V&A Wikilounge

Victoria and Albert Museum Wikilounge

Saturday 16th July 2011

Courtyard in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Front view of Tipu's Tiger.

The Victoria and Albert Museum are running a Web Weekend and have invited Wikimedia UK to take part by holding a public Wikilounge. This is a joint outreach event to encourage new contributors to help with improving the access to cultural content. The V&A will be running a page on their website, there will be a hashtag recommended for tweets and there will be notices for the public about what is going on in the Sackler Centre.

This page is for registration of supporting Wikimedians either hosting and coaching members of the public or joining to help with the parallel editathon activities. Members of the public interested in dropping by do not have to register.

Logistics

• Location: Seminar Room 2, Sackler Centre in the V&A. Map
• Coordinator: Fae, WM-UK director
• Hashtag for Twitter: #webweekend
• Numbers: The room easily holds up to 20 at any one time with plenty of natural light via massive windows. There is additional comfy seating in the Sackler downstairs.
  • At least 4 Wikipedians will be available to support public interest by answering questions, giving demonstrations or edit coaching sessions
• Facilities
  • free Wifi
  • beverages and lunch for volunteers provided
  • plenty of power-points, re-arrangeable desks and chairs and mains extension cables
  • four PCs with internet access for the public to have a go at editing
  • presentation screen

Programme

The programme is a framework, if there is enough interest in any particular topic on the day (such as batch upload to Wikimedia Commons) then we can start a parallel session. Remote e-volunteers are part of the day and engagement with the virtual world via IRC, Skype and tweeting will be explored.

• Volunteers should aim to be at the venue at 10.30 and bring their own laptops.
• Public introductory sessions will be at 11, 12.30, 14.30, 16.00 (but welcome to drop by and join in at any time)
  • The sessions will be a short walkthrough of Wikimedia, Wikipedia and sister projects and an editing demonstration with Q&A. There are two "loaner" laptops so the public can have a go straight away and will be encouraged to help with the editathon (in particular with non-English Wikipedia versions).
• Parallel all day mini-editathon will focus on selected V&A artefacts with good potential for multi-language interest with Tipu's Tiger as the key article for improvement, particularly with versions needed in South Asian languages. Photographs are allowed in the museum and this may also be an area for improvement.
• Lunch around 1.30 will be provided by the V&A along with refreshments at other times.
• Close at 17.30 (Sackler closes at 17.45), possibly going on to a social venue for wind-down.

Registration for Wikimedian volunteers

Please add your name and drop an email to Fae if you would like to help support the event, if you can be available all day or part of the day and your scope of interest (helping the public, editathon, language skills, photographs etc.). Note, to be an official helper V&A security will need your name registered (Fae can forward your real name on your behalf), if you prefer to stay under your Wikiname, then you need not "officially" register with the V&A but it would be useful to have your name below to help our coordination.

Note, as well as a free lunch, we expect to be able to offer a limited number of free special exhibition tickets as a reward for official helpers.

• Fae - Helping with general coordination, demonstrations or editathon activity.
• Tom Morris - can do photographs, sister project stuff, bring some laptops along
• Leutha - general help, wikiversity
• Johnbod - as Fae, maybe pm only
• Philafrenzy - I will attend. Did some photos of pieces for Commons last time I was there.
• Andrew Davidson - Expect to be working in morning but will come when I can.
• James Forrester - only there for the morning really (bringing the pop-up signs!)
• Peter Cohen - It's on the way to where I am in the evening. I therefore hope to be able to offer some time helping people edit. I'll try to get there for lunchtime.

Questions

1. How exactly is remote participation to be achieved?
   • We are planning to use IRC and can set up a bot so that a relevant hashtag has messages copied direct into the same IRC channel (this will encourage general public interaction). We are open to trying out other interactive methods if they are suggested and practical.
2. What other topics besides Tipu's Tiger can be edited?
   • Any V&A related topics and artefacts. In the first instance we want to ensure that Tipu's Tiger is significantly improved in English and created in several other languages, particularly languages used in India.

Cultural partnerships
Content partnerships — Digital image restorations — Joint events