News/Archive 2010
With 1-2% of its budget, Wikimedia CH is supporting to build up communities in Africa. The first attempt is in Bamako, Mali.
A dictionary Songhai - French is being created which contains around 3000 words by now. And a Map of Bamako replaced now the formerly empty spot on Openstreetmap. However many street names and points of interest are still missing.
Many thanks to Renaud Gaudin and Collegues from Kunnafoni, and Christian Wagner from Openstreetmap to support this.
Beside the on-going fundraising, our association is momentarily involved with the beginning of the international TAO project. On 26 October, the project dealing with involvement of elderly people to online communities has been kicked-off. An official project website is soon going to inform about it in detail. Wolf Ludwig, TAO project lead for Wikimedia CH since April, participated in the intense project preparations. Our partner Seniorweb together with the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Coop and Swisscom organized an information stand at the Coop-Center Wankdorf in Bern, where Wikipedians will explain how (not only) people over the age of 50 can get familiar with the Internet and the editing process on Wikipedia from the beginning of next year. Board member Charles Andrès is, for his part, staging Wikipedia courses at several universities for Third Age people in Romandie. More infos will soon be available on the TAO website.
In order to reach a broad involvement of the Swiss Wikipedia Community in the TAO project, we ask our members to fill out a poll - and hope for a high degree of participation!
Seniorweb, one of our partner organizations in the TAO project, has recently posted an interview with Mourad Ben Abdallah, President of Wikimedia CH. He answered questions about the autonomy of the Wikimedia chapters, about the Rösti barrier or about the expectations of the TAO Project (Third Age Online). The German version of the interview can be found here (a French language version is also available):
http://www.seniorweb.ch/type/magazine-story/2010-10-10-wikimedia-der-schweiz
PS: The TAO project will start on Tuesday 26 October, at 17.30 clock, with a public kick-off event. The event will take place in the auditorium of the Bern University of Applied Sciences at Hallerstr. 10 in Bern.
During September 4th to 6th Wikimedia CH CIO Manuel Schneider visited Israel to help preparing Wikimania 2011 in Haifa. Since 2006, Manuel has visited all Wikimania conferences throughout the world and was involved several times. As an engineer he took care for technical issues such as broadcasting sessions to the internet and others.
During his three-day stay in Israel he had the opportunity to meet several local partners and see more members of the Wikimania team and Wikimedia Israel in life. He visited the venue, discussed with internet providers about internet uplink, setup of a local network infrastructure and wifi, saw the college of design Tiltan where the preliminary cocktail party will take place and the dorms of the Israeli Institute of Technologie, the Technion. Wikimania party will take place at a beach so there were on-site meetings to decide which was the better place. In Tel Aviv he meet the CEO and staff of Kaltura, the open source video platform. Kaltura will provide the video streaming of Wikimania. He also checked out traveling between Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Lod by car, railway and subway (Carmelit). The local Wikimania team was an excellent host which arranged tours and visits of the area wherever possible so Manuel got many impressions despite his short visit.
Wikimania 2011 will take place August 4th to 7th in the Haifa Auditorium, the integrated Rapaport Centre as well as in the Hecht House on Mount Carmel above Haifa. The larger hotels are just nearby and offere a breathtaking view over the northern bay of the mediterranian sea up to Lebanon and into the country till the Golan Heights. The Carmelit, the underground funicular takes you from the main station up to Mount Carmel within a view minutes, just a five minutes walk away of the Haifa Auditorium and the hotels. There is a tree-shaded yard between the Hecht House, a building of the 19th centory built by the templars, and the the Rapaport Centre where one can stay in the shade the whole day long. Behind the buildings is a small park-like garden which will be used one evening to serve dinner for Wikimaniacs. Lunch will be served inside the airconditioned buildings. On the top floor of Hecht House is a bar which will act as a 24 hours lounge, a place to hang out all day and night.
Preliminary to Wikimania will take place Hacking Days, beginning on August 2nd, where developers and system operators will meet to talk shop. The openZIM project which is supported by Wikimedia CH evaluates currently if they will hold its Developers Meeting during these Hacking Days in Haifa to provide an alternative to the past meetings in Europe.
After Wikimania Wikimedia Israel is offering one or two days of guided tours to different places throughout Israel such as Akki, Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem.
The ultimate opinion of Manuel after his visit of Israel: "There is a lot of work to do. The Wikimania team and Wikimedia Israel have bold plans and there is a lot we need to bring in by ourselves. But the team is very ambitious and the collaboration is good. Seeing that I am convinced that they will overcome these obstacles until next year. Furthermore Israel is an interesting country between Africa and Asia with a diverse culture. Traveling was less complicated than I anticipated. I am looking forward the next Wikimania and will together with my wife and two kids stay for two weeks in the country to spend our summer vacation."
On April 10th, 2010, 22 persons, of which 19 members entitled to vote, gathered for the General Assembly of Wikimedia CH at the University of Neuchâtel. The Assembly began at 2.30 pm and was conducted by President Mourad Ben Abdallah. Initially, he briefly resumed the Annual Report of the Board and pointed especially to the fact that the association should sooner or later become more professional in order to provide better communication. Board and members should equally become more active to lobby in behalf of the association on a regional level.
The Treasurer, Bagawathram Maheswaran, then presented the Financial Report featuring a balance sheet and the calculation for 2009. The income rose from 54'000 to 150'000 CHF compared to last year due to a highly successful fundraising campaign in November and December. Both the amount for the Wikimedia Foundation and the funds for Swiss projects increased. The Auditors, Jürg Studer and Stéphane Coillet-Matillon, checked the calculation and recommended to discharge the Board. All the reports were unanimously approved.
Before the elections, the Assembly needed to decide over the size of the future Board. The medium option with 6 Board members (incl. President) was chosen. Seven members presented their candidature for the Board, two current Board members didn't run for another mandate. The result of the ballot: Elected are
- Mourad Ben Abdallah (President, reelection),
- Frédéric Schütz (reelection),
- Bagawathram Maheswaran (reelection),
- Charles Andrès,
- Patrick Kenel,
- Ilario Valdelli (reelection).
Mourad was reconfirmed as President. As no one showed interest in being Auditor, the Assembly decided to hire a company to check the association's finances.
Afterwards, the Assembly went closely into the upcoming TAO Project which has already been presented one year ago and whose realization is bound to start in September 2010. This international project that intends to promote the integration of elderly people into Internet communities has a duration of three years as was mentioned by project leader Beat Estermann of the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Its ambition is to create a win-win-win situation for the target group (seniors), Internet communities and society as a whole. Social scientists as well as technicians are involved with the project. The overall budget amounts to 3 million euros.
Wolf Ludwig explained that the TAO Project needed active participation on the part of communities. The benefit which Wikimedia CH could expect to gain from this project consists in the attribution of more Wikimedia contributors and a further outreach of the chapter in different parts of the country. The association will engage in community activities (together with local partners) and the sectors Public Relations/Community Relations.
The Assembly had to give a mandate and to declare the willingness to engage financially and organizationally in a extraordinary way. Both issues were debated in the course of the Assembly. Finally, the creation of a core group, the amount for the first year (between 35'000 and 50'000 CHF for a payed project lead and other expenditures) as well as a budget frame for the following years (around 25% of the annual budget) were approved. One conclusion out of the discussion was that the engagement wouldn't be a great risk as the mandate could be withdrawn at the next GA should the project fail early. Already next year, some conclusions should be drawn.
The first measures to the implementation of the project are: a reunion of the core group (led by Wolf Ludwig) and plans for a fundraising to finance the project. The General Assembly was officially closed at 6.05 pm.
