Reports/2011/May

Below is the Wikimedia UK report for the period 1 January to 31 May 2011. We'll be making future reports available on a monthly basis from now on.

WikiConference UK and AGM

We held the first WikiConference UK, which included our 2011 Annual General Meeting, at the Watershed in Bristol. The three main themes of the conference were Wikipedia and GLAM; Wikipedia content; and Wikipedia in Education (including two keynotes). Slides from the presentations are available online.

At the AGM our members elected the Board for the coming year. 8 members stood for the 7 available seats, and it was a very close-run election. The new Board consists of Roger Bamkin (Chair), Andrew Turvey (Treasurer), Michael Peel (Secretary), Chris Keating, Martin Poulter, Ashley Van Haeften and Steve Virgin. The new Board put out a blog post announcing their appointment and first board meeting.

The AGM also included the formal business of the outgoing Board's report, approval of minutes from the 2009 and 2010 AGMs, and voting on resolutions. 5 resolutions were put to the members. The first was on extending board seats to 2 years, which failed to receive the required 75% support. The other four - on setting membership fees; appointing board members; approving the 2008-2010 annual accounts; and appointing auditors - were unanimously approved. Preliminary minutes for the AGM are online.

GLAM

(Fæ to expand)

Should include a mention of:

• The Wright Challenge.
• Roger's visit to Vienna for the UGC4GLAM conference
• Fæ's visit to NYC for GLAMcamp
• GLAMcamp London
• Derby Backstage Pass

As part of our 10th Anniversary activities and partially inspired by our successes with the British Museum collaboration, on 14-15 January, 2011, we held a editathon at the British Library where Wikimedia UK volunteers alongside the employees of the British Library created Wikipedia content related to the British Library. At the event attendees started 8 new articles and helped develop the infrastructure on Wikipedia related to the new GLAM/BL project on English Wikipedia. See Editathon, British Library/January 2011 and the event announcement for details. This will be followed up by another event in June 2011.

Education

(MLP to expand)

Should mention:

• Wikipedia Contribution Team.
• Martin's presentation at Open Educational Resources 2011

An Imperial College Wikipedia Society has been officially recognised by Imperial College, the first Wikipedia student organisation to be established in the UK. The society hopes to feed teaching assignments and outreach on campus and hopes to encourage the use of Wikipedia on campus and to seriously question its position in the academic community. It has already run two contribution team events: wikipedia:Wikipedia:CONTRIB/Imperial & wikipedia:Wikipedia:CONTRIB/Imperial2 - as well as the London Wikipedia Academy

Wikipedia Workshops

(MP & MLP to expand)

Wikimedia UK ran a 'Wikipedia Workshop' at Cancer Research UK's London offices. Cancer Research UK's staff explored how their unique expertise can benefit Wikipedia, improving existing cancer-related pages and sharing new information about cancer and health.

The 'Wikipedia Workshop' was split into two sessions. The first took place in early February and consisted of a two hour comprehensive introduction to Wikipedia, including what makes a good Wikipedia article and how to interact with other contributors. The second session, on Monday 28th March 2011, was an all-day 'hands-on' session where the Wikipedians guided attendees through their first edits to Wikipedia.

Kate Arnold, director of patient information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Wikipedia is a key source of information for people looking for information about cancer. Either they go to the site directly or they Google a term and Wikipedia links appear high in the search rank. We believe it is vital for the information available on these pages to be accurate and easy to understand."

For more details, see Cancer Research UK Workshop. This event will be followed by a Medical Research Council Workshop in July

Also need to cover Bristol Wiki Academy 1

Charity status

(AT to expand)

Hiring staff

(AT to expand)

Finances

(AT to expand)

We make fundraising reports publicly available each month via our Finances webpage. Here are summaries of the months covered by this report:

• January, £49,900 received from NN donors (detailed report)
• February, £XXX received from NN donors (URL to complete report to come)
• March, £XXX received from NN donors(URL to complete report to come)
• April, £XXX received from NN donors(URL to complete report to come)

Our accounts from incorporation until 31 January 2010 have been completed, and were approved by our members at our AGM in April (you can read them online). Our accounts for 1 February 2010 to 31 January 2011 are currently being audited; we expect to be able to have them completed by (end of June?).

Wikipedia's 10th birthday

Wikimedia UK hosted 2 events in Bristol in honour of Wikipedia’s 10th Birthday. In the morning Jimmy Wales led a school assembly at Bristol Cathedral for the Bristol Cathedral Choir School. Then, at noon he gave a set piece talk at the University of Bristol on Wikipedia in celebration of the 10th birthday that was due to take place two days later. Over 700 people attended the talk live, around 3500 watched it live over the Internet courtesy of one of the sponsors Bristol City Council, and a further 25,000 watched it after the event. The BBC Anchor Project recorded it professionally as well and has donated a recording of the talk under a Public Domain licence to Wikimedia UK.

After the Bristol event, Jimmy threw a celebratory party in London. See summary of events. The Editathon at the British Library (see above) was also a 10th anniversary celebration event.

Miscellaneous

• We put out a blog post on Wikimedia Commons reaching the 10 million multimedia files milestone.
• Mike Peel attended the Chapters meeting 2011 in Berlin on behalf of WMUK. Documentation from the meeting is available online.
• Minutes of board meetings are available for 4 January, 5 February, 1 March, 8 April, 16 April (pre-AGM), 16 April (post-AGM), 26 April (full board) and 20 May (Exec).
• Wikimeets happened in London on 9 January, 13 February, 13 March, 10 April and 8 May; in Cambridge on 27 February and 21 May; and in Manchester on 24 April.
• UK Community IRC meetings were held on 3 May and 17 May.