Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Oesterreich/September2014

Community Support edit

GLAM meeting in Vienna edit

 
 
Some participants at the Imperial Palace
 
Discussions at the Federal Monuments Office

The GLAM meeting for the German-speaking region (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) took place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna from September 13th to September 14th. It was organized by WMAT together with the Institute for Corpus Linguistics and Text Technology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and supported by the Federal Monuments Office. The core participants (Austrians, Germans, Swiss) were 18 Wikimedians and representatives from like-minded organizations.

Agenda
  • The true history of the Wiener Schnitzel according to old cookbooks, newspapers and field studies in restaurants
  • Planning a dialect database on vernaculars of the Bavarian language in Austria
  • Cooperation possibilities with the new Wien Geschichte Wiki (“Vienna History Wiki“), a project of the City of Vienna
  • The cooperation between the Federal Monuments Office and Wikimedia/Wikipedia as best pratice
  • Photo tours within the context of Wiki Loves Monuments in Germany
  • Processing of GLAM media files on Wikimedia Commons: manual customizations e.g. by adding categories, galleries on Wikimedia Commons for presenting GLAM projects, tools for automatic processing of media files
  • The OpenGLAM-AT working group of the Open Knowledge Foundation Austria
  • Working with small GLAM partners as “Austrian way of GLAM“
  • GLAM projects of WMDE in 2015
  • Past and future GLAM projects of WMCH
  • Fringe events:
    • Tour at the archive of the Institute for Corpus Linguistics and Text Technology
    • Special tour at the Imperial Palace lead by the PR Executive of the Federal Monuments Office
    • Meeting Wikipedians from Austria at the regular Vienna Wikipedia Meet-up
Learnings for future GLAM meetings

Developed by the participants. - The vitality of in-person meetings can be transferred into fruitful discussions and dynamic group work. These aspects should be considered even more at future GLAM meetings. Concerning the topics, two different – and probably opposing – directions were discussed: concentrating on individual case studies (exemplification) or on common problem solving strategies (generalization). It proved of value to stay at premises during lunch time and to break the meeting routing by extraordinary thematic activities outside.

WMAT staff involved: 2. - Core participants: 18 (participants at the fringe events: 24). - WMAT support: organization including agenda coordination, infrastructure, catering, promotion. - WMCH support: 2 travel grants. - WMDE support: 4 travel grants. - Austrian Academy of Sciences support: premises, technical infrastructure, promotion. - Federal Monuments Office support: special tour.

Main page of the GLAM meeting in Vienna in the German-language Wikipedia
Etherpad used at the meeting (in German)
Images at Wikimedia Commons

WikiDienstag edit

 
Exterior of WMAT's office

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 September:
  • September 2nd: Briefing of the Austrian delegate for the Berlin workshop on the revision of WMDE's community support guidelines
  • September 9th: Knowledge transfer of an Austrian participant of the guide camp on conflict resolution in Wikipedia
  • September 16th: How do we keep records of the WikiDienstag results
  • September 23rd: Editing together on Austria-related Wikipedia articles with poor quality (resulting in 26 improved articles)
  • September 30th: Workshop on Wikimedia Commons categories and tools for Wiki Loves Monuments images (resulting in hundreds of revised files)

WMAT staff involved: 1. - Active volunteers involved: 5–7. - WMAT support: infrastructure, co-organisation, promotion.

WikiDienstag in the German-language Wikipedia

Free Content Generation edit

Wiki Loves Monuments edit

8621 images by 152 individual users were uploaded for Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 in Austria. They are used 1150 times in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects; 990 distinct images (11.48 % of all images) are used in the main namespace. 59 of the 152 contributors were new users.

WMAT staff involved: 2 (+1 contractor) – WMAT board involved: 2 – Active volunteers involved (as members of the pre-jury): 15. – WMAT support: website, information material, contact management with the Federal Monuments Office, awards (vouchers), mailing, serving the pre-jury and jury.

Website of Wiki Loves Monuments in Austria (in German)
Images on Wikimedia Commons
Stats for Wiki Loves Monuments in Austria

Open Data Community Event edit

The team of the Open Data Portal Austria hosts regular events for community around the platform: data suppliers as well as data users. The aim is to learn more about their needs and experiences when using the portal, so that it can be improved over time but also to connect data suppliers and users in order to match supply and demand and to collaborate together on ideas for new applications. The first meet-up on September 25th was quite a success with 25 participants who gave us valuable feedback and discussed issues of data quality.

WMAT staff involved: 1. - Participants: 25. - WMAT support: communication, promoting the event. - City of Vienna support: venue, technical infrastructure, coordination, promotion.

Report on the Open Data Portal Austria (in German)

Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness edit

DACH Open Science event on the MS Wissenschaft edit

 
Panel discussion on the MS Wissenschaft

On September 15 WMAT, WMDE and WMCH as well as the Open Knowledge Foundation chapters in Austria and Germany hosted a common event on Open Science in Vienna. The function was sponsored and co-hosted by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. The event was held in context of the stay of the MS Wissenschaft boat in Vienna, an annual travelling science exhibition from science insitutes in Germany. In this extraordinary setting we invited guests from all three countries to discuss the status quo and common challenges in the field of open science in order to use synergies, build networks and learn from each other. For Wikimedia Austria the main goals were to expand it's network and to incerease visibility in the Austrian science community (especially regarding funding organizations such as the FWF) and to promote the Open Data Portal as a plattform for open scientific data.

The preparation and conduct of the event went very smoothly despite of the many stakeholders and showed that joining forces and resources has bigger impact than many smaller events by the single institutions. Many topics in this field are discussed on a cross-national or European level rather than in a national context and sharing best practices from the various countries and institutions was valued by the various stakeholders and the audience.

On the panel:

Facilitator: Prof. Alexander Gerber : http://scienceblogs.de/sic/author/agerber/

WMAT staff involved: 1. - Participants: 70. - WMAT support: organization, coordiantion, project management. - WMCH support: program planning, contacts to panelists. - WMDE support: communication, network, project management. - OKF Austria / Germany: Program planning, contacts and network. FWF (Austrian Science Fund): venue, technical infrastructure, promotion, catering, travel costs for organizers and panelists, remuneration facilitator and film team.

Event page
Blogpost on Scienceblog.at
News post of the FWF

Workshop for fire departement historians edit

 
Workshop for fire departement historians

Volunteer fire departments play an important role in the rural communities in Austria. These organizations have their own “fire departement historians“ - volunteers whose job it is to do research and documentation of the history of the fire departement and the communes they belong to. 53 fire department historians from all over Lower Austria participated in a four-hour lecture and workshop on Wikipedia and free knowledge.

Active volunteers involved: 3. - WMAT support: information material.

Report on our members wiki (in German)
Images on Wikimedia Commons

Organisational Development edit

Community PlanningLab edit

 
MuseumsQuartier in Vienna

In order to include the community into our annual budget and program planning, we conducted a workshop with interested community members in early September in order to discuss the draft documents board and staff created two weeks earlier during a separate strategy meeting. In addition to the in person meet-up, the documents where also shared on our members wiki and open for online discussion. The meeting was also used to follow up on the status-quo community project ideas from the IdeaLab workshop in April.

The meeting took place at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, which is one of the largest cultural areas in the world and in walking distance of the WMAT office. Due to a special agreement, WMAT can use a lecture and meeting room for digital culture at the MuseumsQuartier (the Raum D/quartier21) for free for all activities from now on.

WMAT staff involved: 2. - WMAT board involved: 3 - Active volunteers involved: 5. - WMAT support: infrastructure, organisation, snacks. - MuseumsQuartier support: venue.

Event information on our members wiki (in German)

DACH Volunteer Supporters Meeting edit

WMCH's Community Liaison for the German-language community, WMDE's head of Team Communitys and another staff member of Team Communitys as well as WMAT's Executive Director and Community Manager met in Vienna to discuss the trans-border impacts of their respective volunteer support programs. It came to an agreement that WMAT is the first contact for volunteers living in Austria, WMCH for volunteers in Switzerland and WMDE for volunteers in Germany as well as in other countries outside of the DACH region. Another important issue was the roadmap of lifting the inter-chapter cooperation on volunteer support to a global level.

WMAT staff involved: 2. - WMCH staff involved: 1. - WMDE staff involved: 2. - WMAT support: premises, food and drinks. - WMCH/WMDE support: travel costs.