Hallo!
My name is Dariusz Siedlecki and I'm the executive secretary of
Wikimedia Poland, the Polish local chapter of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
At the end of April, our association will hold a meetup of all the
Polish Wikimedians, and we'd like to invite people from Wikimedia UK
to participate in a panel discussion on the future of the Wikimedia
projects in Europe, and of course, to take part in the meetup as a
whole.
Apart from the Polish Wikimedians, we're inviting people from other
Polish organizations (Creative Commons Poland), European organizations
(Mozilla Europe) and Wikimedians outside of Poland (Czech and Romanian
Wikimedians were interested so far).
We'd be really happy if it would be possible for anyone from your
organization to come and have a chat with both our organization, and
our community. I think we should communicate fairly easily in English.
The meetup will take place in Wroclaw, during 29th April - 1st May.
30th April will be the most interesting part, during which we'll hold
every discussion, including the discussion panel I mentioned earlier.
If anyone from Wikimedia UK would be interested in coming and taking
part in the discussion, please notify me. We'd be really happy to see
you here, in Poland.
Hope to hear back from you soon.
--
Regards,
Dariusz Siedlecki
I've just had the best Communications Committee meeting ever, in which
I got so angry I lost the power to form sentences. James: your story
about how you were greeted at Wikimania? I now empathise.
There are several people at higher levels of the Foundation who have
taken a stance of Foundation versus volunteers. This isn't actually
necessary, but the people in question have stated they officially
don't care.
As such, I don't plan to do much for the Foundation in the immediate
future that isn't expressly for Wikipedia itself. I'll see what I'm up
to otherwise and how this works with Wikimedia UK. Call this cooling
off time.
- d.
On 18/03/06, Rob Church <robchur(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Obviously I don't want to pry directly, but I would be interested in
> hearing what happened...
*whistles* ooh, look! It's ANOTHER TOPIC!
So. How about those launch ideas, eh? Eh?
- d. (and being forced to give up smoking isn't helping my mood any)
This morning I went into BBC Television Centre and did a remote radio
interview for BBC Radio Wales 'Mousemat', which is to be run in this
Sunday's programme - 5pm Sunday, repeated 6pm Wednesday. If you're not
in Wales, you can pick it up on Sky TV channel 0117, or on the website
for a week after broadcast:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/shows/mousemat.shtml
I covered how Wikipedia works, how we keep it from turning to rubbish,
how good it is ("it's not perfect, and we're painfully aware of its
problems, but it's *pretty good*"), the millionth article (how you can
get so much good detail out of an unremarkable suburban railway
station) and I did a *big* push for Welsh speakers to get in on the
ground floor of cy.wikipedia - en. has 1,000,000 articles, but cy. has
4,000 and there's endless room to work on a really *good* Welsh
encyclopedia. The Welsh language is undergoing bit of a revival -
everyone there speaks English, but learn Welsh first, it's popular
with its ethnicity, it's something people feel they *should* know if
they're Welsh and of course kids learn it so their parents won't
understand them, and the parents learn to keep up with them ;-)
They recorded about 15 minutes, of which they'll probably use 5 or 6.
And I'm apparently to receive a small payment for my trouble. :-O Just
as well since I'm presently not on a contract. (Gi's a job!)
- d.
The WMUK wiki is presently a small closed internal directors' wiki,
but mailing to the list here (a) reaches you all satisfactorily (b)
will get ideas from the world, which I could do with right now.
[[Media]] - this page has been started for all interviews/articles
about WMF-related stuff in the UK, whether it's WMUK people or
whatever. Nach0king has been doing a *pile* of press for the 1
millionth article. (He avoids wikipolitics like the plague, but would
be happy to do local Scottish stuff come press launch time.)
[[Press launch]] - here's where I need your help. This event is *all
about marketing*. We want to look like a charity people in the UK will
want to chuck money at.
We need a *compelling marketing story*. We don't have one yet. "What's
the money for?" "Er ... stuff ..." We don't control the wiki, we don't
run servers - what do we use people's money for?
- d.
I just spoke to Natalie Hanman from the Guardian. This is to appear in
Monday's paper, in the 'Office Hours' column in the Media section.
This will be in the paper edition and *may not* be in the online
edition (they tend not to put up the entire Media section).
A reader had written in saying they'd read about Wikipedia's
unreliability and asked if Wikipedia was any good; and she also wanted
to know if it was good for office workers at their desks. I said we
weren't as good as Britannica as yet, but we were better than anything
else on the web, so the more media we get saying how bad we are the
more readers we get ... and office workers don't have the Britannica
on their desk but they *do* have Wikipedia. For usefulness, I pointed
out that as an IT contractor, I use Wikipedia as a reference work
daily. It's fabulous for computer and technical stuff, to quickly get
yourself up to speed on what a piece of jargon is in 60 seconds. And
Nature measured us as equal to Britannica in science. And we were
no.12 in the world on Alexa yesterday, and we've been no.1 reference
site for months now.
So the main message was: we're not Britannica, but we're better than
*anything* else readily available on the web. "We make the Web not
suck." And we're actually good and useful as a reference work *right
now*.
- d.
Recording with BBC in about an hour and a half. I also have an email
from the Guardian to talk about Wikipedia's utility in the workplace -
which is something I *actually find it useful for*. Probably this
afternoon.
- d.
I do not support the Foundation spending money on this.
I put the special project comm in copy in case some disagree.
If other people or if a local chapter feel like donating money to set
that up, fine.
ant
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com>
>Date: Mar 4, 2006 3:57 AM
>Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Jordanhill commemoration
>To: wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration
>
>It has been suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation should contact the
>authorities of the Jordanhill railway station to request and/or offer
>to place a plaque at the station, in commemoration of the millionth
>English language Wikipedia article.
>
>However, it might be better for the Wikimedia UK chapter to handle
>this than the Foundation. Any opinions?
>
>If it was the Foundation, then it would likely fall under the remit of
>the newly created Special Projects Committee.
>
>Angela
>_______________________________________________
>Wikimedia UK mailing list
>wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK
>http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>
>
>--
>~notafish
>
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration
It has been suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation should contact the
authorities of the Jordanhill railway station to request and/or offer
to place a plaque at the station, in commemoration of the millionth
English language Wikipedia article.
However, it might be better for the Wikimedia UK chapter to handle
this than the Foundation. Any opinions?
If it was the Foundation, then it would likely fall under the remit of
the newly created Special Projects Committee.
Angela