Program activities[edit]
Community[edit]
GLAM activities[edit]
Editathons[edit]
March was a diverse month both in the focus on diversity or international Women's day and in geographic diversity, with events in York, Dundee and the Midlands as well as London, a very high proportion of UK Wikimedians will have had an event within a couple of hours travel.
Police[edit]
Andy Mabbett led an event at the West Midlands Police Museum, gaining access for Wikipedians to a museum that is usually only open to researchers by appointment. A number of articles were improved, and, thanks to the curators kindly removing glass fronts from display cases, many great pictures were taken (some still awaiting transfer from Flickr). This was probably the first UK editathon to be visited by an armed response vehicle, whose crew kindly posed for pictures, and displayed some of their specialist equipment, on the proviso that their faces were not shown!
Diversity[edit]
Wikimedia UK supported international Women's day with support for two events. One at Goldsmiths is covered in the Education and Expert outreach section and a GLAM one on female archaeologists at the Petrie Museum. The event at the Petrie Museum was sufficiently successful that we are planning a fringe event for just after Wikimania.
Scotland[edit]
March saw the first event in Dundee, an editathon focused on female Scottish artists.
York[edit]
Pat Hadley, the Wikimedian in Residence at the Yorkshire Museums trust, hosted an editathon in York.
Royal Society of Chemistry[edit]
On 28 March, a number of volunteers delivered an all-day training session in the library of the Royal Society of Chemistry's impressive London headquarters, Burlington House, on Piccadilly. The audience included RSC staff, fellows and guests, including academics and journal editors.
Wikimania London 2014 =[edit]
Submissions closed for this year's Wikimania with 64 in the GLAM and Free Culture track. The programme committee is currently assessing them and the hundreds of other submissions, one of their criteria for choosing what goes in the programme is the level of interest, so please look through the submissions and sign up for the ones you would most like to see.
Image Releases[edit]
Negotiations were taking place with several organisations for some large content releases, and Fae is working to setup a mass upload of the 100,000 Welcome trust images.
Education and expert outreach[edit]
- Education activities
Please see respective links for each of these activities for futher details.
- As part of International Women's Day celebrations, on 8 March 2014 we supported the Women's Arts Practices editing event at Women's Art Library, Goldsmiths.
- On 19 March, a Wiki-Themed Symposium was held at Stirling University - entitled What I Know Is - with the participation of several academics and guest speakers involved in Open Knowledge, Open Education and Open Publishing.
- A second TaPRA Wikipedia Workshop was held at the University of Glasgow on Thursday 20 March.
- Marc Haynes starts as our Wikipedian in Residence at the federal Welsh university of Wales: Coleg Cymraeg; he is the only 2nd Wikipedian in Residence at an university, worldwide.
- WMRS EduWiki Conference 2014 in Serbia
Volunteer Brian Kelly attended WMRS EduWiki Conference 2014 in Serbia through support from WMUK. He has posted the following blog posts about this experience: preparation + report.
Wiki Education Cooperative[edit]
In early March, Dr Toni Sant attended the Wiki Education Cooperative meeting in Prague. At this meeting, the WMUK joined other Wikimedia education programs (including Israel, Nepal, Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, United State, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Serbia) and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Education Program team to determine a plan moving forward for sharing best practices and fostering collaboration among educational efforts on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project. Outcomes of the Prague meeting include:
- Cooperative members will spend the next several months in small teams that target the initial goals agreed upon by the whole group. From now through Wikimania 2014, Toni will be a part of the Resources Team, which initially aims to consolidate existing resources so that everyone can find everything in one (very visible and easy-to-find) place. This is an important step in aligning our Education activities to the successful approaches on the global education program and similar efforts in other parts of the world.
- The team at the Wikimedia Foundation will help the group redesign an online portal that is more cohesive and accessible than the varied portals have been in the past.
- The cooperative will network at Wikimania 2014 with other stakeholders to expand its reach and to welcome new members into the community.
For more about the kick-off meeting in Prague see this Education newsletter post.
The cooperative is technically still in formation and is presently only operating under a working name. Aims, goals, scope and other essential elements for any such grouping are still to be codified, but co-op members are already formulating these ahead of a potential official launch at Wikimania 2014.
EduWiki Conference 2014[edit]
Preliminary planning for EduWiki 2014 was stepped up during this month. See plans for EduWiki 2014.
Wikimedia Ambassador at Jisc[edit]
Dr Martin Poulter continues as Wikimedia Ambassador with Jisc. See his report on the most recent Education Newsletter.
Future of Education at Wikimania 2014[edit]
Preliminary planning for a fringe/hack event ahead of Wikimania (21-22 June) continued during this month. Details here.
Other activities[edit]
Project grants[edit]
The proposal for a number of books to be purchased to improve articles on the English Wikipedia related to hotels and cinema, along with a request to improve articles associated with the Channel Tunnels has been approved.
Information about project grants that are currently running, and how to submit an application of your own, are at Project grants/Applications.
UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects & activities)[edit]
The Economist - WikiPeaks? The popular encyclopedia must work out what is next
Blog posts this month[edit]
- 7 March - Ten ways educators can use Wikipedia
- 10 March - Announcing Wikimedia UK’s new five year strategy
- 12 March - On a Bill of Rights for the world wide web
- 13 March - IPv6 enabled on Wikimedia UK’s websites
- 17 March - Wikipedia and the Digital Enlightenment
- 20 March - Reflections on two years in post
- 21 March - Wikimania – ten days to submit your session proposal
- 25 March - What I know is...
- 28 March - Publishing scholarly papers with, and on, Wikipedia
- 31 March - The unusual suspects...
Activities in February and March[edit]
February[edit]
- 01 - TaPRA Wikipedia Workshop - London
- 01 - Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon, Middlesex University
- 01 - Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon, Dundee
- 01–02 - Training the Trainers/February 2014 event - Cardiff
- 04 - Tech Com meeting
- 05 - UEA Wikipedia Workshop for PhD Students - Norwich
- 09 - London meetup
- 14 - Wikipedia and Archaeology or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the free Encyclopedia
- 15 - Cambridge meetup
- 16 - Oxford meetup
- 17–20 - Wikipedia Takes UCL - London
- 20 - Cornwall GLAMs workshop - hosted by the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth. Contact:Fæ
- 23 - Liverpool meetup and museum visit
- 25 - WWI editathon with students at University of Hull in Scarborough
- 25 - Education Committee meeting 25 February 2014
- 26 - Wellcome Library editathon
- 27–28 - Ally Crockford at The EDGE Conference - Edinburgh
- 27 - Magnus Manske speaking about Wikidata to Cambridge University Wikipedia Society, all are welcome
For events in April 2014 and onwards, please see Events.
Communications[edit]
The chapter was approached by both Sky News and ITN this month with a view to finding someone to speak about Wikimedia and Wikipedia in relation to the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web. Unfortunately to the story of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, the segment was bumped both times. The approaches show that we are making progress in terms of recognition and awareness.
Please see the above links to relevant press coverage received in January and blog posts published during the same period.
If you're interested in getting more involved with our communications or have any questions or comments, please email Stevie Benton – stevie.benton@wikimedia.org.uk
Fundraising and Membership[edit]
- Fundraising
This month, we received £588 in one-off donations, with 20 individual donations. The average donation amount was £29.40 - of the donations that were eligible for gift aid, 65% had Gift Aid Declarations made and matched with their records. If anyone would like a full (but anonymised) csv file with more information, please get in touch with katherine.bavageatwikimedia.org.uk and let her know your requirements.
There were 4878 successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £20337.17
- Membership
You can view more detailed membership data here
The Chapter's donor newsletter was distributed at the beginning of March by the WMF to all UK donors on their contact database. This saw a high number of new sign-ups. All new members were accepted and welcomed swiftly. It is to be hoped future such sign ups will be repeated to broaden the Chapters' membership base.
Visitors to the office this month[edit]
The office received 46 visitors this month.
Stevie Benton Head of External Relations Wikimedia UK +44 (0) 20 7065 0993 / +44 (0) 7803 505 173 @StevieBenton
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.