. This one has one of the most important findings for all future fundraising campaigns of Wikimedia: Jimmy is not unbeatable!

PROMOTING VOLUNTEERISM / COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Since June 15th, our new employee Johannes Rohr has been working in the areas of promoting volunteerism and community relations. The work area includes the communities of the projects (Wikipedia and Co.) as well as the membership of the association. John is also taking over some of the duties of Henriette Fiebig, who left the association at the end of the month. In addition to becoming familiar with administrative processes, Johannes is involved with ongoing plans for several measures for improving the promoting of authors and for improving the communication flow between the office and the community. As part of all this, Johannes introduced himself on June 29th in the Kurier to the Wikipedia community and invited others to discuss the role and performance of Wikimedia Germany.

Community Space

Also in June, the blog posting concerning the search for space for free knowledge continued to remain a topic of relevance. Sebastian Sooth had a look at many buildings in Berlin and also held meetings with potential partners in other cities who could offer sites which are simple to use.

Community Project Budget

Sebastian Sooth supported the community project budget committee during its first meeting on Jue 17th and 18th in Hamburg

Zedler Prize for Free Knowledge

On June 14th, Nicole and Catrin invited several community members to talk together about the future of the Zedler medal and to implement innovations discussed in writing in a fixed framework. The meeting was very constructive and fruitful: on the Wikipedia project page there can now be found presentable approaches for a new concept: The newly launched in 2011, "Zedler Prize for Freedom of Knowledge" is a prize for outstanding achievements, articles, editorials, activities and projects both within and outside of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia universe, comparable to the Grimme Prize and the Grammy Awards . In various categories, persons or groups will be honored that have engaged themselves especially for the cause of free knowledge, produced free knowledge, promoted a shift in consciousness or have filled in certain gaps. For these categories we are looking for external partners to take over a sponsorship, to increase the range of competition and who can be members of a jury. The main innovation is that competition does not call for creating articles specifically for the competition but rather recognize the great achievements of the past year. The concept is now being finalized and then a jury will be selected and external partners sought. In November, we will begin the public nomination period then the voting will occur in December and then the contributions will be passed along to the jury. The award ceremony will take place in February/March 2012. Further contributions to the discussion and suggestions for partners, judges, patrons etc. are still welcome! Our contact person is Nicole.

WikiConvention

From September 9th to 11th, the WikiConvention will take place in Nuremberg. The event is being organized by the community for the community. Wikimedia Germany is the main sponsor (along with WMAT and WMCH) and is supporting all the logistical and organizational issues. The WikiCon aims to bring together all the players of the German version of Wikipedia and its sister projects at the Bildungszentrum in Nuremberg. It follows up on the Skillshare Meeting 2010 and will provide time and space for workshops, lectures and panel discussions. By means of open structures, new ideas will be developed and deepened. There will be many opportunities for getting into contact with others in "real life" in the event program. Nicole and Henriette have been in constant contact with the organizers from Nuremberg and have been assisting with questions about registration, budgeting, accommodation, program design and other logistics. As part of the logo contest, a nice-looking logo was chosen. The official registration begins in early July and currently suggestions for the program and offers of help are being collected.

Wiki loves Monuments

The search for partners and sponsors for the photo contest “Wiki loves Monuments” also continued in June. The community is continuing to work on creating the appropriate lists. Contacts are being made to individual cities (and existing contacts are being strengthened) that are interested in local activities. In addition to the website, there are now flyers that can be printed out and taken on photographic tours. For the jury. the candidates from the community as well as suggestions for external judges are being gathered through July 10th. Our contact person is Nicole. Kilian has published a detailed blog post.

SCIENCE

Wikipedia meets Antiquity

On Pentecost weekend in the city of Göttingen, the conference “Wikipedia meets Antiquity” took place. For two days, 100 academics and Wikipedians met, a total of almost 30 lectures were held (including one given by Mathias about image rights, database links and content partnerships). Marcus Cyron, Martin and Jonathan Rulsch did a wonderful job organizing such a great event. Wikimedia Germany supported the event financially and from our office Michael and Catrin helped out with informational material and public relations and Nicole and Henriette with the organization and logistics. Marcus writes in the Kurier: I have rarely experienced such a constructive meeting of Wikipedians with academics. Both sides were so open-minded [...] Even in the context of the organization of our event, we were absolutely surprised by the positive response from the "academic world.” Altogether about 100 participants on both days were present - from professors to students to Wikipedians (and surely some people who were both). Surely this does not apply to everyone - but with very many academics and, not least with university professors a change in thinking seems to be taking place. Wikipedia is certainly not loved - no, this is wrong, Wikipedia is now at least respected by a significant number of academics, in part by some highly respected ones but at the very least it is being made use of in almost all cases. But it is being more and more understood that something is there that is so common and used and, in spite of all the (not always unjustified) doubt, is worthy of attention and indeed is needed. For a variety of reasons. Many thanks to the organizers and those who helped out at the conference for this great event!

Wikipedia Academy

In June, Nicole, Angelica and Denis continued the discussions concerning the reorientation of the Academy. In two intensive meetings, more ideas were gathered and, furthermore, talks were held with the organizers of the CpoV and of the Free Culture Research Conference. One of the ideas is to organize the Academy as a three-day conference and to leave the preparation of the program and subject matters to an external program committee or an advisory board. We hope that through the use of external experts we will be afforded a broader look at various research topics and will meet scientists from the most various of disciplines.

POLITICS AND SOCIETY

4th Collaborative Initiative on “Privacy and Public”

In June, the third workshop of the 4th collaborative initiative Internet and Society took places at the premises of the Deutsche Telekom’s main office in the capital city and in Brandenburg, there was a weekend workshop where participants worked intensively on scenarios, theses and graphics for the report. Sebastian is part of the expert group. On September 16th, the final workshop will be held with invited guests. At http://collaboratory.de/ all dates, reports and documents of the first three panels of experts can be found and they are available under open licenses.

Kick-off of the Ohu on Copyright Issues

Following up on the third collaborative initiative on control systems for informational goods, new topics will now be identified to the study group level for a reinvigoration of the copyright debate. At the kick-off meeting on June 28th, Jan represented Wikimedia Germany and voiced his opinion, advocating a deeper engagement with the topic of "Using toll-funded content." For additional project proposals and new participants, the Ohu (Maori for the study group) remains open. Application here.

OKCon – OpenKnowledge Conference

On June 30th and July 1st OKcon 2011 took place in Berlin’s Kalkscheune, which is supported by Wikimedia Germany as a partner Sebastian Sooth supervised the cooperation. Mathias Schindler presented several Wikipedia research projects in one session and Daniel Kienzler showed what can be done with the tool server.

German Digital Library / Europeana

On the 9th and 10th of June in Berlin, the Federal Cultural Policy Conference was held, to which Mathias was invited as a substitute for Pavel to take part in a panel on the future of libraries. In preparation for this panel, Mathias attended the presentation of the current state of the "German Digital Library" (DDB) at the Librarians' annual meeting a few days earlier. Based on the information shown there, two recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation concerning the licensing policy of Europeana and DDB were quickly written, which we are now publishing. At the core lies the question of whether the metadata of the objects shown in the DDB and Europeana will be made available under the terms of CC0 or a similar model. After several years of discussion, we have finally reached the point with Europeana where there is now a CC-0-publication route. The DDB still has to discuss this matter. At the panel of the Federal Cultural Policy Conference, the question about licenses was also one of the topics being discussed. As a declared friend of libraries, we also took a position on the matter.

Photo Project Hamburg City Parliament

On the 22nd and 23rd of June, a dozen Wikipedians moved into temporary quarters in Hamburg’s city hall, the seat of the parliament of the free, Hanseatic city. This (and this is a totally neutral description) holiday parliament held session from three in the afternoon till ten at night. The goal of the activity was to take photos of the deputies in order to be able to provide images for the relevant, articles in Wikipedia. Despite a tight agenda and a voting marathon that required almost constant presence in their time-honored parliamentary chamber, the representatives of all factions managed to find time while not being photographed to be given valuable practical tips for using Wikipedia. Words do not really suffice to thank the volunteers and helpers (notably and not exhaustively Olaf Kosinsky, Peter Weis, Ralf Boesch, Henriette Fiebig, Sven Teschke ...) that propped up this event in a professional and pleasant manner. The results are available on Wikimedia Commons.

PUBLIC RELATIONS & PUBLICITY

Wikimedium

The second edition of our association’s magazine for 2011 was published in June and is now available online or as a print edition. The Wikimedium as always can be ordered free of charge by emailing redaktion@wikimedium.de. Catrin and Michael worked together on this edition with a series of guest authors. It contains contributions from active members of Wikipedia and dedicated users from other Wikimedia projects, insights into the everyday life of volunteer contributors and even an interview with the 1,000th association member of Wikimedia Germany. A big thanks goes out for all the great contributors! We are delighted to announce the increasing number of interested people who want to communicate news and experiences from their commitment to free knowledge through the Wikimedium. Be courageous! Your ideas for topics to write about we gladly will accept by emailing us at redaktion@wikimedium.de.

Informational Material

In June, Michael ordered a series of give-aways. These include Wikipedia pencils, fabric bags and postcards, whose different subjects should draw attention to Wikimedia Commons and the project “Wikipedia does school”.

Press Releases

In June, Catrin and Michael published accompanying press releases for four events directly related to Wikimedia Germany and the Wikimedia community. You can find the announcements concerning Wikipedia meets Antiquity, the experts talk “Why should Wikipedia become world heritage?” the public registration for Wikimania Haifa 2011 and the Open Knowledge Conference in the press area of our association’s website.

Press Conferences / Media Cooperation

In June, Catrin conducted several talks with potential cooperation partners for various projects including media such as dradio wissen, the WAZ-Gruppe and Zeit. Talks were held and ideas exchanged that hopefully will shortly be presented as actions. Preparations for the media reports on the television station 3sat (The True Lugworm, June 10th, 2011 ) and at Deutschlandradion Wissen (The Edit Wars of the Know-it-alls, June 10th, 2011) took place in close coordination with Catrin. Thanks to the support of and cooperation with Wikipedians, the results are worth seeing and hearing. Catrin handled numerous requests for background information and interviews concerning the initiative “Wikipedia has to be world heritage.” The event “Wikipedia meets Antiquity” was the focus of some coverage in the media. The reports about this and other examples of the daily press work can be found in news coverage.

Internet Presence

In June, there was a revision of the association’s blog. A little more clarity in navigation, better search functionality and a consistent integration into the association’s website were the first measures taken. In addition, a re-categorization of the old content was necessary in order to improve the outline structure. As a result, there was a new addition; namely, a menu on the right side, which allows users to easily search through categories and years. This revision seamlessly merges with the gradual renovation of one of our various Internet sites, which have been under way since late 2010. As nice as a real "relaunch" of the association’s website or blog might have been, we have carefully opted for an "evolution.” In this way, we can take into account the many scattered sites pertaining to the work of Wikimedia Germany and, at the same time, continue to better fulfill our mission of information.

Wikipedia-Book

When we considered what we could still do on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, the idea occurred to publish a book. In order to develop the concept and content, Catrin and Boris received a strong level ofsupport from the Wikipedia authorship and other user groups on Wikipedia. And the work is now nearing completion: in June, the publishing house based in Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe announced the new books to be published in the autumn and the Wikipedia book is one of them! Currently, Catrin is coordinating with the publishing house the activities planned for the Frankfurt Book Fair as well as readings which will be held throughout Germany around the release date of the book. Preparations for the book release party will start in July, since this event is going to take place in late September. But for the time being the editors at Hoffmann und Campe are spending a lot of time working closely with Boris compiling and editing the contributions. Unfortunately, not all contributions will be included in the book and thus Boris is currently also busy creating an online publication on our association’s website.

German Museum of Technology

The German Museum of Technology was not only a beautiful venue for the first panel discussion “Why should Wik-ipedia become world heritage?” In the closing meetings, Catrin gained an interesting partner. Whether exclusive tours for Wikipedia photographers and authors (all photographs of the exhibits offered under a free license), workshops with Wikipedia editors and museum department heads and possible cooperation within the framework of the program “Wikipedian-in-residence” are just a few ideas for collaborations that were thus created and will be implemented in the upcoming months. For further information, please contact Catrin.

Initiative “Wikipedia for World Heritage”

By now, there are over 28.000 signers and more than 3,300 fans on the Facebook page belonging to the initiative. Jimmy Wales supports the initiative not only through the video appeal that Catrin had produced in May. In June, a letter was written (German / English), which serves mainly to help Jimmy appeal to celebrities worldwide to support the initiative. Altogether, the petition has been translated into over 36 languages. Currently, the campaign logo is being designed by the pro bono agency Leo Burnett in 10 languages for the time being - the participation of the chapters will be accompanied by flanking support of Catrin and Sebastian. Some ideas for national and international community activities were compiled in June and should be scheduled in July in cooperation with volunteers. On the Italian Wikipedia, there has been since late June a site notice referring to the petition. In June, Sebastian Sooth accompanied the online presence of the initiative on the petition site and at Facebook. He also supervised the subtitling of the videos in additional languages. Sebastian is currently preparing the next events that are probably going to be held in Cologne / Bonn, Frankfurt and Hamburg. In early July, there will be a meeting with the German UNESCO Commission, during which possible further steps will be spoken about. In Sebastian will report about it here on the blog.

The petition form and all information about the initiative can be found at http://wikipedia.de/wke

Wikipedia School Project

This month, the school project took pleasure in having more than twenty requests from schools and educational institutions for workshops. In particular, the workshops for pupils were in great demand through the end the school year. We were able to organize a total of six workshops for pupils of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Brandenburg and for the autumn we were able to plan our first series of workshops at trade group conferences and fairs. Also from the press there were reports this month in several newspapers. A summary can be found in our media coverage. The summer holidays have now partly begun and some teachers seem to be using the time now to schedule workshops at the beginning of the school year. All of this makes us quite happy. Especially in light of the current debate about plagiarism, the issue of copyright law is now high on the agenda even in schools. This topic, of course, our speakers were able to bring up and discuss in their work. A teacher told us that after one workshop his pupils were still even discussing the workshop one day after it had taken place. So some progress was actually made this month! In addition, this month we were able to gain two new speakers for our project. We met with the applicants on June 17th in the Unperfekthaus in Essen. We all got to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere and this especially became a successful event due to insights provided by one of the speakers about his line of work. Other candidates are expected to come to our camp in August. For this purpose, the planning began this month. In the current issue of the Wikimedium, you can read the article about one speaker’s work in the school work on page 2. Does this interest you? Then apply or support the project by sending your ideas to schule@wikimedia.de.

FUNDRAISING

This year’s fundraising summit took place between the 17th and 19th of June. A total of 18 participants from 11 Chapters and the WMF met for three days in Vienna in order to discuss all aspects related to fundraising for Wikimedia / Wikipedia. Tobias and Till represented Wikimedia Germany. The main themes were the fundraising agreement, last season’s and the upcoming on-line fundraising campaign, CiviCRM and general aspects of fundraising. Till gave a presentation about the fundraising of Wikimedia Germany, in which he emphasized the importance of the year-round fundraising activities for Wikimedia / Wikipedia. The presentation can be viewed here. It was exciting to discuss the experiences other chapters have had and which way the chapters as well as the WMF would like to take in terms of future fundraising efforts. Here you can view the notes of the summit, which are unfortunately not totally complete due to Internet access problems, Furthermore, our donor survey was created in June. In July, the survey will be conducted. The results we will present both on the blog as well at this point. Incidentally: last year, the WMF conducted an international donor survey, with quite surprising insights that can be read here. Finally, in June the preparations continued for the fundraiser 2011. On the project page you can become updated. In this context, we would like to draw attention to the Test of WMF on June 16th. This one has one of the most important findings for all future fundraising campaigns of Wikimedia: Jimmy is not unbeatable!

PROMOTING VOLUNTEERISM / COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Since June 15th, our new employee Johannes Rohr has been working in the areas of promoting volunteerism and community relations. The work area includes the communities of the projects (Wikipedia and Co.) as well as the membership of the association. John is also taking over some of the duties of Henriette Fiebig, who left the association at the end of the month. In addition to becoming familiar with administrative processes, Johannes is involved with ongoing plans for several measures for improving the promoting of authors and for improving the communication flow between the office and the community. As part of all this, Johannes introduced himself on June 29th in the Kurier to the Wikipedia community and invited others to discuss the role and performance of Wikimedia Germany.

Community Space

Also in June, the blog posting concerning the search for space for free knowledge continued to remain a topic of relevance. Sebastian Sooth had a look at many buildings in Berlin and also held meetings with potential partners in other cities who could offer sites which are simple to use.

Community Project Budget

Sebastian Sooth supported the community project budget committee during its first meeting on Jue 17th and 18th in Hamburg

Zedler Prize for Free Knowledge

On June 14th, Nicole and Catrin invited several community members to talk together about the future of the Zedler medal and to implement innovations discussed in writing in a fixed framework. The meeting was very constructive and fruitful: on the Wikipedia project page there can now be found presentable approaches for a new concept: The newly launched in 2011, "Zedler Prize for Freedom of Knowledge" is a prize for outstanding achievements, articles, editorials, activities and projects both within and outside of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia universe, comparable to the Grimme Prize and the Grammy Awards . In various categories, persons or groups will be honored that have engaged themselves especially for the cause of free knowledge, produced free knowledge, promoted a shift in consciousness or have filled in certain gaps. For these categories we are looking for external partners to take over a sponsorship, to increase the range of competition and who can be members of a jury. The main innovation is that competition does not call for creating articles specifically for the competition but rather recognize the great achievements of the past year. The concept is now being finalized and then a jury will be selected and external partners sought. In November, we will begin the public nomination period then the voting will occur in December and then the contributions will be passed along to the jury. The award ceremony will take place in February/March 2012. Further contributions to the discussion and suggestions for partners, judges, patrons etc. are still welcome! Our contact person is Nicole.

WikiConvention

From September 9th to 11th, the WikiConvention will take place in Nuremberg. The event is being organized by the community for the community. Wikimedia Germany is the main sponsor (along with WMAT and WMCH) and is supporting all the logistical and organizational issues. The WikiCon aims to bring together all the players of the German version of Wikipedia and its sister projects at the Bildungszentrum in Nuremberg. It follows up on the Skillshare Meeting 2010 and will provide time and space for workshops, lectures and panel discussions. By means of open structures, new ideas will be developed and deepened. There will be many opportunities for getting into contact with others in "real life" in the event program. Nicole and Henriette have been in constant contact with the organizers from Nuremberg and have been assisting with questions about registration, budgeting, accommodation, program design and other logistics. As part of the logo contest, a nice-looking logo was chosen. The official registration begins in early July and currently suggestions for the program and offers of help are being collected.

Wiki loves Monuments

The search for partners and sponsors for the photo contest “Wiki loves Monuments” also continued in June. The community is continuing to work on creating the appropriate lists. Contacts are being made to individual cities (and existing contacts are being strengthened) that are interested in local activities. In addition to the website, there are now flyers that can be printed out and taken on photographic tours. For the jury. the candidates from the community as well as suggestions for external judges are being gathered through July 10th. Our contact person is Nicole. Kilian has published a detailed blog post.

SCIENCE

Wikipedia meets Antiquity

On Pentecost weekend in the city of Göttingen, the conference “Wikipedia meets Antiquity” took place. For two days, 100 academics and Wikipedians met, a total of almost 30 lectures were held (including one given by Mathias about image rights, database links and content partnerships). Marcus Cyron, Martin and Jonathan Rulsch did a wonderful job organizing such a great event. Wikimedia Germany supported the event financially and from our office Michael and Catrin helped out with informational material and public relations and Nicole and Henriette with the organization and logistics. Marcus writes in the Kurier: I have rarely experienced such a constructive meeting of Wikipedians with academics. Both sides were so open-minded [...] Even in the context of the organization of our event, we were absolutely surprised by the positive response from the "academic world.” Altogether about 100 participants on both days were present - from professors to students to Wikipedians (and surely some people who were both). Surely this does not apply to everyone - but with very many academics and, not least with university professors a change in thinking seems to be taking place. Wikipedia is certainly not loved - no, this is wrong, Wikipedia is now at least respected by a significant number of academics, in part by some highly respected ones but at the very least it is being made use of in almost all cases. But it is being more and more understood that something is there that is so common and used and, in spite of all the (not always unjustified) doubt, is worthy of attention and indeed is needed. For a variety of reasons. Many thanks to the organizers and those who helped out at the conference for this great event!

Wikipedia Academy

In June, Nicole, Angelica and Denis continued the discussions concerning the reorientation of the Academy. In two intensive meetings, more ideas were gathered and, furthermore, talks were held with the organizers of the CpoV and of the Free Culture Research Conference. One of the ideas is to organize the Academy as a three-day conference and to leave the preparation of the program and subject matters to an external program committee or an advisory board. We hope that through the use of external experts we will be afforded a broader look at various research topics and will meet scientists from the most various of disciplines.

RENDER

Wikimedia is a Use Case Partner in the EU supported research project RENDER

The main task in the first project year is defining metrics and measuring methods. These should help us to make state-ments about the quality –and here especially the manifoldness (diversity) – of the information within Wikipedia. In June, we continued to prepare the definition of new metrics. In addition, we also carried out a manual analysis of a Wikipedia article in different language versions. On the basis of this analysis, we investigated the editing and updating process in regard to varying ways of representing things in the respective language versions.

For suggestions or questions, please contact Angelika or render@wikimedia.de. In June, the RENDER team gained a new member. Gerrit. He has been working since May 2009 as a student employee at Wikimedia and, beginning in June, he has been supporting the project during part of his work week. Gerrit studied library and information science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and, in light of his experience, he complements our team well. Since June, Jonathan Sonntag has been involved in the project as a student employee in addition to working on his thesis in computational linguistics. He will be paying special attention to current programming and im-plementation tasks.