Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Oesterreich/April2014

Community Support

TFM Edit-a-thon

The participants on the balcony

... and working

The TFM Edit-a-thon took place at the Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies (TFM) of the University of Vienna on April 15th from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. It was the first-ever Wikipedia editing event of its kind in Austria. The idea came from TFM students who asked WMAT and the TFM Institute for support. The event focussed on the editing of Wikipedia articles related to theatre, film and media. The main target group were TFM students, irrespective of their experiences with Wikipedia.

Preparation and infrastructure

Three partners were involved: the students as main organizers, the university and WMAT.

The students created an event logo, posters and a Facebook event page (see here). They contacted food and drink sponsors for bakery goods, cold drinks and a small fridge. They were also responsible for decorating the rooms and cleaning up afterwards.
The TFM Institute provided a lecture room as a working space and its library which could be reached easily by an interconnection door. The university's technical infrastructure included a video projector and extension cables. (All participants were invited to bring their private computers.) The TFM Institute also promoted the event on its website (see here) and in its newsletter.
WMAT brought learning materials on Wikipedia editing, Wikipedia-branded chocolate bars, Wikipedia banners and other promotion materials. WMAT was specifically asked to give an introductory lecture on Wikipedia editing and to help with advice during the event, if necessary. It was crucial for WMAT to invite the members of the Wikipedia community in Vienna to support the edit-a-thon as much as they wish. The event was announced on the discussion page of the regular Vienna Wikipedia Meetup. The bottom line was that the introductory lecture was prepared and held by WMAT and 3 community members provided their support for the editing activity.

Participants

The 11 participants were 5 students, a university professor and the library director – all with no or very limited Wikipedia editing experiences – as well as 4 experienced Wikipedians including 1 WMAT staff member. Despite the fact that 7 out of 10 TFM students are female the TFM Edit-a-thon could attract only male students. The event was scheduled during the Easter holidays. This meant that the university premises including the library could be used exclusively for the edit-a-thon. However, it might have had a negative effect on the number of participants.

Activities during the event

The edit-a-thon started with a 20-minute lecture on basic Wikipedia principles such as its general scope, licenses, verifiability, community and user rights. This lecture was held by WMAT. The next steps were to create user accounts, if necessary, and to try first minor edits. The activities which followed were rather diverse, from experimenting with Wikisyntax to writing technically complex articles with books from the library. There was also a need for face-to-face discussions on Wikipedia. The support of these activities demanded a lot of time and commitment from the experienced Wikipedians. The ratio of 4 experienced users to 7 inexperienced users was just sufficient to meet the needs.

Results and sustainable outcome

5 new user accounts were created and 1 additional user did his first edit in the main namespace during the edit-a-thon. The editing activity focussed on the German-language Wikipedia. 1 new user uploaded files to Wikimedia Commons.

Results (Wikimetrics)
NAMESPACE	Bytes added (absolute)	Bytes added (positive)	Edits	Pages created
dewiki all	18128	17841	47	10
dewiki main	7089	6914	33	4

4 of 7 new users edited Wikipedia in the days and weeks after the edit-a-thon. 1 participant became a regular user of the WMAT photographic equipment and was successfully taught by WMAT staff how to upload images to Wikimedia Commons and how to embed them into Wikipedia articles.

The TFM edit-a-thon gave an opportunity to gain valuable experience in such events. There are tangible plans to support and/or host more edit-a-thons in Austria in the near future.

Community IdeaLab

The board and staff of WMAT invited their members and friends to the first Community IdeaLab (“Ideenwerkstatt“) in Vienna on April 26th. The volunteers presented 4 new ideas:

an advisory Tech Committee for WMAT,
a QRpedia project for the buildings on the famous historical main square of Sitzendorf an der Schmida (de:Hauptplatz Sitzendorf an der Schmida),
a writing contest on the occasion of Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 with prizes sponsored by WMAT,
an extended working group for WMAT's education projects.

All ideas were discussed and transferred into WMAT's short-term and mid-term planning. - Active volunteers involved: 10. - WMAT board involved: 4 - WMAT staff involved: 2 - WMAT support: organization, promotion, (website, members wiki, newsletter, social media), presentation, documentation, catering.
The community embraced the idea of this new format and it was agreed that it should be conducted on a regular basis (approx. twice a year) in order to incorporate community ideas into WMAT projects and programmes.
→ Project page on members wiki (in German)

Free Content Generation

Open Data Portal

The countdown to the launch of the Open Data Portal Austria has started: the press conference is planned for July 1, 2014. On the evening of the same day we plan a community event for interested Wikimedians and members of the Open Knowledge Foundation to celebrate the launch and to give them the opportunity to meet each other and other stakeholders of the project.

While technical and organisational part is on a ggod way, the biggest challenge for the next weeks and months will be to free as many interesting data sets as possible and maybe even generate some first applications and / or visualisations. For this purpose we put together a special acquisition team to support potential data providers with identifying and preparing suitable data sets.

Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness

School project in Styria

Another volunteer driven school workshop on free knowledge and Wikipedia took place at the School of Forestry in Styria on April 2nd. 20 pupils attended the 4 hour workshop. The results are displayed in the school foyer for the next 6 months. - Active volunteers involved: 2. - WMAT support: travel grants, information material.
→ Report on members wiki (in German)
→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Long Night of Research

WMAT at the Long Night of Research

The Long Night of Research was a nation-wide event on April 4th with 1,789 event stations at 234 locations and 136,500 visitors. Austrian research institutions presented their work. Together with the Austrian Academy of Science, WMAT hosted a lecture and panel discussion on the collaboration of humanities and Wikimedia projects. - Active volunteers involved: 1. - WMAT staff involved: 1 - WMAT support: promotion (website, members wiki, newsletter, social media).
→ Report on members wiki (in German)
→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Big Fat Brussels Gathering

An Austrian Wikipedian went to this lobbying event on April 24th which was dedicated to the idea of free knowledge, and particularly freedom of panorama. Other participants included representatives of the European Commission, the European Federation of Publishers and UNESCO. - Active volunteers involved: 1. - WMAT staff involved: 1 - WMAT support: 90 minutes counseling, travel grant, WMAT chocolate bars and WLM calendars as give-aways.
→ Report on members wiki (in German)
→ Images on Wikimedia Commons

Organisational Development

Wikimedia Conference Berlin

Wikimedia Conference 2014

WMAT sent four delegates to this year's Wikimedia Conference. In addition to the the usual two board members and our ED we decided to also send our new community manager to enable him to network with his counterparts from other chapters and to participate in knowledge transfer, especially regarding one of his key tasks: project and programme evaluation. Programming and organization by the organizing committee were excellent and made the conference a very fruitful experience. WMAT especially contributed to and benefited from the exchange regarding strategy, evaluation and governance. We also used the possibility to catch up with our partners from other chapters concerning international activities such as Wiki Loves Earth, board training / capacity building and so forth.

Strategy Meeting

On April, 26 WMAT board and staff came together in the office for the first face to face Strategy Meeting in 2014. It was also the last in person meeting before the general assembly and the elections in June. Hence, a self-assessment of the last term was a central part of the meeting. As the complete board is up for re-election, the contentual and strategic planning for a possible next term was also addressed. The last part of the day consisted of a meeting with the community to discuss new ideas for WMAT program planning (see section Community IdeaLab above).

Survey on Capacity Building

Over the past few months, WMAT, WMUK, WMDE, AffCom, WMF and others across the movement have increased our efforts to develop collective knowledge in board governance and organisational effectiveness. We started a page on Meta which we hope will act as a hub for documentation and ideas around the training and development needs of Wikimedia movement organisations: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organisational_development
As a next step, we will conduct a survey to collect information about the different board governance models in Wikimedia organisations, as well as the kind of support your boards need to do their work better. The results will be used to refine the board training concept and serve as a baseline for similar other trainings that might be useful. The survey will be sent out to the various Wikimedia organisations in May.