The first ever Wikimedians’ conference is taking place in Tokyo this weekend. A group of Wikimedians, who were inspired by Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt, gathered in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan in the late summer of 2008. Those who traveled to Alexandria shared their excitement and inspiration gathered from Wikimania, and others listened. The excitement in the room turned into collective will power, determined to form a Wikimedians’ conference in Japan within a year from the meeting.

Wikimedia Conference Japan (WCJ) is happening this Sunday, November 22nd, at the University Tokyo’s Hongo Campus. The Center for Knowledge Structuring of the University Tokyo offered the space for this conference. Japanese National Institute of Informatics also supports this conference and invited Jay Walsh, Head of Communications, to give the keynote speech. WCJ will cover a number of topics including academic research, wiki workshops, introduction of Wikimedia projects, language support and education.

The goal was to draw 150 participants, however due to overwhelming interest, 180 have already with more expected on the day of the conference. As a volunteer organizer, I am sending my cheers to WCJ organizers from San Francisco. I hope this conference will create synergy among Japanese Wikimedians and who knows, Wikimania 2011 could take place in Tokyo.

Naoko Komura

Founded by Susan Crawford in 2006, One Web Day aims to highlight the critical importance of protecting the values and principles of an open, participatory web. From the official site:

OneWebDay was founded by Susan Crawford, cyberlaw scholar, former Board Member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and current technology policy advisor to President Obama. According to Ms. Crawford, “Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006. In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into their own hands.” Today, a worldwide citizens’ movement has put the environment front and center politically. According to Crawford, “peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted, and we must advocate for the Internet politically and support its vitality personally.”

This is a cause any Wikimedian can appreciate and understand – they live it every day.  Millions of people access Wikipedia and the Foundation’s sister projects daily, and hundreds of thousands of small (or large) edits pile up thanks to the tireless work of editors and volunteers from all over the world.  By increasing the overall amount of high quality information, in hundreds of languages, Wikimedians are working to reduce the digital divide and provide high quality, free information.

Although editing Wikipedia or its sister projects can be easy, the act itself is nothing short of brave.  Millions around the world still cannot edit or access our projects. Thousands of volunteers are building language projects for their peers who are otherwise unable to author or contribute due to internet access barriers or due to political censorship.  And Wikipedians are never shy to tackle the toughest and most challenging topics in human history, not to mention the task of writing neutral, high quality information about emerging news.

On this One Web Day we are especially excited to recognize our enormous volunteer force, and the millions of other brave contributors to free knowledge around the world.  We thank them, and we’re looking forward to an infinite number of One Web Days in the future.

Jay Walsh
Communications

Follow the events of the conference on twitter and identi.ca, and keep an eye on the Wikipedia Weekly podcasts.  Hopefully we’ll have time to blog about events as they unfold at Wikimania.

We also want to thank all of our sponsors this year.  Without them we couldn’t pull events like this together: Telefonica, Terra, Speedy, The Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Answers.com, Kaltura, Wikimedia Deutschland, The Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Open Society Institute, wikiHow, Wikia, and Banco Credicoop.  Thank you!

More as the event unfolds…

Jay Walsh, Communications

Congrats to the volunteer organizers and the Tropenmuseum!

More from a release sent by the Netherlands chapter and the Tropenmuseum:

Tropenmuseum and Wikimedia collaborate on an exhibition
The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and Wikimedia Netherlands will join hands to present an
exhibition Art of Survival about Maroon culture of Suriname. As part of this collaboration, the
museum will make approximately 2100 pictures available through Wikimedia Commons, the shared
image repository used for Wikipedia and related projects.

By involving multiple language editions of Wikipedia at the exhibition, the Tropenmuseum reaches
out to new audiences and invites them to add to the available information on the subject in the
online encyclopaedias. The Tropenmuseum will incorporate valuable contributions into its
exhibition when it becomes available through Wikipedia.

“The exhibition is about Maroon culture, and we hope that the exhibition and Wikipedia together
will provide audiences with information about the Maroon, their culture, and their history -
particularly in the languages of the countries where the Maroon live” says Susanne Ton of the
Tropenmuseum. “Of particular interest will be the contributions in the English, Dutch, Sranang,
French, and Spanish Wikipedias.”

“It is a novelty that a museum collaborates with an Internet community in this way”, says Gerard
Meijssen, who as a Wikimedia volunteer played a major role in the realisation of this partnership.
“Extraordinary information will be made available about the Maroon and it will be really interesting
to learn what extra material will become available through the Wikipedias.

“Cultural institutions, not only in the Netherlands but in the whole world, are becoming more and
more aware of the possibilities offered by the Wikimedia projects to give their collection a bigger
audience”, says José Spierts, chair of Wikimedia Netherlands. “We are really happy that the
Tropenmuseum is willing to play such a pioneering role and we hope that this example will be
followed by more initiatives aimed at making our cultural heritage generally available”. The
Tropenmuseum and Wikimedia Netherlands worked previously together in “Wiki Loves Art /NL”.
Forty-five museums opened their doors to volunteer photographers to make parts of their
collections available through Wikipedia.

The exhibition “Art of survival: Maroon culture in Suriname” will be on display at the
Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam from November 6, 2009 to May 9, 2010.

About Wikimedia Nederland
http://www.wmnederland.nl
Wikimedia Nederland supports within the Netherlands the activities and goals of the Wikimedia
Foundation – the non-profit organization which hosts Wikipedia and sister projects. Wikimedia aims
to make the sum of human knowledge available to every single person on the planet. To reach that
goal, Wikimedia cooperates with the volunteers on the Wikimedia projects (such as Wikipedia) and
by organising all kinds of activities and events.

About the Tropenmuseum
http://www.tropenmuseum.nl
The Tropenmuseum is part of the Royal Tropics Institute and presents, researches, and promotes the
exchange of knowledge between cultures. The museum pursues cultural exchange through
exhibitions, collections, expertise, publications, its historic building, and educational and other
activities. The museum is innovative in its choice of themes and presentation. It offers an
experience to a broad and diverse public, helps the appreciation of a cultural diversity, is
internationally active in culture and development, and fulfills an important educational role.
Digital image restoration is one of the many ways that volunteers contribute to the exhibition. This
digital restauration by Lise Broer of a picture of Granman Jankoeso of the Saramakaner Maroon
and his captains is an example.
———————————————————————
For more information:
* José Spierts, chair Wikimedia Nederland, +31 (0)6 50512514, josewmnederland.nl
* Anna Brolsma, Public Relations Tropenmuseum, tel. +31 (0)20 568 8422, a.brolsmakit.nl

This year’s NetSquared is focussed on the ‘mobile challenge,’ highlighting new applications for mobile technology that can have a positive impact on the world.  Wikimedia is particularly interested in the opportunities of mobile donations, social engagement, and how projects like Wikipedia can engage broader audiences through the very rapidly expanding mobile web.

You can follow the conference twitter feed. You can learn about the 15 featured projects and weigh in with your thoughts as well.

A big thanks to TechSoup and the NetSquared team for organizing a great event and bringing together truly like-minded people.  And of course a thank you to the

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

Wikimania is an annual event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe. The conference is a community gathering, giving the editors and users an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, and collaborate on the future of the Wikimedia projects. The conference is open to the public
and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers, and free culture activists who are interested in the Foundation’s projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects.

This year’s conference will be held from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina at San Martín Cultural Center.

We are accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. Without submissions from people like you, Wikimania wouldn’t be nearly as fun!

Submissions are due April 15, see the Call for Participation for more information.

For further information on Wikimania, please visit the official Wikimania 2009 site at wikimania2009.wikimedia.org.

I am very much looking forward to seeing your presentation at Wikimania! :-)

Cary Bass, VOLCO

<

According to Mark Pellegrini, long-time coordinator of the English Wikipedia front page, since 2007 Wikipedia has been running a tongue-in-cheek, but truthful smattering of wild articles on the first day of April:

Back in 2004/2005, the place was a mad-house come April fools. Highly respected people, even admins, would create fake articles. Then other people would discover them, delete the articles, and block the creators, etc. In short, come April 1, the place would go crazy.

As the person who chooses the featured articles, I was dragged into the mess. In 2005 and 2006, as a compromise, I choose the silliest featured articles I could find (Nintendo and Spoo, respectively). In 2007, Pharos had a genius idea — to  feature [[George Washington (inventor)]] — and write up the main page  blurb as if it were describing the actual George Washington. Everything in the blurb was absolutely true, but *a lot* of people were fooled.

Thus, a new tradition was born, which worked out well in 2008 (Ima Hogg)  and this year (Museum of Bad Art). Now the true-but-sounds-like-an-obvious-hoax  philosophy seems to taken root as  the de-facto policy for the day.

Thus proving it’s possible to be a fact-focussed, NPOV Wikipedian and have a solid sense of humor.

See you at the MOBA!

Jay Walsh, Communications<

Admittedly, this is a year of growth and testing for the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising team. We have 4 new members and the Annual Fundraiser is a new experience for all of us. In fact, I’m not sure how many fundraising projects have had this kind of reach (250+ million unique viewers in November).  This provides us with an amazing opportunity to test different pitches through our site notices. With the fundraiser reaching a huge audience, we knew we had a great chance to test different messages and see what works and what doesn’t.

We started the Annual Fundraiser on November 3rd with 4 site notices (the big banners across the top of every Wiki article). Our tech team worked to track each notice and each notice had a randomized 25% chance of displaying on any given article (on every Wikipedia, in localized languages, and in other other Wikimedia projects). In theory, every notice had the same number of views. You can see the 4 site notices here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008/design_drafts.

Now, which notices do you think did the best? The results are surprising:

People love to click on the links with the thermometer…but less than 10% donated after clicking-though. However, it’s interesting to see the strength of the “Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you” message. While it had significantly less clicks, nearly 17% of people donated after clicking on it.

What do you make of that? What other conclusions would you draw?

And what do you think our next test should be?

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving<

Today, we are 11 days into the 2008 Annual Giving Campaign…it’s been quite an exciting experience. You’ve probably seen the site notices up on just about every Wiki-project page and almost every language. Our volunteers and tech team have worked overtime to get everything working. We’ve had an amazing response from the community (This page still stuns me and I spend far too much time refreshing it).

After 11 days last year, we had 10,599 donors who gave $289,091.08 in total.

After 11 days this year, we have 22,736 donors who have given $629,825.92 in total.

Those are some nice numbers and we’ll be working to make sure that they continue. But to see that type of progress reminds me of one of the things I’ve heard more often than anything else related to my work at Wikimedia was/is: “What? Wikipedia is a non-profit?”

People don’t seem to know yet how dependent the Wikimedia Foundation is on the goodwill of our community. This year, community gifts (donations of less than $10,000) are expected to make up nearly half of our $6 million budget. Part of our strategy this year is to emphasize our charitable status and make a case to our users that they can help us maintain and promote the free knowledge movement.

And, to date, they have. And that’s pretty exciting.

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

Today we are very pleased to announce the kick-off for the 2008 Annual Giving Campaign for the Wikimedia Foundation. For most Wikipedia users that means you’re now seeing a shiny banner at the top of every Wikipedia page – likewise for the other Wikimedia Foundation projects.

The campaign will run through January 15, 2009 – which will mark the eight birthday of Wikipedia. We’ve increased our goal this year to $6million USD – it’s ambitious, but with more resources to spread the word and help bring in donations, we’re confident we’ll get there and beyond.

To make things run smoothly we’ve rebuilt the entire front-end of the donation system at donate.wikimedia.org, and we’ve streamlined the Wikipedia donation banners. Live comments from donors return, and we’ve also added a series of standard ‘Support Wikipedia’ buttons. We’re also encouraging fans and users to remix the Wikipedia puzzle mark to show support in their own way.

For the podcasters or internet/traditional radio folks out there we’ve also produced a series of audio public service announcements in varying lengths, and in broadcast quality formats.

Last (but not least) we’ve created a form so anyone can share their stories about how Wikipedia has made their lives easier. This is the perfect time to reflect on the impact Wikipedia has had on your life – and you’ll help us build our understanding of how Wikipedia is being used by people every day. We’ll be sharing your stories here on the blog.

A huge thank-you to our ongoing and new donors – your donation will support global access to free knowledge, and a long, healthy future for Wikipedia.

Here’s to a successful campaign!

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications