Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Mexico/September 2014

September 2

• Meeting with Manuel Venegas “Borla”, production coordinator, and Agustín Peña, Program Manager at Ibero 90.9 Moebius 90.9.
• Shooting of the film "Wikipedia in the radio" (in Spanish with subtitles in English).
• Working session about Chapter processes with Minoru Osorio.

Wikipedistas working at the Museo Soumaya

September 3

• Monthly Board meeting

September 4

• Meeting with Carlos Enrique Galindo Leal, PhD, General Director of Science Communications, following up on the CONABIO project

September 6

• Airing number 14/24 of the radio program Möebius: From Ibargüengotia to the Malaysia flight. Aired on Ibero 90.9 FM of Mexico city.

September 8

• Talk at the Technology and Innovation Center in Telmex: Editatón Soumaya Abierto. 50 hours of Art.
• Meeting with Abdiel, from the Iztapalapa Institute of Technology to promote the Wikipedia Education Program

1985 Earthquake Editathon

September 13

• Airing number 14/25 of the radio program Möebius: From Queen Victoria to wedding garters. Aired on Ibero 90.9 FM of Mexico City.

September 15

• Meeting with Marco Rascón, Institutional Coordinator at the Culture Secretariat of the Distrito Federal Government, initial talks towards a probable colaboration agreement.

September 20

• Airing number 14/26 of the radio program Möebius: Damon Albarn. Aired on Ibero 90.9 FM of Mexico City
• 1985 Earthquake Editathon, at Tlatelolco Cultural Center of UNAM, Mexico City.

September 23

• Edit workshops towards the second editathon at Museo Soumaya: Editatón Soumaya Abierto. 50 hours of Art.

September 24

• Talk at the State of Mexico Autonomous University, Atlacomulco campus, as part of its 30 anniversary celebrations.

Talk about Wikipedia and free knowledge, at UAEM, Atlacomulco Campus.

September 26 - 28

• Editatón Soumaya Abierto. 50 hours of Art, Museo Soumaya Plaza Carso, Mexico City.

September 29

• Participation at the Digital Communities for Learning in Higher Education summit in Xalapa, Veracruz, as guests of the Veracruz University.

September 30

• Participation at Abre Latam 2014, the Open Data and Transparency meeting in Latin America, in Mexico City.

Highlights

50 hours of art in Wikipedia: the Museo Soumaya editathon

Between September 26 and 28, we literally lived in Museo Soumaya of Mexico City during a 50-hour editathon, surpassing the mark of 35 hours established by Amical Wikimedia in 2012. With the full support of the museum, we finished this great challenge achieving 64 new articles in Spanish Wikipedia and more in English, Catalan and Hebrew with editors outside Mexico City, in Uruguay, Venezuela and Israel. There were also editors who came from the States of Puebla, Jalisco and Aguascalientes just to be part of this wondrous occasion.

Museo Soumaya made a great effort as well: they developed a logistics plan that included the active participation of researchers, investigators and museum curators, offered unique support for the wikipedists' stay, established a small temporary library with references, created a complete program of cultural contents (including guided visits to the museum and its thematically divided halls), visits to the Inbursa Aquarium and UNOtv studios, and provided hot meals and beverages during the 50 hours of the event on top of it all.

The event began with the presentation of the new museum website, presented by Alfonso Miranda, head of Museo Soumaya, and followed by a special message of opening by Lila Tretikov, executive director of Wikimedia Foundation. "We are so proud to partner with institutions like Museo Soumaya as part of our ongoing relationships with the world’s leading galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. I want to thank the organizers of this event, the incredible team at Wikimedia Mexico. Your passion, enthusiasm, and energy are unsurpassed. You inspire me with your creativity and commitment", said Tretikov in her message.

We had special talks by Herminia Din, from the American Association of Museums, and Liam Wyatt, currently GLAM coordinator at Europeana and long-time GLAMmer.

At 10:01 PM Sunday 28th, everyone in the museum celebrated reaching 50 hours of continuous Wikipedia edits and we had a small cocktail celebration, and the ceremony award from the Museum to the people who wrote more articles.

The results of the activity are huge: 64 new articles in 5 languages, 1616 editions to the Wikimedia projects and 15 new and active registered users. We hope to continue working with the museum in our shared mission of free knowledge dissemination to the whole world, one art piece at a time.

1985 Earthquake editathon

On September 20th we perform the 1985 Earthquake editathon at Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco (CCUT) of UNAM. During some hours the Wikimedia Mexico community edit about the main article of the 1985 Earthquake, one of the most relevant historical events in the recent Mexico City history. In addition to the Wikipedia edition activities, the cultural center recorded some stories from citizens who lived the events, due to an open call made previously. The surrounding zone of Tlatelolco, where the cultural center is settled, was one of the most damaged zones.

This event was inaugurated by Mr. Marco Rascón, interinstitutional coordinator at Mexico City Culture Secretariat, and Eunice Hernández, Head of Communications of the CUT. In his speech, Mr. Rascon highlighted the importance of 1985 Earthquake in the Mexico City recent history and the subsequent development of their democratic institutions. He was involved actively in the social movements after the earthquake claiming houses for the victims and the mind under the "real-life superhero", Superbarrio Gómez. Rascon noted that free knowledge efforts help to expand the available historical sources for the future generations with more scope and accuracy.

For this editathon, the Wikimedia Mexico organizers worked previously for at least 15 hours with hemerographical sources only available in libraries and included now in the Spanish Wikipedia article. In this editathon we worked to give more breadth and historical references to a single article, unlike other events that we worked on several simultaneously. And the event was not only an exercise of writing with more accuracy but as an exercise of social gathering about an episode which remains in the Mexico City habitants until today.

During the event we uploaded 116 historical photos from the next weeks after the earthquake taken by Roberto Esquivel, an engineer recently passed. His family been assisted to the editathon and received a diploma from Wikimedia Mexico community. All the donated images are available now in Wikimedia Commons.