Archiv/2012-Annual-Report

Internal Affairs

Membership

• 26 November 2010: 58 members
• 10 Dezember 2011: 81 members
• 28 November 2012: 105 members

10 members have left since 2010.

Finances

As mentioned in the previous report, accounting was now switched to a web-based system, which administers all contacts of the society and integrates bookings and membership. As part of the process, transaction costs were added to the book-keeping and membership fees demanded much more effectively.

The new accounting system allows for live monitoring of bookings and transactions:

http://www.wikimedia.at/wmse/audit/public

Movements on nominal accounts, compare financial year/calendar year and budget:

Account	Budget 2012	01.09.2011 - 31.08.2012	01.01.2012 - 28.11.2012
0900 Acquisition of assets		24.788,59 EUR	24.788,59 EUR
0901 AfA		-4.019,66 EUR	-4.019,66 EUR
4010 WMF Grant		131.200,00 EUR	- EUR
4031 Direct donations public		10.799,09 EUR	2.320,00 EUR
4032 Direct donations anonymous		4.552,06 EUR	420,00 EUR
4040 Donations (manual booking)		4.373,07 EUR	3.687,90 EUR
4051 membership fees (automatic booking)		110,00 EUR	245,00 EUR
4052 membership fees (manual booking)		1.565,00 EUR	685,00 EUR
7011 Wikimania	15.000,00 EUR	-17.246,81 EUR	-14.299,08 EUR
7012 Wikimedia Conference	1.200,00 EUR	-4.086,23 EUR	-3.145,78 EUR
7013 Literature scholarship	1.500,00 EUR	-1.972,88 EUR	-1.028,71 EUR
7014 Wiki Loves Monuments	7.000,00 EUR	-13.701,19 EUR	-5.790,58 EUR
7015 Photography projects Austria	13.000,00 EUR	-3.069,56 EUR	-5.305,04 EUR
7016 International aid	3.500,00 EUR	-1.282,34 EUR	-1.282,34 EUR
7017 International Wikimedia editorial meetings	4.000,00 EUR	-1.039,76 EUR	-1.039,76 EUR
7018 WikiConvention	3.500,00 EUR	23.704,71 EUR	-1.309,52 EUR
7019 Materials for promoting voluneering	9.000,00 EUR	- EUR	- EUR
7020 Admont Monastery / Wikisource project	5.000,00 EUR	-3.441,86 EUR	-3.441,86 EUR
7021 Infrastructure and programming project	6.500,00 EUR	-8.159,73 EUR	-1.825,30 EUR
7022 Library project	4.600,00 EUR	- EUR	- EUR
7111 School and university projects	5.000,00 EUR	-33,24 EUR	-2.033,24 EUR
7112 Public relations / Adverstising material	6.000,00 EUR	-7.189,84 EUR	-6.092,82 EUR
7113 GLAM / Open Content	3.500,00 EUR	- EUR	-2.000,00 EUR
7200 Open budget	5.000,00 EUR	- EUR	- EUR
7210 Community budget	26.000,00 EUR	-5.884,22 EUR	-6.140,65 EUR
7211 Photographic equipment		-17.158,00 EUR	-17.158,00 EUR
7520 General meeting	1.800,00 EUR	-1.768,40 EUR	- EUR
7710 Office rent and equipment	4.250,00 EUR	- EUR	-4.187,50 EUR
7720 Legel expenses	1.500,00 EUR	-3.553,08 EUR	-2.653,08 EUR
7730 Internal IT	800,00 EUR	-5.276,90 EUR	-4.089,28 EUR
7740 Office supplies	1.350,00 EUR	-52,66 EUR	-52,66 EUR
7750 Administration and office management	12.000,00 EUR	-2.484,50 EUR	-5.371,31 EUR
7760 Accounting	6.600,00 EUR	-1.099,60 EUR	-1.099,60 EUR
7771 Banking fees		-1.054,38 EUR	-805,11 EUR
7772 Capital returns tax		-151,35 EUR	-146,97 EUR
7773 Interests		605,41 EUR	587,68 EUR
7780 Internal communication	400,00 EUR	-2.055,30 EUR	-2.064,86 EUR
7790 Insurances		-1.048,88 EUR	-1.501,74 EUR
7800 Work of the board		-3.780,06 EUR	-3.510,50 EUR
7999 Other expenses		-2.329,90 EUR	-1.667,00 EUR
9021 Advancements		-182,20 EUR	0,00 EUR

Movements on nominal accounts, compare financial year/calendar year and budget:

Account	01.09.2011 - 31.08.2012	01.01.2012 - 28.11.2012
Credit card	-2.565,63 EUR	0,00 EUR
General checking account (Krentschker)	7.028,46 EUR	-61,74 EUR
General savings account (Krentschker)	55.497,27 EUR	5.383,39 EUR
Grant checking account (Krentschker)	4.523,15 EUR	-108.409,09 EUR
Grant savings account (Krentschker)	75.000,00 EUR	10.000,00 EUR

Strategy

On the 20 and 21 April the board Wikimedia Austria met in Graz in order to consult about the future of the society, its strategic goals, annual aims and work out a structure and its realisation. We were resolved to set the framework for the next three years (2012-2015).

After gathering tasks and activities, we set up the following portofolios:

*Society - Infrastructure / Organisaiton (Operational processes and activities)
*International work - Conference scholarships / Chapters cooperation aid / Project coordiation
*Community work - Content: promotion of content production for Wikimedia projects / Community building: trust etc.
*External - Cooperation with like-minded organisations / Lobbying / Scientific work / Educaitonal work / GLAM etc.

The discussion showed rather clearly that:

• Community work is of pivotal importance for us and already a very successful part of the society's work. This is our main goal (50% weighting).
• External affairs were barely a part of our work while they support the main goal in many ways. We would like to expand this important area and therefore make it an auxiliary goal (30% weighting).
• International work is also an auxiliary goal, since it supports the main goal in various areas (Wikimania scholarships, Wiki Loves Monuments) and we're part of an international movement (20% weighting).
• The society needs to be sized and positioned according to these aims and is therefore an infrastructural goal.

In order to do justice to our current size and organisational level, we're focusing on one central goal, namely community work. This main goal is being aided by two auxiliary goals, external and international work. These two areas have to be seen as additional aims that support and complement our main goal. Coming from this we have defined yearly goals including measures for the different areas, which we want to achieve. This last part was the most time and effort consuming during the discussions.

Afterwards we took up discussion on the shape and form of our organisational structure that would be necessary to achieve the above mentioned goals and to run the society. This culminated in a first job description for a secretery. The plan is to initially distribute the workload to this position and part time manpower or further positions developed by the secretary. This way the society's work can be stabilised and set on an ongoing, continuous basis. This is intended to develop the foundation for the work of the coming years.

The details can be found in a somewhat rudimental form at http://mitglieder.wikimedia.at/Projekte/Zukunft. The raw material for this document can be sighted at http://mitglieder.wikimedia.at/Projekte/Zukunft/Protokoll as a protocol.

Denis Barthel

Staff

After a job advertisement in the newspapers "Standard", "Presse" and "Kleinen Zeitung" there was a several stages long selection process for the selection of a secretary. Finally Claudia Garad from Stuttgart was awarded the position. She moved to Vienna and dedictes herself from 1 October 2012 to the buliding up of our office there. Ruben Demus continued to work on a service contract, supporting several projects, including Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, the Ortsbildmesse, assisting municipalities, Photography workshops and school projects. The development of our staff was welcomed by the Wikimedia Foundation, the FDC however mentioned that our staff needs to gather more experience and should be expanded further. Wikimedia Sweden, for instance, has three permanent positions in the WLM/GLAM/Outreach sphere and hires additional support on service contracts. At Wikimedia Austria we are aiming at developing our backoffice capabilities in our office in Vienna as a first phase.

Fundraising Certificate

The Fundraising Certificate (Spendengütesiegel) is a quality seal for organisation collecting donations in Austria and guarantees quality standards, transparency and control. Its aim is to improve the security and trustworthiness of fundraising campaigns. In order to be allowed to use the seal, WMAT has to be audited yearly by an independent chartered accountant. There are seven auditing areas including the "correctness of financial accounting", the "integrity of the fundraising promotion and the responsibility for its regulation" as well as the the "statutable and designated use of donations", i.e. according to what was annouced during the funraising process. In total the organisaiton applying has to fulfill 35 criteria checked by a list of more than 300 quesitons in order to receive the „Spendengarantie-Ausweis“ badge of the Austrian chamber of chartered public accountants and tax consultants (Kammer der Wirtschaftstreuhänder - KWT). WMAT has submitted the necessary documentation which is currently being checked.

Regulation on Travel Expenses

Never before since the founding of our society in Austria have so many people participated in activities relating to Free Knowledge as in 2012. This doesn't always take place in the place thy live, oftentime volunteers were travelling across Austria and beyond. As part of their engagement they sacrifice their time and energy for the common cause. Having this in mind it is more than appropriate if the society supports them when it comes to travel expenses, which are sometimes a considerable part of the total cost of participation.

Travel expenses financing requests were already on the increas in 2011. In order to be predictable and fair vis-à-vis the volunteers and to be able to repsonsibly handle funds, the board adopted a travel expenses by-law in January 2012. Some details were improved in the course of the year, overall the expectations were confirmed and we now have a more simple and more balanced way to distribute the funds in this crucial area for the success of our society.

Fundraising Congress

Photo: Michael Kranewitter, cc-by-sa 3.0

Even if Wikimedia Austria can't itself become active in the yearly Wikimedia fundraising campaign, there are numerous other possiblities and situations to bid for support. In order to use these potentials in the best possible way, Wikimedia Austria is as of this year member of the Funraising Association of Austria (Fundraising Verband Austria - FVA). The FVA is an information and networking platform for non-profit organisaitons. Especially the annual Fundraising Congress is an excellent opportunity to to keep up with latest developments and trends, get inspiried and gather contacts in this sector. This year our secretary Claudia Garád was able to attend this event for WMAT. As part of our membership we are granted access to important basic knowledge and information about strategic financial planning.

Projects

ICANN

Wikimedia Austria became member of the ICANN in 2012 and was therefor accredited as a "At-large Structure" what made them a member of the "At-large Community".

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is an international organisation primarily dealing with the granting of names (Domains) and addresses (IP-Adresses) on the internet. While the ICANN is not doing this by itself it delegates the tasks to regional and national registrars. Therefor ICANN is mainly monitoring and setting up requirements for them, what makes ICANN one of the leading authorities of the internet and its regulation. This sets ICNAN partially in direct competition to other authorities such as IETF, IEEE (technological standards) and ITU (conventional telecommunication infrastructure).

Since the ICANN became independent from the United States Department of Commerce it has got a so-called "multiple stakeholder"-structure, which means, that it is holded and controlled by various pressure groups, such as governments, the economy and the society (where the "At-large structure" is situated).

As a member of the ICANN Wikimedia Austria now has full access to the work of the ICANN, is able to participate there and is via the internal mailinglists informed about recent discussions regarding the "internet government". The main reason for WMAT to become a member of the ICANN was our interest in topics regarding neutrality and open accessibility to the internet, which is important to ensure that the society is still able to influence the development of the internet, because the society still runs the Wikimedia projects. Until now WMAT is not taking an aktive part in the ICANN because the organisation is larger and more complex than the Wikimedia-movement, additionally there is a lack of time for the participation on larger events such as WSIS, IGF and EuroDIG. WMATs commitment at the ICANN is free of costs and in the long term. The main task is at the moment to monitor processes and discussions and give notice, if any interesting topics are coming up.

WMAT is represented at the ICANN by Manuel Schneider and Kurt Kulac. Manuel is already active at the ICANN for WMCH and since 2010 board member of the EURALO (European Regional At-Large Organisation).

• Application for accommodation at the ICANN by WMAT (17.1.2012)
• ICANN-Announcement of the accommodation of WMAT as the 162th ALS (25.4.2012)

Manuel Schneider

Wiki Women Camp

Photo: Nkoepff, CC0 1.0 Universal

Regarding to a study of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2010 one of the main problems of the Wikimedia-movement at the moment is a lack of female editors. Therefor various concepts have been elaborated and activities have been set up to change this fact.

One of these activities was the WikiWomenCamp in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 23rd to 25th of May 2012, which should take influence on the direct activities of the women as well as beeing a strategy meeting for further thoughts. Some involved female Wikimedians organised this conference especially for women. As a part of this organisation they had a look at all countries examining the situation for women there:

• Examination for Austria

Wikimedia Austria was supporting this conference with an ammount of 5.000 EUR to enable female Wikimedians from Austria to participate in the conference. Unfortunately despite various announcements and invitations at the public mailinglists, the website and WMATs internal Wiki there was no interested participant from Austria. In addition WMAT hold an ammount of 2.000 EUR for the conference, which was given to WMDE by the organisers to support additional participants by an international scholarship.

In the end 23 participants met for three days at Buenos Aires and disussed in 16 Workshops and meetings about the lack of female editors in the Wikimedia-projects and how to solve this problem.

• Report of two participants from Germany

Manuel Schneider

Photography Project

Miha Vodicar and Nadiya Bychkova dancing a Cha-Cha-Cha
Photo: Ailura, cc-by-sa 3.0

What began last year with an expensive equipment acquisition and the setting of ambitious objectives turned out to be a major project for Wikimedia Austria. There is hardly a week without a request for an accreditation and a transport of WMATs noticeable camera equipment somewhere.

WMAT still uses its existing contacts to football-clubs and the -league as well as responding to individual wishes of Wikipedians. But especially these wishes are what makes this project this notable. Because at first the wishes and requirements of the Community are making the results of the project so diverese.

Not only sports and nature-photographs but also pictures of celebrities such as politicians, actors and rock musicians are now categorised at the project-category with nearly 7000 pictures on Wikimedia Commons. Not only the doubtlessness of the photographers which handle the equipment but also WMATs self-confidence has raised in the last year, so that we also ask at large and important events for an accreditation for our photographers. Let's see, where we are going next in the name of Wikimedia-projects. Evereything's possible!

Photography Workshop Nuremberg

In March 2012 I participated as the only Austrian participant at the Wikipedia photography workshop in Nuremberg. Besides the exchange of experiences with numerous other Wikimedia-photographers the topics of the workshop were the "Landtagsprojekte" (Projects to photograph the memebers of the regional assemblies in Germany and Austria), Focus Stacking, problems with owners of national heritage monuments and neutrality in photographing of modern buildings. I did'nt participate at the main topic, nude photography but was still able to gain experience at handling the flash-module.

In October I was participating a second time at the photography workshop in Nuremberg. There have been talks about a potentially upcomming "cultureclash" between authors and photographers, Hugin, Divas in front of the camera and the operation of flash. Additionally there has been an excursion through Nuremberg and a tampon and a model railway have been photographed.

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:10._Fotoworkshop_N%C3%BCrnberg

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_11._Fotoworkshop

Aliura

Photography Workshop Vienna

In spring, there was a own photography workshop held in Vienna especially for Austrian photographers. The workshop took place at the "Wiener Medienzentrum", a premises of the city of Vienna, where the participants brought their individual camera-equipment with them and were coached by the lecturer. It has been a personal gain for every single participant – for the beginners as well as for the professionals. Everyone was surprised by the quality of pictures which can be made with very low-budget-cameras. At the end of the day there were some exercises done and the lecturer showed some tricks at dealing with various lighting conditions.

On the eve of the previous day Olaf Kosinsky from WMDE met the photographers in Vienna to tell them about his "Landtagsprojekt" at which the objective is to photograph the memebers of the regional assemblies in Germany and Austria. This meeting led to an intensive cooperation with photographers of Austria which were especially involved in the shootings at the Bavarian regional assembly (Bayrischer Landtag) and the Regional assembly of Salzburg (Salzburger Landtag). Detailled information about this project are available in section Landtag Project in this Annual Report.

Wikipedia Get-together of the Biology Editorial Team

Like in the last years Wikimedia Austria supported the meeting of the Biology Editorial Team of the german-language Wikipedia by compensating for travelcosts of participants. This years get-together took place at Podgorje in Slowenia. A car was rented with wich the participants traveled to expeditions in several areas around Podgorje, including the 1014 meters high mountain Slavnik. Not only four Austrian Wikimedians, but also members of the communities of Germany and Slowenia took part in the get-together.

Furthermore the Wikipedians gained insight into the fieldwork of an entomologist, access to nature protection areas and markable biotopes. Througout the numerous expeditions they were able to take pictures of unique animals of the karst, which were uploaded at the Wikimedia Commons. The identification of these animals was no problem with the help of some scientists and their books. The cooperation with the Slowenian Wikipedians is going to be continued next year.

Hackathon Berlin

With the support of Wikimedia Austria I was able to participate in the "Berlin Hackathon 2012" at the begin of June this year. About 100 technically interested Wikipedians, Wikimedians and Mediawikians got there together to work on projects collaborative, share news and for socializing. Additionally to the work on my tools I was able to have some good conversations and listen to some speeches.

A speech by Tim Starling about next years plan to introduce a real programming language for the creation of templates gave us a first insight into the Scribunto-extension of MediaWiki. Although it is supporting all popular programming languages, in the Wikimedia-projects preliminarily only the language Lua is going to be established. Further speeches were about the usage of the new revision-management for MediaWiki under Git&Gerrit by Patrick Reilly and about tipps for the improvement of MySQL-Statements by Roan Kattouw.

Solanaceaen Congress

From the 26 to the 30th of August the SOL2012 took place in the swiss town of Neuchâtel [1] - a conference abou the nightshade family plants. For the first time such a scientific congress was supported and sponsored by a Wikimedia chapter (in this case CH). By taking care of the travel expenses Wikimedia Austria allowed Cartse Stiller [2] - the most active contributor on the German Wikipedia when it comes to nightshade family plants - to visit this event. On location he was able - together with Charles Andrès (board member Wikimedia CH) and Daniel Mietchen (Wikimedia DE) - to contact and interact with the people whose work he ususally covers and explains while editing articles.

The present scientists were given an understanding of Wikipedia and the wider work of Wikimedia. This happened during the Wikipedia workshop [3], which was part of the conference schedule, as well as in plenty conversations. The main conservation topics were how Wikipedia works, how the scientists can help improve the articles in their field of expertise and how crucial Open Access is in the diffusion of research results outside of the science community.

Currently the contacts gained during the conference are being maintained with the idea to foster new cooperations and to build up further exchanges between the science world and Wikipedia. A first, direct success can already be reported. The article Nicotiana attenuata [4] created by Carstor for demonstration purposes during the workshop was further improved after the conference for a writing contest where it won the 5th place.

1. http://www.sol2012.ch/
2. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Carstor
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Talks/SOL_2012
4. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_attenuata

User:Carstor

WikiCup and Writing Contest

The WikiCup and the Wikipedia Writing Contest were supported by Wikimedia Austria by providing prizes. The main prize was each time a weekend in Vienna (including invitation to the regulars' table). Im the WikiCup contest, which takes place during the course the year, all particianpts of every round received a specially designed t-shirt. These t-shirts were ordered in very limited quantities and soon become popular souvenirs and thereby fulfilled their purpose, to motivate the participants to take part in the next round.

Wiki TV

WikiTV presentation at Wikimania 2012
Foto: Dyolf77, cc-by-sa 3.0

WikiTV is a community-project that traces its roots back tot he Wikipedia anniversry celebrations in 2011. Then, a first TV show was produced online in cooperation with the ORF (Austrian Public Broadcaster). Over the following months other video projects were added to that cooperation so that by the end of the year funds from the Community project budget were requested.

In March 2012 the WikiTV project received a 36.000 Euro budget from Wikimedia Deutschland. With these funds a camera was acquired, a large amount of the money remains unspent. Due to the amount of work required by the WikiCon the project developped only slowly until now, still several kilometer stones were reached:

• The camera was used for the first time at the Wikipedia Academy (29-30 June). Marco Fleckinger spontaneously found enough free time to go to Berlin to attend the event. The goal here was to gather experiences with the new device.
• A un unexpected collaboration with the German TV station NRW.TV took place during the LinuxDay 2012. The ComputerClub2, a very successful TV show in Germany which ran for decades on WDR (West German Public Broadcaster), wanted to question the organisers of the event. WikiTV and ORF established a connection from Berlin via Vienna to Düsseldorf, which allowed for an interview in the highest possible TV quality. We were also able to present WikiTv during the show, whose recording we keep, but still haven't secured a release under a free license.
• At the Wikimania the technology was presented in front of a full room and the idea of WikiTv was spread internationally. In Sweden a similar project is already taking place, in the Czech Republic it is in the workings.
• During the Wikimania we spontaneously visited the ORF-Centre in Washington D.C. After a very interesting tour with the correspondent Wolfgang Geier the local team shot a short interview. Well packaged this appeared about one week later as a short film in the Austrian news broadcast "Zeit im Bild 2".
• At the WikiCon 2012 the project was presented in a short session. The following workshop attracted new interested participants and answered detailled questions.
• We were further able to gather experiences at the open SUSECon in Prague. At the event in October we helped the filming crew in several rooms simultaneously. The know-how and contacts gained during this event can be subsequently used to tape-record and cut various presentations at OpenSource events.

Book Scanner Project

• Budget: 5000,00 EUR
• Expenses: 3441.86 EUR
• Responsible person: Heinz Egger

LinuxTag

The Linuxday in Berlin is by the description of its organisers Europes leading Open-Source-Event. Manuel Schneider has been there for a couple of years frequently as a exhibitor. In the last years he represented OpenZIM in combination with tntnet because the developer of both projects is Tommi Mäkitalo.

This year Manuel was planning to do something different there. After the positiv experiences at the Linuxday in Dornbirn he organised a Wikimedia stand at the Linuxday in Berlin as well, where the first official public collaboration of the three german-language Wikimedia-Chapters (WMDE, WMAT and WMCH) took place. Additionally some other projects of the Wikimedia-movement were represented at this stand. Of course also OpenZIM and tntnet were at the Linuxday, supplemented by Emmanuel Engelhart with Kiwix, which bases on both of them.

Lydia and Angelika from WMDE further represented the projects Wikidata and RENDER. They alternated with Catrin Schoneville, Johannes Rohr, Kai Nissen, Katja Ullrich, Michael Jahn, Nils Brenner, Phillip Wilke und Silke Meyer from WMDE as well as with Marco Fleckinger, who was the Austrian representative in the Wikidata-project.

A special highlight was the live videoconference connection betwenn Vienna, Düsseldorf and Berlin. Wolfgang and Wolfgang from ComputerClub 2 wanted to take an interview with Nils Magnus from LinuxTag e.V., but were not able to be in place. With the help of the ORF they were able to set up a conference connection between Vienna and the two outposts. Organised by Manuel Wikimedia was together with the ORF the broadcaster of this event.

Additionally this year the soft drinks were sponsored by all of the three represented chapters. The costs of 900 EUR were solidarily splitted between them.

Ortsbildmesse

Landesrat Viktor Sigl and WMAT secretary Claudia Garad
Photo: Ailura, cc-by-sa 3.0

Austrian Wikipedians and Wikimedia Austria for the first time organised together a bigger event at the „Ortsbildmesse“ (townscape fair) in Perg, Upper Austria. Furthermore it was an outstanding introduction and starting event for 2012s Wiki loves Monuments. One of the first prominent participants was Upper Austrias vice-governor, Franz Hiesl, who took a picture of the parish curch of Perg. This picture also participated in 2012s Wiki loves Monuments contest in Austria. The politician further openend togehter with Kurt Kulac, chairman of WMAT, the photoexhibition in the gallery in the „Zeughaus“ (armory) with all of last years national and international WLM winner-picuters.

The Wikipedians at the fair distributed over 10,000 pieces of information-material and took the advantage to talk directly with the representatives of Upper Austrias municipalities at the other stands of the fair. In the afternoons interested visitors were able to take part in Wikipedia-Workshops of the „Katholisches Bildungswerk Perg“ and get information about how to participate in Wikipedia.

Landesrat Victor Siegl, another member of Upper Austrias government, was welcomed at WMATs stand by the designated secretary of WMAT, Claudia Garád, who leads the administration of WMAT since October 2012. The presentations at the Ortsbildmesse Perg were a great success and all participants had a lot of fun at this day.

Franz Pfeiffer

WikiCon

Photo: Manuel Schneider, cc-by-sa 3.0

Photo: Mr N, cc-by-sa 3.0

The WikiCon is a german-language Wikimedia-conference organised by the Wikimedia-community. After Skillshare 2010 in Lüneburg and the WikiCon 2011 in Nuremberg the WikiCon 2012 took place at the university of applied sciences Vorarlberg (Fachhochschule Vorarlberg) in Dornbirn, Austria. The conference was funded by WMAT (10,000 EUR), WMDE (10,000 EUR), WMF (10,000 EUR), WMCH (5,000 EUR) and the government of Vorarlberg (1,560 EUR + free usage of the university-buildings and their staff). Of this budget about one quarter was saved, which made us able to refund this amount proportionately to the Wikimedia organisations.

There were 212 participants at this years WikiCon, who came from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Italy (South Tyrol), Luxembourg (sorted by nuber of participants). At three days 57 presentations (including keynotes, panel discussions, speeches, workshops and open space sessions) of 45 speakers took place. Also the organisation team was consisting of members of all three major german-language countries. Its main target was to give room to all Wikimedia projects and to also invite external participants - meaning external projects as well as the public.

The nuber of participants as well as the attendants survey showed that the efforts were successfull. Not only were there more participants from different countries - including Liechtenstein and South Tyrol with no attendants in former WikiCons - but also were they widly spread by their home-projects and age. With some rentirees and 18 % women at the event the WikiCon 2012 was very different in a positive way from the projects reality.

In the end after loads of discussions and talks the participants decided to work out a final declaration to take the positive effect of the WikiCon 2012 also into the projects.

• Declaration of Dornbirn (German)

• Photos
• Presentations
• Press view
• Summary of the attendants survey

Manuel Schneider

Wiki Loves Monuments

Winning picture: Castle ruine Pottendorf with chapel. Photo: Becky85, cc-by-sa 3.0

At this years Wiki Loves Monuments contest, organised by the Wikipedia-community and Wikimedia Austria, in September 2012 nearly 15,000 photographers from 36 countries submitted more than 360,000 photos.

In Austria the contest took place for the second time in 2012 resulting in 10,800 pictures of palaces, castles, churches, industrial buildings, residential houses and much more. There are about 360,000 cultural heritage monuments in Austria. The year before about 12,000 pictures were submitted to fill the lists of cultural heritage monuments existing for every Austrian municipality in the german-language Wikipedia.

This year more photographers from the public participated in Wiki Loves monuments. They submitted a surprisingly wide variety of views on Austrias cultural heritage. There were panoramic photographs of monuments as well as details of frescos and sculptures.

At first a pre-jury built of dedicated Wikipedians, photographers and Editors selected a preselection. The final selection of the winning pictures was done by a jury consisting of representatives of the Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Agency for cultural heritage), of the Bundeskanzleramt (Federal agency of the chancellor) and Wikimedia Austria. The ten best pictures were the awarded and sent to the international Jury for the international contest.

The price for the best picture in Austria – a camera equipment from Canon – went to Becky85 for a photo of the Castle ruine Pottendorf with chapel. The following awarded persons got a balloon travel across the alps, vouchers for hotels and valuable illustrated books from the Bundesdenkmalamt.

Wiki takes Oberes Murtal

Picture: cc-by-sa 3.0

In the context of the Denkmallistenprojekt Peter Lauppert and I organised a weekend event to improve the grade of pictured monuments in Styria. Unfortunately the "Kleine Zeitung", a daily newspaper in Austria, was just reporting about it after the end of the event. So we were a small group consisting of only five participants. The grade of pictured cultural heritage monuments in the district Murau raised sind the begin of September from 24 % to 55 % (from 78 to 177 pictured monuments) and in the district Murtal in the same time from 27 % to 59 % (from 87 to 129 pictured monuments).

• Category on Wikimedia Commons with pictures from Wiki takes Oberes Murtal

• Story of the "Kleine Zeitung" about Wiki takes Oberes Murtal

Based on a report by Aliura

Zedlerpreis

In 2012 the Austrian Denkmallistenprojekt was awarded the "Zedlerpreis für freies Wissen" (Zedler-award for free knowledge). The project was featured in the Category Community-project of the year for helping to encourage the people to create content for the Wikimedia projects directly or indirectly, as the jury said. Wikimedia Austria together with Wikimedia Germany financed the journey of community-representatives to the award-ceremonial in Berlin and helped the project indirectly to win the award by advertising for WLM.

Wiki Loves Memories

Wikimedia Austria supports the idea of Wikipedia-User Robert Schediwy, who plans to transform the goal of the Photography projects - to get new mediafiles for Wikipedia and its sisterprojects - to existing old slide-collections. The objective is to get very useful and non reproducible historical snap-shots with upright copyrights. The digitalisation of a collection of pictures from the 1990s in the middle east is actually sceduled. Therefor a Reflecta DigitDia 6000 including the Silverfast Ai Studio 8-Software and a slim, small laptop have been acquired. While the projects still at it's beginning the equipment is now beeing tested in cooperation with the organisers of the german project "Silberwissen".

Support Slovakia

Wikimedia Austria has participated in an elementary way in the founding of Wikimedia Slovakia. Not only with the experiences of WMATs members but also in a physical way by providing webspace for the www.wikimedia.sk-website the founding was strongly supported by Wikimedia Austria. In addition the founding was also supported financially with Austrian cooperation.

The communication-level between WMAT and WMSK can be described as very casual and comfortable. Members of both associations developed a common awareness in corporate projects such as Wiki loves Monuments. Some members of WMAT participated at meet-ups in Slovakia while also some Slovakian members were welcomed at Austrian meet-ups. From our point of view with this cooperation we are able to look forward for a active and fruitful future.

Based on a report by Rudolf Smehly

Open Week Graz

From 23rd to 27th of July in the "Spektrum" in Graz the Open Week was held up, organised by Stefan Kasberger. It was basically a workshop regarding the topics Open Data, Open Science, Open Access, Open Source and copyrights. Topics, which are interesting for us as Wikipedians as well. Overlappings between the Open Science movement and our community are distinguishable and were shown in various conversations. Through the exchange of information material the contact between our movements was increased. A common event was planed but not implemented yet.

Wikimeet Lower Austria

Soon after the first Wikipedia meet-up in Lower Austria, in Sankt Pölten at 11th of August 2011 it was clear, that the meet-ups should also be held at other places in Lower Austria to enable other Wikipedians, for which the journey to Sankt Pölten would be too far, to participate at the meet-ups. This was the birth of the "Niederösterreichischer Wanderzirkus" (Travelling circus of Lower Austria).

As the participating Wikipedians liked to do something else than just sitting in a tavern for two or three hours they organised for their second meeting at the 19th of November 2011 a guided tour through Stift Göttweig (Göttweig monastery) with the secretary of the abbot and a following regulars' table in a Heurigen-tavern. This brought me to the idea to link the travelling circus not only with cultural focuses but also to bring interested people together with the Wikipedians.

After another meet-up at Sankt Pölten at the 3rd of March 2012 I organised a meet-up for the 28th of April in my hometown Sitzendorf an der Schmida. The participants could take part in a welcome with the mayor and a guided tour across the historical main square and the parish church, showing them the most interesting cultural highlights of Sitzendorf.

Afterwards there was a course of lectures for interested people at a local winegrowers cellar which was exclusively opened for us. The participants got to know about the foundation, the national chapters, the funding, the Wikis and Commons as well as about the importance of the german-language Wikipedia in comparison with the international movement. Additionally it was exemplified how to become an editor, wich kind of functions there are (admins, ...), how the relevance criterias work, whats to consider at loading up a file and which licences there are. Concludingly I was giving an insight into some example works in Wikipedia about the municipality of Sitzendorf. Afterwards the casual part of the day was following which was supported by Wikimedia Austria.

At the 21st of July 2012 I further organised a special guided tour with the prior of Lilienfeld monastery through the monastery. During this tour we got insights into rooms as the sacristy, which are normally not shown in guided tours. Also this time we used the afternoon for the casual time of our meet-up.

Various other ideas for the travelling circus of Lower Austrias Wikipedians are under way.

Based on a report by Manfred Kuzel

Wikimeet Innsbruck

In the eastern part of Austria there are some meetups existing since a time. In Germany they are nearly uncountable. The Munich meetup even claims to be the oldest meetup of german-language Wikipedians. Until now it also was the nearest meetup for Wikipedians from the Tyrol. It's a long but quite simple journey to Munich for tyrolean Wikipedians even though the last train in the evening back to Innsbruck is departuring quite early.

Now the time has come for the Tyrol to get an own regularly meeting meetup. It's a major goal of the meetup to get not only Wikipedians from Innsbruck but also such from the rest of the Tyrol - including Eastern and South Tyrol - as participants. Everybody is welcome.

The meetup is in a manner of speaking a result of the WikiCon 2012 in Dornbirn. Wikipedia-Users Elisabeth Kugler, Thorsten Schwerte, Stefan Stolz, Yung and Marco74 met each other there for the first time and decided to found a meetup in Innsbruck with monthly meetings. This should help building up a strong community of Wikipedia-editors in the Tyrol. Since the every month in the Stiftskeller in Innsbrucks historic centre more than seven Wikipedians meet each other - and the number of participants is still increasing.

Based on a report by Marco Fleckinger

Linux Day

The LinuxDay is a annually held event in Dornbirn, Austria regarding the topic free software and organised by the Linux Usergroup Vorarlberg. One Saturday long at the schooldbuilding of the HTL Dornbirn various projects of this topic are presented at fair-stands and by lecutres. The visitors of the LinuxDay are as well as the exhibitors because of Dornbirns border-near location very international. They are comming from Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

As we reported in our last years annual report WMAT was already once represented at the LinuxDay 2011 with an own stand. The idea to organise the very successfull WikiCon 2012 (see above) in Dornbirn came up at last years LinuxDay.

So we decided to participate in this years LinuxDay again. Indeed Wikimedia fits very well in this event as the largest provider of free content, there is still the problem, that the visitors of the LinuxDay are already aware of the topic and would not need to be informed about the need of a free access to knowledge worldwide. Nonetheless we used the opportunity to strengthen our publicity in the community. Therefore Manuel Schneider held a short speech about the Wikimedia organisation, its projects and goals.

So the most important message to give was, that Wikimedia is more than just Wikipedia. Although most of the visitors knew the "product" Wikipedia, the vast majority didn't know anything about the project itself or its organisation. Also the Wikipedia-users Michael Karolzak and Marco Fleckinger had some interesting conversations with visitors about these important facts.

Based on a report by Manuel Schneider and Marco Fleckinger

QRpedia

A QR-Code

German-language Wikipedia's definition of a QR-Code: "Der QR-Code besteht aus einer quadratischen Matrix aus schwarzen und weißen Punkten, die die kodierten Daten binär darstellen." (The QR-Code consists of a quadratically matrix of black and white points which binary constitute the encoded data.) QR-Codes are used with mobilephones to get to sites of the Internet. So it suggests itself to link QR-Codes to Wikipedia-articles when it's most intersting, like in museums, at monuments or in botanical gardens.

This idea is now being implemented in Graz. After a conversation with Prof. Berg, director of the botanical garden in Graz, a list of species was transferred, which should get a QR-Code-link to its Wikipedia-article. Members of Wikipedias Wikiproject biology are at the moment writing the last missing articles. Also the exact design and content of the plates showing the QR-Code is being developed now. We are looking forward for the first QR-Code plates at the botanical garden in Graz.

Landtag Project

Chiemseehof in Salzburg (Kaiviertel), seat of the Salzburg regional assebly and the government of Salzburg
Photo: Andreas Praefcke, cc-by-sa 3.0

Although every member of all Austrian regional assemblies (Landtage) has its own de.Wikipedia-article, only very vew of them include a picture of the person described. Even less of them have a portrait photo. This is not because the politicians are shy or there are no photographers. It's because of the licence. We are only allowed to use pictures under a free licence. To take photos which can be published under a free licence, such as CC-by-sa, WMAT organised in cooperation with the existing German "Landtagsprojekt" a meeting between the politicians of regional assemblies and Wikimedia-photographers.

At the 31st of August 2012 the regional assembly of Salzburg was the fifth regional assembly to be photographed in the project. After the plenary session each politician was asked to pose for the photographers of Wikipedia. Afterwhats nearly all of the 36 memebers of the regional assembly have been photographed. Their Wikipedia-articles are now supplemented with a portrait picture under a free licence.

The project compares of varios goals:

• the creation of free licenced pictures for the usage in Wikimedia-projects and beyond
• the revision of mistakes and the extension of articles about the politicians
• enable the discussion between politicians and Wikimedians
• direct attention to the goals of the Wikimedia-movement and showing chances and risks
• claer topics like personality rights and copyright for the created images
• beeing open for questions, wishes and ideas of the politicians