Newsletter/April2009
Summary:
In this month's newsletter:
Annual General Meeting
The first Wikimedia UK AGM was held on Sunday 26th April at the Kro Bar in Manchester. The day saw a new Board be elected to serve, numerous speakers cover a range of highly interesting topics, as well as the general chit-chat that comes with any wiki-meet! The minutes from the AGM can be found at Meetings/2009 AGM/Minutes, and the minutes from the first meeting of the new Board (see below!) can be found at Meetings/2009-04-26.
Steve Bowbrick, Editor of the BBC Radio 4 blog, spoke to the assembled members about how to open the BBC archives for use within Wikimedia projects, including 10 million images, and 4.5 miles of paper archives. He explained that the BBC is currently undergoing staffing changes in the areas surrounding the archives, and that the future may hold some bright things for us! He also spoke about how he is trying to encourage BBC staff to contribute to Wikipedia without fear of losing their jobs over it. He explained how he wished to set up a "Wikipedia Club" within the BBC. He also spoke about how he believes the chapter could interact with the BBC, clearly illustrated by the image at [1], which was circulated amongst the assembled.
Duncan Harris, speaking on behalf of SOS Children's Villages, spoke about the Wikipedia for Schools project, and offered an insight into how it all works "behind the scenes". He spoke about how the charity selects and distributes - for free - the "selection" of articles - now totalling around 3.5GB - to those places with a computer but without or otherwise unable to access an internet connection. The articles are selected based on the UK's National Curriculum - a widely popular curriculum around the world - and formatted to fit into the proprietary software developed especially for the DVD.
New Board
As part of the 2009 AGM, a new Board was elected by the present members and those voting by proxy. Therefore, the board currently stands as:
- Michael Peel - Chair (assuming role of Communications Officer)
- Andrew Turvey - Secretary
- Tom Holden - Treasurer (assuming role of Membership Director)
- Zeyi He - Initiatives Director
- Joseph Seddon - Events Director
- Steve Virgin - Corporate Relations Director
- Paul Williams - Volunteers Director
The full results of the board election can be found in the 2009 AGM Minutes
Chapters Meeting
[MP]
Wikipedia Loves Art
[ART]
Meet-ups
The next scheduled meetups in the UK are as follows:
- London 21 - Sunday 17th May @ 13:00 - Penderel's Oak Pub, Holborn WC1