Hi all,
The full details about what will be happening during Britain Loves
Wikipedia are now in - so it's time to start spreading the word about
it now. ;-) See the complete info below. Hope to see you at some of
the events!
Mike
---
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2010/01/britain-loves-wikipedia/
Britain Loves Wikipedia
Join Wikipedia in photographing and celebrating Britain's cultural
heritage in museums, galleries and archives nationwide
29 January 2010, UK: 'Britain Loves Wikipedia' is a month-long
competition and series of events to be held in participating museums
nationwide from 31 January 2010. People from all ages, backgrounds
and communities can take part in the competition, which encourages
the public to photograph the treasures of our nation's museums and
galleries, actively involving them in digitally recording the
collections. All of the photos entered into the 'Britain Loves
Wikipedia' competition will be made available under a free license on
Wikimedia Commons, and can then be used to illustrate Wikipedia
articles.
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Chief Executive Roy Clare
said, "'Britain Loves Wikipedia' provides a stimulating opportunity
for museums and Wikipedia to work more closely together for the
benefit of the public. This new collaboration enables museums to
bring their collections, scholarship and expertise even closer to
audiences in digital environments. Wikipedia provides a vivid forum
for engaging public interest in the stories within collections held
in museums across the country. MLA is very pleased to support this
initiative and welcomes the development of partnerships between
museums and Wikimedia."
Chair of Wikimedia UK, Michael Peel, said, "Museum collections hold a
vast range of objects that have great cultural significance and
enhance our knowledge of our origins but are not as well covered on
Wikipedia as they deserve to be. With 'Britain Loves Wikipedia', we
hope to increase the number of photographs on Wikipedia for the world
to share, enjoy and learn from."
The celebration begins at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on
Sunday 31st January from 11.00 am to 4.00 pm in the Sackler Centre;
everyone is welcome to come along and take part. Short talks from the
Victoria and Albert Museum, Wikimedia UK and the Collections Trust
will take place at 11.30 am, accompanied by free tea, coffee, and
refreshments, with plenty of time in the afternoon to explore the
museum and photograph its collections!
Gail Durbin, Head of Online Museum at the Victoria and Albert Museum,
said, "Britain Loves Wikipedia is an innovative way for amateur (or
professional) photographers to make things in museums accessible to
more people. We are delighted to be hosting Britain's photography
community at the kickoff event and look forward to seeing creative
new images of our objects."
Britain Loves Wikipedia then continues with:
* On the 6th/7th February, the Museum of Army Flying in
Hampshire will be offering free entry to photographers as well as
free tea or coffee, and will be allowing flash and tripod photography.
* Nottingham Natural History Museum is hosting a "Britain Loves
Wikipedia Day" on 11 February, where they will be bringing out a
selection of biological and geological objects from their stores and
making them available for photography in the museum’s Great Hall
(situated in the main Wollaton Hall building.) Objects will include
examples of taxidermy (reptiles, birds, mammals) skeletal material,
and invertebrates from the biology collections, and various rocks,
minerals and fossils from the geology collections. Booking is essential.
* The Manchester Museum is running "Darwin’s 201st Birthday Bash
Big Saturday" on 13 February (book ahead or on the day); as part of
this they will be making objects from their zoology, palaeontology,
entomology, botany and geology collections available for photography
in the Museum’s Resource Centre on the 3rd floor gallery.
* John Muir's Birthplace and Preston Grange Museum will strike a
romantic note for Valentines Day, hosting "East Lothian Photographers
LOVE Wikipedia!" These host museums are opening up specially for
photographers, and are providing a warm Scottish welcome with free
tea and coffee to all participants, as well as tours and guides
around the museums.
* Mill Green Museum will be running "Mill Green Loves Wikipedia"
on the afternoon of 16 February - come along to explore the range of,
and changes in, the working days of local people.
* Bedford Museum will be giving photographers the opportunity to
see behind the scenes at thir stores on the 18 February, including a
sneak preview their upcoming exhibition ‘Clocking-In’, an exhibition
of the working day. Places are limited; booking is essential.
* On the 20th February, The British Postal Museum & Archive will
open the doors of its Museum Store in Debden, Essex to photographers.
The British Postal Museum Store houses a variety of objects including
letterboxes, telephone kiosks, postal vehicles, sorting machinery and
the desk of Sir Rowland Hill (founder of the penny post).
Refreshments will be available to participants and flash photography
and tripods are welcome.
Throughout February, you can visit the following museums to take part
in the Britain Loves Wikipedia competition:
* Astley Hall, Chorley
* Caithness Horizons, Thurso, Scotland
* Ceredigion Museum, Wales
* Horniman Museum, London
* Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland
* Museum of Army Flying, Stockbridge, Hampshire
* National Football Museum, Preston
* Old Operating Theatre, London
* Royal Air Force Museum, London and Cosford.
* Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum
* ThinkTank Birmingham
* Victoria and Albert Museum, London
* Working Class Movement Library, Salford
Prizes include a WikiReader - a copy of the entire English Wikipedia
in your pocket. The best photograph from each RAF Museum site will
receive £100 worth of goods from the Museum's shop. The best
photograph taken at The British Postal Museum & Archive’s Museum
Store will receive a trio of DVD box sets celebrating the work of the
acclaimed GPO Film Unit, valued at £75. More prizes will be announced
at the launch event on the 31st January.
Britain Loves Wikipedia is organized by Wikimedia UK in collaboration
with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Collections Trust,
Culture 24 and Museums Galleries Scotland. Full information is
available at http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/. An initial event
in February 2009 at the Victoria and Albert created over 300
photographs now available on Wikipedia. In June 2009, Wiki Loves Art
in The Netherlands created over 10,000 photographs taken at 46 Dutch
museums.
Hi all,
Unfortunately the board meeting this evening has had to be cancelled due to lack of quorum. The meeting will be deferred until next Tuesday, 19th January 8:30 - 10:30.
As before, The meeting will primarily be via Skype, but we'll also be in #wikimedia-uk on IRC and everyone is more than welcome to attend the IRC session, and participate in the discussion there.
The agenda will be up at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings
Board members + Tango: please post whether you can attend, and your reports if applicable, to the agenda page.
Regards,
Andrew
----- "Michael Peel" <email(a)mikepeel.net> wrote:
> From: "Michael Peel" <email(a)mikepeel.net>
> To: "board(a)wikimedia.org.uk WMUK Board" <board(a)wikimedia.org.uk>, wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 January, 2010 15:52:29 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: [WMUK Board] Next board meeting: This evening
>
> Hi all,
>
> The next board meeting, and the first of 2010, will be this evening
> (Tuesday 12 January 2010) at 8.30-10.30pm GMT. The meeting will
> primarily be via Skype, but we'll also be in #wikimedia-uk on IRC.
> Everyone is more than welcome to attend the IRC session, and
> participate in the discussion there. If you don't have an IRC client,
> then you can connect using http://webchat.freenode.net/ .
>
> The agenda is at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2010-01-12/Agenda
>
> Board members + Tango: please post whether you can attend, and your
> reports, to the agenda page. My thanks to those that have already
> given their attendance and started their reports.
>
> (Note that I'm currently out of the country, and will likely be
> unable to attend by voice and/or a bit late. Either way, please could
> someone else chair the meeting?)
>
> Thanks,
> Mike Peel
Now that the annual fundraiser is complete, we have started to decide on the main things that the chapter should its money on in the forthcoming year. In line with our philosophy of open decision making, the board would like to share these proposals with you for feedback and consultation before making any final decisions. Please let us know what you think to these ideas, by replying to this message, by personal email or by commenting on the wiki page [1]
We raised around £85,000 in the fundraiser. [2] Of this, half will be remitted to the Foundation, subject to legal clearance, which leave us with £42,500 to spend on projects, administration and to keep in reserves. We also have the remainder of our existing £5,000 start up grant from the Foundation, but that money is already earmarked for particular areas. [3]
Part time Administrator
We are considering employing a part time administrator to assist in the running of the chapter. Wikimedia Deutschland have said that they found employing an administrator was a significant boost to their chapter's efficiency and we hope that we can achieve the same.
The proposal is to employ someone at £10/hour for 8 hours per week, rising to 12 hours per week during next year's fundraiser. They would work from home and most of their work would be online. Assuming they start work in June that would cost a total of £3,122.
Please let us know whether you think in principle we should do this, and if so, whether these numbers look sensible.
Admin costs [4]
We have budgeted £6,700 to cover other administrative costs. This includes £3,000 for legal fees - including help with our charity status application and the Fundraising Agreement - and £1,000 for accounting and audit fees. We have also budgeted £500 to pay for travel to a face to face board meeting, which we hope will help boost the productivity of the next board.
Full details are:
Annual Accounts: 1,000
Legal advice: 3,000
AGM: 500
In person board meeting: 500
Telephone, postage etc : 200
Insurance: 500(?)
Administrator: 3,122
Other: 1,000
Total: 9,822
Are there any other things we should add, or are there things on this list you disagree with?
Reserves
Now that we have a more secure financial footing, we think it's appropriate to start thinking about putting some money aside in reserves, to cover us for years when we have lower that expected income. We think £8,000 is a reasonable figure, which covers a full year's admin expenses. We would like to build this up over two years, putting £4,000 aside from this year's fundraiser and £4,000 from next year.
Projects
This leaves £28,500 to spend on projects this year. Ideas that have been proposed included:
Toolserver support
The Wikimedia Toolserver is a platform that hosts various tools that are used on the Wikimedia projects, including vital counter-vandalism bots. The toolserver is operated by Wikimedia Deutschland eV with assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation. [5]
WMDE has recently asked other chapters if they could assist in financing and operating the toolserver. The annual budget is around €100,000 and they would like other chapters to cover around half of the budget - €50,000. In addition, there has been some discussion around setting up some kind of Toolserver Association, to operate the toolserver, with the contributing chapters as shareholders. The timetable for this is likely to be around August 2010 before it is established.
Figures that have been discussed by the board range from £5,000 to £10,000. Exact details of how we would contribute - a donation to WMDE earmarked for the toolserver, a donation earmarked to a particular expense or waiting and then contributing to the Toolserver Association has not been decided.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile contribution to make and, if so, how much do you think would be appropriate?
Wikimedia Usability Initiative
Individual board members have discussed various ideas with the Usability Initiative, the team that is working on improving the Wikimedia interfaces. [6] As part of their work they have generated a list of discrete projects that would all have a significant positive impact on Wikimedia and do not currently have sufficient funding. If we give them a budget they would be able to provide a selection of potential projects, and we could then choose to fund one of these, potentially one that linked in with a particular interest of the chapter. This proposal was discussed by the board back in October, when it was positively received, with further action deferred until after the Fundraiser. [7]
It's been proposed that we budget £10,000 to fund a project drawn up by the Usability Initiative.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile project and, if so, how much do you think would be appropriate?
GLAM-WIKI
We have discussed organising a GLAM-WIKI (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia) conference in the UK, along the lines of the conference in Australia in August 2009. [8] We have had tentative discussions with museums who would be interested and may be able to arrange it for August 2010. The purpose of the conference is to bring key decision makers in the "GLAM" sector into contact with Wikimedia people to persuade them to partner with us on content donation, partnerships like Britain Loves Wikipedia and other ways we can help each other achieve our aims.
Costs are expected to be in the region of £5,000, of which some or all may be funded by the GLAM partners or through sponsorship.
Do you think this is a worthwhile use of our resources?
Other projects
Other projects that have been proposed, but not yet discussed by the board, in connection with the 2010 Budget include:
£1,000 for a microgrant project, along the lines of Wikimedia Poland's scheme [9]
£1,000 to sponsor Wikimedians to attend Wikimania Gdansk 2010 [10]
£500 to fund travel to museums etc for discussions on content access
£500 to assist in the development of Wikimeets
£300 to pay for members to attend free content conference [11]
£340 to fund preliminary work on Wikimania Manchester 2013 [12]
Do you think these are worthwhile things to spend our money on? Is there anything else you think should be added to the list?
If you've managed to read this far then I'm impressed and thank you! All comments are gratefully received whether on our general approach or on specifics.
We look forward to hearing your ideas!
Regards,
Andrew Turvey
Secretary
Wikimedia UK
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited.
Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827.
The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Budget
[2] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2010-01-19/Agenda/Fundraiser_Report
[3] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[4] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Administrative_costs
[5] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Main_Page
[6] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[7] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009-10-20#AOB
[8] http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM-WIKI
[9] http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpl.wikimedia.org%2Fwik…
[10] http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[11] See list at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[12] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Wikimania_Bid/Bid_budget
This month, the London Wikimeet will be on the third Sunday, January
17th (1pm at the Penderel's Oak).
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/29
Also, it looks like there will be two London Wiki Wednesdays
forthcoming, on Wednesdays 3rd (February and March). Details to follow.
The London Wiki Wednesday meetings are more likely to cover other
collaborative software such as SharePoint etc but I am sure that will
put you off attending, and free pizza and free beer is often (not
always) an incentive.
http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london
Wednesday 3rd February looks like a pub meeting, with 3rd March being at
a business address (to be confirmed).
Gordon
See below. Is it worth us signing this as an organization? Note that
both Asociación Civil Wikimedia Argentina and Wikimedia Nederland
have already.
Mike
Begin forwarded message:
> From: shi zhao <shizhao(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 26 January 2010 12:29:44 GMT
> To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wmfcc-l] The Public Domain Manifesto
> Reply-To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> see http://www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/node/8
>
> Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
> My blog: http://shizhao.org
> twitter: https://twitter.com/shizhao
>
> [[zh:User:Shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wmfcc-l mailing list
> Wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfcc-l
Could anyone help us draft a blog post about this?
I've started a page at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_releases/Geograph_images
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Michael Peel" <email(a)mikepeel.net>
To: "board(a)wikimedia.org.uk WMUK Board" <board(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
Sent: Saturday, 30 January, 2010 11:58:22 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
Subject: [WMUK Board] Geograph images
Hi all,
I've just been given a heads-up that 250,000 images of the UK that
people have released on Geograph.org.uk are currently being mass-
uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Category:Images_from_the_Geograph_British_Isles_project
We should probably do a blog post about this sometime soon; next week
perhaps?
Mike
_______________________________________________
Board mailing list
Board(a)wikimedia.org.uk
http://wikimedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/board_wikimedia.org.uk
Hi all,
Hopefully the last cool thing for today: just discovered the
following thanks to a tweet from @jwyg (Jonathan Gray of the Open
knowledge Foundation)
http://www.futureeverything.org/news/opendata1
"We were funded in November 2009 by the Manchester Innovation
Investment Fund* to work to make Manchester the UK's first Open Data
City."
There's a social media cafe happening on Tuesday in Manchester, at
which one of the people behind this will be talking:
http://socialmediamanchester.ning.com/events/social-media-cafe-
february?rsvpConfirm=1
I plan to be there until I have to escape for Tuesday's board meeting
- would be great if anyone else can come along too.
Mike
Hi all,
just toolspamming my latest...
I read the announcement for "Britain Loves Wikipedia", was sad to find
no museum in or immediately around my place participates, and tried to
look for the nearest one. Harder than it sounds, if you're not very
familiar with British geography.
So I wrote a tool to show all "related" places.
First, you need a wikipedia page that links to all the objects you are
potentially interested in. I quickly made [1].
Then, go to my new tool [2] and enter that location there. Click on the button.
Then, you get a link to a google maps page (shortened at [3]).
Which is when I realized there is potential for more. Wanna see places
important to The Beatles? Go [4]!
Enjoy!
Magnus
P.S.: I couldn't quickly figure out how to do the same for
openstreetmaps. If anyone could point me to that...
P.P.S.: Yes, using backlinks are an option as well. Is there interest in that?
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/BLW
[2] http://toolserver.org/~magnus/related_places.php
[3] http://tinyurl.com/ycncg2f
[4] http://tinyurl.com/y92rgo2
Thanks to @mia_out on Twitter, I've just found out about:
http://osconsult.ernestmarples.com/
"The Government have launched a consultation on how to make Ordnance
Survey data free with no restrictions on reuse."
Full details are given in:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/1411177.pdf
The deadline for responding is 17 March 2010.
What do you think would be the best approach to take here? A single
official comment from Wikimedia UK? Persuading lots of Wikimedians to
emphatically say "yes"? Both of these? It isn't clear to me whether
they want detailed, logical responses or large numbers of responses
saying the same thing, although I haven't read through the whole
document yet...
Mike
~~ Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: Call for Proposals ~~
* where: London, UK
* when: Saturday 24th April, 2010
* www: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
* last year: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/2009/
* cfp: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/cfp/ (deadline: Jan 31st 2010)
* hashtag: #okcon2010
## Introduction
OKCon, now in its fifth year, is the interdisciplinary conference that
brings together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for
a day of presentations and workshops.
Open knowledge promises significant social and economic benefits in a
wide range of areas from governance to science, culture to technology.
Opening up access to content and data can radically increase access and
reuse, improving transparency, fostering innovation and increasing
societal welfare.
This is a time of great change. In addition to high profile initiatives
such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the Human Genome Project, there is
enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all
levels. Moreover, in the last year, many governments across the world
have begun opening up their data.
And it doesn't stop there. In academia, open access to both publications
and data has been gathering momentum, and similar calls to open up
learning materials have been heard in education. Furthermore this
gathering flood of open data and content is the creator and driver of
massive technological change. How can we make this data available, how
can we connect it together, how can we use it collaborate and share our
work?
Join us to discuss all of this and more!
## Topics
We welcome proposals on any aspect of creating, publishing or reusing
content or data that is open in accordance with
http://opendefinition.org. Topics include but are not limited to:
### Technology
* Semantic Web and Linked Data in relation to open knowledge
* Platforms, methods and tools for creating, sharing and curating open
knowledge
* Light-weight, adaptive interaction models
* Open, decentralized social network applications
* Open geospatial data
### Law, Society and Democracy
* Open Licensing, Legal Tools and the Public Domain
* Open government data and content (public sector information)
* Open knowledge and international development
* Opening up access to the law
### Culture and Education
* Open educational tools and resources
* Business models for open content
* Incentive and rewards open-knowledge contributors
* Open textbooks
* Public domain digitisation initiatives
### Science and Research
* Opening up scientific data
* Supporting scientific workflows with open knowledge models
* Open models for scientific innovation, funding and publication
('open-access')
* Tools for analysing and visualizing open data
* Open knowledge in the humanities
## Submission Details
* Submission deadline: January 31st 2010
* Notification of acceptance: March 1st
* Camera-ready papers due: March 31st
We are accepting three types of submissions:
1. Full papers of 5-10 pages describing novel strategies, tools,
services or best-practices related to open knowledge.
2. Extended talk abstracts of 2-4 pages focusing on novel ideas,
ongoing work and upcoming research challenges.
3. Proposals for short talks and demonstrations
OKCon will implement an open submission and reviewing process. To make a
submission visit:
* http://www.okfn.org/okcon/submit/
Depending on the assessment of the submissions by the programme
committee and external reviewers, submissions will be accepted either as
full, short or lightning/poster presentations.
Proceedings of OKCON will be published at http://ceur-ws.org. If you
want your submission to be included in the conference proceedings you
have to prepare a manuscript of your submission according to the LNCS
Style.
### Programme Committee
* Sören Auer, AKSW/Universität Leipzig
* Christopher Corbin, UK Advisory Board on Public Sector Information
* Adnan Hadzi and Andrea Rota, Goldsmiths College, University of London
* Claudia Müller-Birn, Carnegie Mellon University
* Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge
* Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation and Emmanuel College,
University of Cambridge
* Joseph Seddon, Wikimedia UK
* John Wilbanks, Science Commons
--
Jonathan Gray
Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org
Twitter/Identica: jwyg