Reports/2012/October

This report is still a draft and is not ready for release. Feel free to edit it. You may find Wikinews' manual of style useful.

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 October 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.

Program activities

GLAM activities

Other activities

• 14 - Andy Mabbett addressed the Central and Eastern Europe Wikimedia conference about recent developments in UK and international GLAM collaboration.
• 19 - Andy Mabbett spoke to the CityCamp Coventry event, about Wikimedia and GLAM.
• 22 - Andy Mabbett delivered a training session on Wikipedia editing to history students at the University of Birmingham, as part of the International Dunhuang Project.

Expert outreach

The London School of Economics' Impact of Social Sciences blog ran a guest post by Martin Poulter, "Writing for Wikipedia has forced me into good scholarly habits and accessible writing". This asks academics to view Wikipedia as an opportunity to write about their own fields and as an opportunity for educational assignments.

Martin Poulter, Charles Matthews, Tom Morris and Edward Harding delivered a day workshop at for the JISC Digital Infrastructure team at the JISC headquarters in London. Many of the trainees had managerial or leadership roles in elearning, research infrastructure or digital humanities. As well as basic editing, the workshop looked at different kinds of effort to improve Wikipedia, and how the different Wikimedia Projects work together to provide a "digital infrastructure" for each other and the wider web.

Other activities

• 13 - Fæ addressed the Central and Eastern Europe Wikimedia conference, about the Chapters Association.
• WereSpielChequers and Leutha ran a categorisation workshop for donors who were also willing to donate some time to Wikimedia.
• The second "train the trainers" session took place in London

Microgrants

Volunteers at the Cambridge University Wikipedia Society's fresher's fair stall

Two microgrants have been approved this month.

• Microgrants/Birthday 2012 is for supplies for WMUK's birthday party celebrating the 4th anniversary of the chapter and the 1st anniversary of us achieving charity status - the party will take place at the London wikimeet on 11 November, to which all are welcome. The application was submitted by WMUK's intern, Hasina Khatun.
• Microgrants/32GB usb stick for Commons dump is for a 32GB memory stick to support the operations of Commons:User:Faebot without wearing out the operator's computer. The bot is currently working on categorising the Geograph images on Commons, as well as doing other similar tasks. The application was submitted by Fæ.

A number of microgrants were marked as completed this month, including:

• Microgrants/Cambridge University Wikipedia Society provided funding to get the Cambridge University Wikipedia Society started via a stall at their fresher's fair, with freebies to give away. The report for the microgrant, which was submitted by User:Deryck Chan, said "We now have a mailing list, with 237 members on it, a huge jump from only 10 wiki-page members and volunteers prior to the fair. Volunteers at the stall included Charles Matthews, Daniel Thomas, and myself. We've also received great support from SRCF. Almost all freebies were given out; the T-shirts and pens for volunteers of our stall created a particularly professional image by making everything in the stall Wikimedia-branded. Additionally, the nearby stalls, all science and technology related, were also predominantly using Wikipedia pens for their sign-up sheets!"
• Microgrants/Imperial College Wikipedia Society

Information about microgrants that are currently running, and how to submit a microgrant application of your own, are at Microgrants/Applications.

Upcoming activities in November

For events in December and onwards, please see Events.

• 01 - Ethical Properties Wikipedia Workshop/November event
• 03 - Robin Owain addresses The Welsh Academy Writers' Fair, Cardiff
• 04 - RBSA Backstage Pass in Birmingham
• 04 - Oxford meetup 1st ever Oxford meetup.
• 04 - Royal Birmingham Society of Artists editathon.
• 06 - Training at De Montfort University
• 06 - Workshop at the National Library of Scotland
• 07 - Workshop at the National Library of Scotland
• 08 - Workshop at Edinburgh University
• 09 - Workshop at EDINA, Edinburgh
• 11 - London meetup
• 17–18 - Board meeting (TBC) - in person
• 18 - Reading meetup 2nd Reading meetup.
• 20 - Training at De Montfort University
• 24 - Liverpool meetup
• 25 - Manchester Girl Geeks editing day

Administrative activities

Finances

• The current state of each of our budgets is outlined in a Google Spreadsheet. This details spend to date, and a rough estimate of future spending. This spreadsheet is too complex to be placed directly on a wiki. Our yearly spend is heavily 'end-loaded', partially due to the rapid growth of Wikimedia UK.
• Q3's Management Accounts are at File:Wikimedia UK Management Accounts Q3 2012.pdf. These are also available in spreadhseet format for those interested - contact richard.symondswikimedia.org.uk

News from the Chief Exec

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

The updates about the Wikimedia UK Interns can be found there too, together with here.

Fundraising and Membership

Fundraising

This month, we received £443.260 in one-off donations, with 13 individual donations. The average donation amount was £34.09 - 62% of these donors have 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.bavagewikimedia.org.uk and let her know your requirements.

As for direct debit donations, there were 5349 successful direct debits this month, bringing in a total of £20,917.12.

Membership

Up to 31st October 2012:

• 198 new (membership commenced in preceding three months) and current members
• 51 'grace' members (membership within six months after date membership should be renewed)

This adds up to 249 members who are eligible to vote

• 155 Expired members

A membership survey was distributed on 30th October 2012 , the results were made public as part of the reports to the Board meeting of 17th November 2012. You can view them here (pdf)