Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Oesterreich/February2014

Community Support

Preparations for Wiki-Dialog

On February 11th representatives of WMDE, WMCH and WMAT met in Berlin to confer about a planned cooperation of these three major German-language chapters. Wiki-Dialog is a logical next step for WMDE's diversity paper from last years diversity conference. As it is one of the main reasons for too less diversity in the Wikimedia projects, that casual conversations are rather rude within the projects, it seems logical to set up some steps to improve this. One of these steps is the Wiki-Dialog, which aims to give Wikipedians a platform to discuss about such topics – not exclusively but with a strong focus on these problems.

One of the main reasons why the three German-language chapters are working together on this initiative is, that each chapter knows its local community the best. This means, each chapter can decide carefully which topic could be of interest for their local Wikipedians. To ensure that every single Wikipedian in de.wiki finds topics of interest for him or her, it is absolutely necessary to work together when concepting such a project.

We are looking forward for the next steps of the project and starting our first Wiki-Dialog sessions in the next months.

Free Content Generation

Kick-off Wiki Loves Earth

Austrian logo for WLE

On February, 1st interested Austrian Wikipedians met at the WMAT office to discuss a new international project: Wiki Loves Earth. Wiki Loves Earth is a photo-competition, similar to Wiki Loves Monuments, but with a focus on natural heritage and conservation areas. Austria is going to to host the contest in May 2014. In the wake of the meet-up our volunteers outlined the project management, assigned tasks and talked about the goals and objectives. WMAT will cover the costs for the technical infrastrucutre (website) and the design and distribution of information material. The office will also assist the volunteers in approaching potential partners (public administration, NGOs, scientists). We are looking forward for this great new competition and are excited about the outcomes!

Read more about the project (in German): Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Earth 2014/Österreich

European Parliament Project

A group of dedicated volunteers from the German community decided to take the concept of the so-called Landtagsprojekte (State Parliament Projects) to the next level and approached the European Parliament for a similar project. They were invited for the deliberations in early February. The organizers were looking for participants from as many countries as possible and contacted the chapters for support. WMAT offered to pay for the travel costs of two Austrian Wikimedians and sponsored the event with give-aways and information material for the parliamentarians and the administrative staff. According to reports of the project manager, our WMAT chocolates were especially useful to "bribe" important stakeholders and turn them into accomplices.

More information: Commons:Commons:Wikipedians in European Parliament

Organisational Development

New Community Manager

We are pleased to introduce our new colleague Raimund Liebert who will start as WMAT's new Community Manager at March 1, 2014. Raimund is an experienced Wikimedian and skilled in volunteer projects in the field of film and media. We are glad that we managed a seamless transition that enables our leaving Community Manager Thomas Planinger to break in his successor and thereby ensure the transfer of tacit knowledge about our organization and processes.

ED retreat Berlin

Our ED Claudia Garád attended a meeting of Executive Directors of Wikimedia Chapters in Berlin on February 3 and 4. Focus of the meeting was on sharing experiences in programme development, FDC-process, management and governance. The meeting was a valuable supplement to the regular telephone conferences which enabled the EDs to get to know the new colleagues in person, to build trust, learn from each other and to work and focus on common strategic issues. On the second day, Anasuya Sengupta and Garfield Byrd from the WMF joint the meeting to discuss FDC related issues.