Reports/2012/May

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 May 2012. If you want to keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please subscribe to our blog, join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk page.

Our report this month includes a couple of major highlights. From a governance perspective the main highlight was our annual conference and AGM. This well attended event took place at the Science Museum, London. Activities at the AGM included the election of our new Board of Trustees, presentations on various themes related to our activities and the voting on resolutions.

The other main story was the launch of our Monmouthpedia project, which I'm sure you all know about. The numbers for this project were nothing if not staggering. Over 550 new articles, hundreds of improved articles, tens of languages, over 1,000 QRpedia codes in the town... The story received enormous, international press coverage – around 300 notable publications in almost 40 countries covered the story – not to mention blogs and social media. You can see links to these articles, and some photos and video footage from the day, below.

This report also contains information about our other activities over the month, including fundraising, communications, events and board activity.

Program activities

Community

The 2nd Coventry meetup

2nd Coventry meetup - 6th May 2012

WikiConference UK 2012

Jon Davies speaks at WikiConference UK 2012.

May 12th saw the 2nd annual "WikiConference UK", which was combined with the charity's AGM. The day was made up of talks and panels, and the elections of the new board of trustees. Presentations ranged wildly in subject from ideas for new tools, to copyright to outreach initiatives. The slides from the talks can be viewed on the conference agenda.

Wikimedia UK's AGM took place at the WikiConference. This included elections of the new Board (see #Board activities below), approval of past minutes, new resolutions. The resolutions approved at the meeting included changing the charity's official name from 'Wiki UK Ltd' to Wikimedia UK, to modify our Articles so that we can register as a charity in Scotland, to increase Board terms from one to two years, as well as standard motions to set membership fees, approve the accounts, and appoint auditors.

Education

• 29 May - Robin Owain, John Cummings and Roger Bamkin attend meeting with Welsh Ministries to discuss Google phone support and collaboration with the cy and en wikipedia's

GLAM activities

See also the This Month in GLAM UK report for this month.

• Technological landmark for award-winning Birmingham Moor Street station

Monmouthpedia launch

Wikimedians help new editors get to grips in Monmouth Library, during Monmouthpedia launch day.

Below is an abridged list of coverage for the Monmouthpedia launch story so far. Given that there are 277 pieces of online coverage from 36 countries, the whole document has not been recreated on wiki. A full list in PDF form can be found here. Please also note that these are simply the most notable publications and the list doesn't include small scale blogs, tweets or Facebook comments.

• 10 May 2012 – The Calcalist (Israel, in Hebrew)
• 16 May 2012 - Monmouthpedia: The world's first Wikipedia town is set to go live The Next Web
• 16 May 2012 – Monmouthpedia: world's first Wikipedia town (Milenio.com, in Spanish):
• 16 May 2012 - Caribe Noticias (Caribbean, in Spanish)
• 16 May 2012 - Forever Dope website (US)
• 17 May 2012 – nlyten.com location unknown
• 16 May 2012 - Monmouthshire CC blog
• 17 May 2012 - Monmouthshire CC blog on local business
• 17 May 2012 – Dailystuff.org (India)
• 17 May 2012 - Wall Street Journal (US) blog
• 17 May 2012 - Monmouth is first 'Wikipedia town', UK Press Association
• 17 May 2012 - The Verge (US)
• 17 May 2012 - Geek Journal (France, in French)
• 17 May 2012 - Donanim Haber (Turkey, in Turkish)
• 17 May 2012 - Ros Invest (Russia, in Russian)
• 17 May 2012 - Wales.com
• 17 May 2012 - Komputerswiat.pl (Poland, in Polish)
• 17 May 2012 - acikkod.org (Turkey, in Turkish)
• 17 May 2012 - Gigaom.com
• 17 May 2012 - 20minutos.com (Spain, in Spanish)
• 17 May 2012 - phphocam.com (Turkey, in Turkish)
• 17 May 2012 - Gizmodo (Poland, in Polish)
• 18 May 2012 - Monmouth to become UK's first 'Wikipedia town', Independent
• 18 May 2012 - [多图全球首个“Wikipedia”小镇落户英国], Sohu (Chinese)
• 18 May 2012 - Coming soon: 'Wikipedia' Town, Hindustan Times
• 18 May - Welsh town Monmouth to be world’s first ‘Wikipedia town’, Silicon Republic
• 18 May - Welcome to Wiki-ville: Monmouth becomes first Wikipedia town with barcodes at landmarks that link to smartphones guides, Daily Mail
• 18 May - Tourism boost for Wales as Britain’s first ‘Wiki-town’ is launched in historic Monmouth, Daily Mail
• 18 May - Monmouth to be world's first ‘Wikipedia town’, Telegraph
• 18 May - Monmouth Transformed Into ‘Wikipedia Town’, TechWeek Europe]
• 18 May - Monmouth, Wales world's first Wikipedia town, covered in QR codes, NMA World Edition (Japanese)
• 18 May - Welsh village becomes world’s first Wikipedia town, Fox News
• 18 May - First 'Wikipedia Town' Going Live in Wales, PC Mag
• 18 May - World's first Wikipedia town to launch in Wales, CBS News
• 19 May - Monmouth becomes the world's first 'Wikipedia town', ITV News
• 21 May - World's first 'Wikipedia town' covered in QR codes, CNet
• 21 May - Tiny Welsh Burg Paints the Town Wiki, TechNewsWorld
• 22 May - Monmouth is first Wikipedia town, News Wales
• 22 May - Welcome To The World's First Wikipedia Town, Tom's Guide
• 23 May - Monmouth is the world's first Wikipedia town, Monmouth Today
• 23 May - And now, a Wikipedia town!, MSN India
• 31 May - World’s First Wikipedia Town Won’t Be The Last, Singularity Hub

Videos from the launch day

• Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding

• Project lead John Cummings shares his thoughts on the project

• Mike Booth of Shire Hall, talks about the project

• Roisin Curran, Monmouth Museum Wikipedian in Residence, speaks about the project

• Giles Howard, of Monmouth County Council, discusses Monmouthpedia

• Sam Downie speaks about the launch of Monmouthpedia

• Monmouth residents Phil and Katerina who attended the "learn to edit" sessions, talk about the event

Miscellaneous

• Thanks to Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing)'s blog post, Monmouthshire County Council have open-licensed portrait photos of all their councillors (post the recent election), plus their Chief Officer, via Flickr. Some of these have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons

Miscellaneous

Jimmy Wales

• Willetts turns to Wikipedia founder for advice on open access, Times Higher Education, 2 May
• U.K. Seeks Wikipedia's Help to Post Research Online, New York Times, 6 May
• Jimmy Wales: charging to access publicly-funded research makes 'no sense', Wired, 8 May

Public relations

• How many company mistakes are there on Wikipedia, and how easy is it to fix them?, PR Moment, 8 May
• PR: If You Want to Understand Wikipedia, Become a Wikipedian, Huffington Post, 15 May
• CIPR calls for feedback on PR guidelines about Wikipedia use, PR Week, 16 May
• Feedback sought on Wikipedia draft guidelines, CorpComms Magazine, 16 May
• CIPR calls on PR industry to engage with Wikipedia guidance, PR Week, 24 May
• Public relations institute backs guidance for members' use of Wikipedia, Lakestar Media, 25 May
• Draft PR industry Wikipedia guidelines spark complaints, The Drum, 25 May

Expert outreach

• Something wiki this way comes... Geoscientist online (The Geological Society)

Upcoming activities in June

• 30 - Board meeting - in person in London
• 30 - Cardiff meetup
• 28 - Wikipedia photo library workshop, London
• 25 - Birkbeck College Wikipedia workshop (multiple institutions, academic staff focus)
• 23 - Manchester meetup
• 22 - GLAM-WIKI meeting and GLAM networking at the Office (2-5pm); Fæ available for discussion before and during lunch TANSTAAFL
• 18 - Martin Poulter giving Research in Learning Innovation seminar in "Wikipedia and Education" at Beyond Distance Research Alliance, University of Leicester
• 16 - World War I Editathon
• 17 - Conference committee/Wikimania 2014 meeting
• 10 - London meetup
• 09–10 - Train the Trainers event, London
• 08 - GLAMcamp London

For events in July and onwards, please see Events.

Administrative activities

Board activities

There were several board meetings this month, surrounding the AGM on 12 May. On the 8 May, a brief telephone board meeting took place to note decisions made by email, and to run through any outstanding issues surrounding the AGM. On 12 May, a very brief board meeting was held to approve new members prior to the AGM. After the AGM, the new Board met for the first time to assign positions, approve resolutions for the change of signatories, and to discuss other transitional and urgent issues.

The new Board, elected at the AGM, consists of Ashley Van Haeften (Chair), Michael Peel (Secretary), John Byrne (Treasurer), Roger Bamkin, Chris Keating, Joscelyn Upendran and Doug Taylor. Ashley, Michael, Chris and Joscelyn were appointed to 2 year terms, ending at the 2014 AGM, whilst John, Roger and Doug's terms run until the 2013 AGM.

News from the Chief Exec

For information on Jon's activities this month, see News from the Office.

Fundraising and Budgeting

Fundraising

This month, we received £1,054.22 in one-off donations, with 49 individual donations. The average donation amount was £21.51. If anyone would like a full (but anonymised) csv file with more information, please get in touch with richard.symondswikimedia.org.uk and let him know your requirements.

As for direct debit donations, there were 6,129 successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £24,572.99.

Office and Staff

Communications (Stevie Benton)

May has been a busy month for comms within Wikimedia UK. The obvious main piece of work was garnering publicity for the celebration day of Monmouthpedia. Full details are available higher up in this report but the event was a success, widespread international coverage was achieved and many positive relationships were built with volunteers, local people, media, communications agencies and many other lovely people.

Another highlight was the publication of our 2012 Annual Report - Shaping, Sharing, Growing. High and low resolution versions can be found on this page.

A challenge this month was the publication of a somewhat controversial study released by the PRSA in the US. Responding to this in the UK media (especially seeking corrections where required) took quite a lot of time. It also served to highlight the need to improve relationships with the PR industry - which, luckily enough, was already under way. This will culminate in the publication of the CIPR's guidelines for PR best practice on Wikipedia, facilitated by WMUK and created with lots of input from Wikipedians.

The other major piece of work this month was the creation of a Wikimedia UK communications strategy. . It's currently with the board for approval. The document was formed with input from the community here. If you'd prefer to see an abridged version of the strategy which contains only the recommendations you can find one here.