Wikimedia CH/Annual report 2014

Annual Report 2014

Introduction

President's words

In the past year, the professionalization of Wikimedia CH has been felt very much and allowed our association and its volunteers to actively promote free knowledge in most parts of the country and in a variety of ways. The Board has followed the course of the programs and the administration at the office in Lausanne, and it has taken some decisions. Early in the year, it was clear that the growth demanded additional staff, and so by the end of summer two new part-time employees for community support in French and administration came on board.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Stephane Coillet-Matillon, the Board examined the situation and elaborated the strategy for the coming years. We want the association to continue to be in good shape. Like for other chapters, strategic and governance questions or the relationship to the WMF and other affiliations are therefore a current issue for Wikimedia CH. While some progress has been made in the right direction and the collaboration in the two-director-model was fine, the demands of reporting need to be re-looked again in the current year.

The growth has impressed, but also worried the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC). It has acknowledged the usefulness of our Offline Dissemination program, whereas the budget size seems problematic and the metrics seem to be insufficient. The reliability on movement funds attributed through the FDC must be lowered in the coming years to attain a sustainable budget. That's a challenge we're facing at this point as the current Fundraising Agreement is expiring.

Wikimedia CH is of course based locally. However, I'm glad that in 2014 the chapter also successfully hosted an international event for the first time. Volunteers from various countries, mainly from the developers community, met and worked together at the Zurich Wikimedia Hackathon. It was there that Lila Tretikov, the new WMF Executive Director, first came in touch with this community. The next opportunity for Swiss Wikimedians to convene with visitors from other parts of the World is coming soon: Next year, Wikimania is coming to Esino Lario, an Alpine village in Italy, very close to the Swiss border.

-- Patrick Kenel, President

Facts & Figures

As of the 31st of December 2014, Wikimedia CH has observed a 24% increase in its members base compared to the previous year's statistics. This corresponds to a total of 481 registered members distributed among 3 categories:

29 are legal entities
146 are supportive members
306 are active members

Out of our whole members base, 322 identify as male and 65 identify as women. Concerning their distribution per language 295 are primarily German-speakers, 117 French-speakers, 40 English-speakers, 28 Italian-speakers and 1 is a Romansh-speaker.

From the 23rd May 2014 the Board of Wikimedia CH consisted of:

Patrick Kenel, President, Press speaker for German language
Frédéric Schütz, Vice President, Press speaker for French language
Bagawathram Maheswaran, Treasurer
Stéphane Coillet-Matillon
Gabriel Thullen
Mauro Cassina

In the same time period, auditors of Wikimedia CH have been:

Zutter Treuhand AG

Höheweg 2

Postfach 687

CH-3053 Münchenbuchsee (BE)

In 2014, the staff team consisted of:

Chief Administrative Officer was Anh Chung, 80% FTE
Admin officer was Sabine Ray, since 1st September, 20%
Chief Science Officer was Charles Andrès, 100% FTE
German Community liaison was Muriel Staub, 100% FTE (20% being dedicated to the OpenData.CH community))
Italian Community liaison was Ilario Valdelli, 50% FTE
French Community liaison was Gabrielle Marie, since 1st September, 50%
- Contractor: Chief Information Officer was Manuel Schneider from MastersSystems.

Fundings

FDC

In 2014, the FDC recommended to the WMF board an allocation of 350'000 CHF (~380'000 $) for Wikimedia CH in 2015.

This figure corresponds to 70% of the budget we recommended in our funds application, and was is similar to the rate given to other large chapters (WMUK and WMDE).

Revenues

Following the resolution of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Wikimedia CH signed a new fundraising agreement for the period 2012-2013, reconducted for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. For the period covering January to December 2014, Wikimedia CH raised 728'888.14 CHF through Wikimedia sites and 190'307.14 CHF by direct fundraising through Wikimedia CH, for a total of 919'195.28 CHF.

For the third time, banners targeting the Swiss audience have been used during the main fundraising. Like the previous year, we had a significant amount of direct donations to the association as well as an important increase of new members.

In 2014, the total amount of membership fees collected was 16'147.49 CHF.

Opendata.ch

In Summer 2014, WMCH started a collaboration with Opendata.ch. As from June 2014, Muriel Staub from Wikimedia CH has been working 20% for Opendata.ch, not only to act as Community Liaison at their association but also to strengthen the relationship between the two entities, Wikimedia CH and Opendata.ch.

Young & Rubicam

Thanks to Martin Sauter, an active Wikipedian and the Chief Knowledge Officer of the Young&Rubicam Group Switzerland, Wikimedia CH has offered pro bono consulting from Y&R. In 2014, Y&R supported WMCH's annual fundraiser and helped us design new banners.
We are exceptionally grateful and are looking forward to continuing this collaboration with Y&R in 2015 with the release of a new website.

Activities

In 2014, Wikimedia CH aligned its activities to 3 main programs "Community Support", "Outreach" & the thematic focus on "The Alps". In the following paragraphs you are provided detailed information and are provided with an impression on the diversity and variety of the activities conducted in 2014 by Wikimedia CH's members & employees:

Community support

The community support of Wikimedia CH is intending to support Individuals, Groups and like-minded institutions but also to facilitate events and reunions as well as fostering gender diversity in our communities.

Support to Wikimedians

Scholarships

Wikimania:

10 Wikimedians received a scholarship from WMCH to attend the yearly worldwide Wikimedia reunion called "Wikimania". 4 of the scholarship recipients are coming from Switzerland, 3 from Italy, 1 from Belgium, 1 from Tunisia and 1 from Cameroun.

WikiCon:

4 Wikimedians received a scholarship from WMCH to attend the german-speaking Wikimedians-reunion in Cologne called WikiCon.

Microgrants

Microgrants are a mean for members of the Wikimedia community to ask Wikimedia CH for a financial support - from 1 up to 500 CHF - for their micro-projects or activity, that has an impact on Wikimedia projects. In 2014, a total of 8 micro-grants were awarded to primarily 8 different volunteers but indirectly these grants were for the benefit of many more Wikimedians. The awarded grants ranged from 20 CHF up to 500 CHF and supported projects such as:

Renting Notebooks for a Wikipedia Atelier
Financing a tour through the "Moulagenmuseum" in Zurich for the Stammtisch
Purchase of protective clothing for taking pictures from construction sites of the parliament building in the canton of Vaud for Wikimedia Commons

Wiki-Dialog

As a collaboration of WMDE, WMAT and WMCH, the project called Wiki-Dialog was launched on de-WP in April with the intention to enable Wikipedians to collaboratively approach diversity-related issues. The Wiki-Dialog stands for reoccurring online meetings/workshops, in which experienced Wikipedians exchange their ideas, opinions and potential future plans regarding a specific topic, like f.ex. welcoming-culture or conflict-management on de-WP.

Support to Commons editors

Between January 1st and December 31th, at least 23'282 media files have been uploaded on Commons and tagged as supported by WMCH. At the end of 2014, WMCH supported pictures include 39 Featured images and 751 Quality pictures.

In 2014, the pictures uploaded on Wikimedia Commons with the support of Wikimedia CH have cumulated 471'002'648 views.

CHWIKI

CHWIKI is a blog maintained by a clique of photographers from the French-speaking part of Switzerland who are contributing considerable amounts of highly qualitative pictures to Wikimedia Commons. In order to facilitate their voluntary work, Wikimedia CH provides assistance in obtaining press access as well as financial support to reimburse travel costs. In some very specific occasions, Wikimedia CH will grant funds. To get an impression on which events were covered by the "groupe romand" and what exactly they were working on in 2014, we have curated some of their pictures for you:

Algérie - Arménie - 20140531 - Yacine Brahimi (Alg) face à Taron Voskanyan (Arm)
30th St. Moritz Polo World Cup on Snow - 20140202 - Cartier vs Ralph Lauren 9
Championnat de France de cyclisme handisport - 20140615 - Contre la montre 37
Barça - Napoli - 20140806 - 18
Lausanne Sport vs FC Sion - Avril 2014 - Yoric Ravet & Vincent Rüfli
Cathédrale de Lausanne - intérieur
Salon de l'auto de Genève 2014 - 20140305 - Ford 20

You will find all the other pictures in the technical category Content media by years - Supported by Wikimedia CH - 2014. You can also follow them on their blog.

Support to User:Sailko

Wikimedia CH decide to support User:Sailko, an Italian Wikimedian, to support him to buy a new camera and a new lens (partial support of 500CHf).

User:Sailko is the second most prolific contributor:

237'000 uploads in Commons as per March 12th, 2015
210'000 edits in Italian Wikipedia as per March 12th, 2015

Globally, User:Sailko is one of the most relevant contributors to the Wikimedia projects. Despite his huge number of uploads and his strong interest in taking photos of cultural heritages, he had limited means to purchase the professional equipment required to take his photographs to the next level. The idea of supporting User:Sailko was motivated by his high quality and quantity of contributions.

Renaissance glyptics in the Museo archeologico nazionale of Florence
Ancient Roman glyptics in the Museo archeologico nazionale of Florence
Lunia Czechowska, Amedeo Modigliani, Museu de Arte de São Paulo
East Mediterranean in the Roman Empire antiquities (130-150 dc) in the Louvre
Fontana del Nettuno, Firenze
Decorative arts, Andrea della Robbia, Louvre

The result can be seen in this category. In total the user Sailko has uploaded

13'000 new photos with this new equipment and with the template "Supported by Wikimedia CH"

But, as always, the story is more than just the numbers. The idea originally came from Ilario Valdelli, our Italian-speaking Community Liaison.

Support to User:Fabienp

Following the same idea, Wikimedia CH decided to support the User:Fabienp through the purchase of a lens (Sigma 70-200mm 1:2.8 II EX Macro HSM) for a cost of 518 CHF. There is a special category displaying User:Fabienp's contributions with the new piece of equipment. We have curated some of his photographs, and yes, he is indeed a sports fan:

Lausanne HC vs. Rapperswil-Jona Lakers, 11th November 2014
Lausanne HC vs. Rapperswil-Jona Lakers, 11th November 2014
Lausanne HC vs. Rapperswil-Jona Lakers, 11th November 2014
Rapperswil-Jona Lakers vs. Genève-Servette HC, 14th November 2014
Rapperswil-Jona Lakers vs. Genève-Servette HC, 14th November 2014

Support to User:Rama

User:Rama was supported a few years ago through the purchase of a sophisticated tripod, allowing him to efficiently take good pictures under many possible conditions. This support continues to help him producing high-quality images for the Wikimedia projects. In 2014, he mainly uploaded pictures from the "Bolo" Computer museum in Lausanne; 271 pictures were taken in 2013 with the support of Wikimedia CH, but were under embargo for one year. They were released in 2014 in the category https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mus%C3%A9e_Bolo_%282013%29_-_Supported_by_Wikimedia_CH

In addition, Rama benefited from institutional support from Wikimedia CH in order to attend the 2014 summit of the "Group on Earth Observations" in Geneva; this allowed him to take 369 pictures, available in category https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:GEO_-_2014_-_Geneva

Rama continues to use the equipment supported by Wikimedia CH in 2015, and he has uploaded many new pictures since the end of 2014.

Press Accreditation

In 2014, WMCH supported several press-accreditations for volunteers. Zooming into one of them to show the outcomes, we chose to detail the coverage of the Landsgemeinde Glarus 2014.

The institutional support provided by Wikimedia CH also helped other Wikimedians to take photographs in places or during events that are normally not accessible to the public this includes:

Using contacts obtained through Wikimedia CH, User:Schutz took pictures of the Lucens nuclear reactor
User:Rama pictures of the 2014 summit of the "Group on Earth Observations", mentioned above.

Training activities

In 2014, the association organised two training sessions for volunteers.

On 17 January, Olivier Dessibourg, head of the Science & Environment section of the daily newspaper Le Temps presented a half-day workshop on "How to interact with the medias?". This topic is particularly useful in a community like ours, where any volunteer can potentially be in discussion with the medias. After a general presentation on how journalists work, and how to interact with them, we went through all the press releases that were released by Wikimedia CH in the past few years, and commented on their strengths and weaknesses. 20 people participated, including 4 staff and volunteers from Wikimedia France which we were glad to host.

In December, Michel Jaccard, our lawyer, presented a half-day introduction to copyright law, software licenses in general and Creative Commons licenses in particular. Among 15 participants were staff and volunteers from our chapters, but also representatives of organisations we collaborate with (including Federal authorities) who were really glad to get detailed information from a specialist on these topics. The Federal archives intend to use this knowledge when releasing works under a free license.

Support for Events & Reunions

In 2014, Wikimedia CH supported, both in organising and financial sponsoring, community events in Switzerland to give back a little to the very active crowd of Wikimedians in Switzerland. We're especially glad to support these reunions and get-togethers by reimbursing travel costs or funding the supporting-program. Also, there were several events and workshops organised to attract Wikimedian newbies. This still remains one of the biggest challenges within our movement.

Wikimedia New Year's Brunch

We kicked-off the year 2014 with a brunch on January 19 in order to talk about upcoming activities and exchange ideas. Ca. 16 volunteers, plus 1 board and 1 staff member joined. One of the volunteers participated for the first time to a WMCH event.

Festicabale

The summer meeting of the French-speaking Wikimedians has been successfully held in Lausanne. During two days, more than 25 contributors from Switzerland and France met in Lausanne for a visit of the old city of Lausanne, a barbecue and even signed up two teams at the Lausanne triathlon. This event gave us the opportunity to build a relationship with the "guide de Lausanne", the association organising city visits: as they change every year their visits offer, they indicated being interested in sharing under a free license the descriptions of the visits from past years. See also commons:Category:Festicabales 2014 in Lausanne

Zurich Stammtisch

As you all know, the Wikipedians from DE:WP organise regular Stammtische to meet in person, mostly on Saturdays. WMCH is very glad that it was allowed to sponsor the guided tour through the city of Baden and the Moulagenmuseum.

Wikipedia Ateliers

In 2014, three Wikipedia Ateliers took place in the Swiss National Library in Bern on Saturdays. On May 24, August 30 and November 1, a total of 26 volunteers found their way to Bern and commonly edited content in Wikipedia, assisted newbie editors, collaboratively worked on articles, lists or other greater subjects. On the 1st of November, for exemple, content about swiss federal votations has been created in the german speaking Wikipedia. We're happy to announce that these 3 Wikipedia Ateliers were positively perceived by the community and laid the foundation for monthly Wikipedia Ateliers coming up in 2015. We thank our association member and volunteer user:hadi very much for all his efforts to launch these amazing series of editing sessions.

Wikipedia Introductions

Wikipedia Intro for the "Historical Society of the Canton of Bern"

Wikipedia Workshop for "Historical Society"

Wikipedia user "Hadi" held two consecutive workshops for members of the Historical Society of the Canton of Bern at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Bern. Over 20 people attended and edited Wikipedia during these two sessions.

Wikipedia Evening in Basel

On the 28th October 2014, volunteers and staff of Wikimedia CH hosted a "Wikipedia Evening" in Basel to enable a look behind the scenes of Wikipedia to the general public and to attract new authors. 16 people attended, thereof 5 volunteers and 1 staff of WMCH supported the event.

Photo Workshop

A photo-workshop was organized in Zurich by Wikimedians based on the concept "learn from your peers". The workshop was attended by 4 volunteers and WMCH financially supported the cost of the rental of the room.

WikiCon

File:WikiCon 2014-Begrüßungsveranstaltung für alle Teilnehmer im Festsaal (2).JPG

WikiCon Welcoming Session

Wikimedia CH financially supported the german-speaking Wikimedia Convention in Cologne with 2'000 CHF. Furthermore, WMCH provided a total of 4 scholarships to Wikimedians from Switzerland who attended this WikiConvention. To give you an impression about the gathering, we herewith quote the report of one attendant and scholarship-recipent from Switzerland (english translation of the original, germanspeaking report) :

"The WikiCon 2014 was taking place in the Mediapark in Cologne, a perfect conference location. The path from to the train station, and therefore also into the city center, was easy do-able by foot. And the accommodation was located ideally close to the venue and was clean, the food convenient and unspectacular.

The program was a rip-snorter: Information was provided about past, ongoing and upcoming projects, technical innovations, photography, audio- and video files in articles - there was definitively something offered for everybody. I often felt spoilt for choice, as the expression goes.
Furthermore, despite prophecies of doom, Wikipedia is far from "complete“. There’s always room for improvements, completion and there are many gaps which need to be filled. Only to name one of them: "Who is, for example, writing all the legal articles about Switzerland?"

Moreover, an insight into the work of the "Lokal K“, the community base of the Wikipedians in Cologne, reveals that the work of Wikipedians goes far beyond writing articles. The "Lokal K“ is a room rented whose purpose it is to be used for activities and work all around Wikipedia. These examples cause one again to reflect on our own situation in our own environment: They open up perspectives, even if they can’t be implemented in the short- or medium-term, they demonstrate that totally different approaches and concepts are possible as well.

Furthermore, the viewing of the DRZ, where the badly damaged archive-material of the collapsed city archive has been restored over the past 5 years, impressively demonstrated the difficulties which are being faced by the parties responsible.

In the Wikipedia environment, the social aspects are often being neglected, which ever and anon influences the work on the Encyclopedia. Even if one keeps out of it, one often experiences first hand how virtual sparks fly. Therefore it is of greatest importance to live through positive impressions and experiences, as well as to get inputs and stimulation from the personal relationships in real life.

The WikiCon 2014 provided me the great chance to renew and strengthen old acquaintances but also to make quite a few new contacts. I also deliberately choose to make new contacts with colleagues whom i have not previously met.
A splendid and very enriching event."

Diversity support

2 Wikipedia Ateliers for Women in Zurich

2 Events were organised in Zurich last September in order to attract women to contribute to Wikipedia in Switzerland.

The first event was an Edit-a-thon about "Art + Feminism", organised by user:VickiAnderson, having attracted 6 women to participate and a total of 3 volunteers of WMCH to support this initiative.
The second event was a Wikipedia-Atelier, which was co-organised by Wikimedia CH and FemWiss, an association of feminist academics. This one-day-long event was attended by 20 women, supported by User:Sarita98 and 1 staff member. These two events in 2014 laid the ground to build upon a network of female Wikipedians in Switzerland in 2015 (similar to the WomenEdit Network in Germany, initiated by Silvia Stienecker and WMDE). Furthermore, in 2014, Wikimedia CH reached out to several women-networks in German-speaking Switzerland (a total of 28 local and nationwide associations, getting a positive feedback of one quarter of the contacted institutions) in order to find partners to co-host future Wikipedia-Workshops/Edit-a-thons/Ateliers in order to improve gender diversity among authors in DE:WP.

Girls Geek Dinners Ticino

The 24th October 2014, Wikimedia Ch co-organised a dinner with the Girls Geek Dinner in Ticino. The dinner focused on the theme of "travel" and entertained a total of 9 speakers. Overall, the event was attended by 80 people, out of which 50% were women.

Support for like-minded institutions

Public Domain project

Keith Monks Music Records Cleaning Machine

Wikimedia CH has a long history in supporting like-minded institutions in Switzerland. In 2014, WMCH supporrted the Swiss Foundation Public Domain in digitizing music records which are very rare and of old age.
To enable the digitization of these dirty and old but very precious music records, Wikimedia CH purchased a music-record-cleaning-machine for the Swiss Public Domain Project. This enables the team of Public Domain Project to clean the music records prior to the digitizing process. This is a necessary step to guarantee goood quality of the digitized music records which will be uploaded to Commons.
Furthermore, to directly support the digitization of the music records, Wikimedia CH engaged two persons from the foundation "specialisterne" during 5 months. "Specialisterne" is a foundation which unites people having Asperger (autism) and seeks meaningful work for them. In 2014, a total of 242 music records could be digitized, having 90 of these being attributed with all meta data and 41 uploaded to Commons. Due to some difficulties with the uploading process, the remaining digitalisations will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2015.

Outreach

Offline Dissemination Program

For many years, Wikimedia CH has been supporting the development of Kiwix - Wikipedia offline. Once again 2014 saw some amazing work has been done! We would like to thank Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin for their efforts and dedication to the offline dissemination of Wikipedia and knowledge in general.

In the following we depict some of the 2014 milestones:

Facts & Figures
- The software Kiwix, which allows you to access Wikipedia offline, was downloaded ~400.000 times in 2014 alone
- On the top of these downloads, Kiwix can also be downloaded via Android App Store. The app has now ~20.000 users.
- And a new audience record was reached where KIWIX got ~200 new users IN ONE DAY only
- Kiwix has a user note of 4.4/5 on Android Google Play and 4.8/5 on Sourceforg

Content

Kiwix is not only providing offline access to Wikipedia, but also to further content and follows the broader mission of "making knowledge available“:

In 2014, the number of available content offline has been increased extensively, providing more and more up2date content:

TED Talks about Business, Technology, Science, Global Issues, Design & Entertainment
New Wikimedia projects like Wikisource
Gutenberg Library
Vikidia

Events & Hackathons
- Hackathon: Team KIWIX has hosted a one-week long Hackathon with 4 people participating, mainly working on the release of the offline version of the Gutenberg Library
- Wikimania: Team KIWIX participated at Wikimania 2014 to promote Wikipedia offline and in particular KIWIX Serve at the Wikimedia CH booth in the chapters village as well as participating at the Wikimania Hackathon.
- Linux Day: Presenting KIWIX and Wikipedia Offline with a booth at the Linux-Day in Dornbirn on November 22nd with Emmanuel and Muriel.

Partnerships

In 2014, team Kiwix was able to establish collaborations with many different partners:

Bookeen: An engineering collaboration with ebook reader manufacturer Bookeen was started (in the scope of the Malebooks project) to be able to offer an offline version of Wikipedia on e-ink devices. Around 30 devices were given in Mali.
eSyllabus: 100 tablets pre-loaded with Kiwix & Wikipedia for 3500 students in Addis Ababa Ethiopia & 20 tablets pre-loaded with KIWIX and Wikipedia have been shipped to Burkina Faso
Ideasbox: Kiwix is used by the IDEASBOX, a portable library, to give access to Wikipedia in refugees camp, until now in almost 10 different places in the world.
Orange Foundation: Around 150 schools in Africa were equiped with offline version of Wiktionary and Wikipedia
City of Sayada (Tunisia), where Wikipedia offline and other content where made available to a whole city trough a mesh network.
Rachel project, which uses now Kiwix in its own offline offer (many deployments over the world)
Project Sankore, which has prepare around 6000 pedagocal kit for Africa including each Kiwix and Wikipedia in French offline
Project Etekkatho, deploying Kiwix with Wikipedia in Burme in dozen of schools and universities in Burma

Communication
- Wikimedia Blogpost: A Blogpost on the Wikimedia Blog drew attention to Wikipedia offline, written by Joe Sutherland http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/12/emmanuel-engelhart-inventor-of-kiwix/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter. This post is one of a whole serie of article about Kiwix and their users.

Technical Development
Kiwix-plug:

In order to make Kiwix more affordable, the support of RaspberryPi was finally merged to the Kiwix-Plug master branch; this offers new perspectives because the price to create a Kiwix-Plug - and therewith to make Wikipedia offline available - has dropped to around USD 100.

KIWIX iOS App: A proof-of-concept of a Kiwix iOS app was made in 2014, so a first app for iOS might be released in 2015.
Kiwix 0.9 for PC (desktop version for Windows/OSX/Linux) final version was released in December.
A dozen of deaddrops USB flash drives were sent over the world and installed
Important improvment of the solution to build ZIM files from Mediawiki (called mwoffliner & zimwriterfs) were done, allowing to make the ZIM creationg process easier and faster.

Wikipedia in jail

By the end of the year 2014, 17 prisons in the german-speaking part and 1 prison in the french-speaking part of Switzerland have access to Wikipedia Offline. Pilots for two further prisons in the french-speaking part of Switzerland were initiated in 2014.
The "Fachstelle für Bildung im Strafvollzug (BIST)"/"Le centre de compéténce pour la formation dans l'éxecution des peines (fep)" coordinates educational activities in a majority of prisons in the germanspeaking Switzerland and makes Wikipedia offline availble on their servers. Wikimedia CH is in touch with BIST/fep to make further content offline available for inmates and deploy the remaining prisons in the Romandie in the near future.

Education

Wikimedia CH is strenghtening it's network with educational institutions throughout primary, secondary and tertiary education in Switzerland with the aim of improving the breadth, scope, and quality of content on Wikimedia projects.
In the following section, we accentuate several collaborations:

Primary Schools: Wikipedia Primary School

Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary education in the languages used by the different education systems. Wikimedia CH is partnering specifically with Wikipedia Primary School SSAJRP programme (February 2014-February 2017), a Swiss-South African joint project focusing on the quality of Wikipedia articles related to the South African primary school curriculum. The project relates to Wikimedia CH's support to Kiwix and two members of Wikimedia CH are currently involved in the project and providing feedback. If you're interested, here you can get more information about the Status of the project and progress.

Secondary Schools: Wikivillage

Wikivillage is a writing contest targeted to the swiss students in the secondary education of the canton of Vaud. The contest offers the possibility to teams of students to edit and improve the articles of a village of their choice in the area. The contest kicked off in September 2015 and the deadline is set for the 2nd April 2015. For the contest's first edition, 2 teachers from the Gymnase de Beaulieu in Lausanne supported us by incorporating wikivillage in the students curriculum. We established a partnership with the Library of the canton, la Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire de Lausanne (BCUL), which possesses an important database about the local villages, they are also supporting us in organising the closing ceremony during which we will deliver the prizes.

8 articles were selected and improved by 8 teams implying a total of 26 students participating.

An internal jury of 4 wikipedians was established who have also been helping the students online during the contest.

We received the support from the canton's administration by having one of their employees as part of the external jury. Indeed the external jury is composed of 3 local personalities.

Mr Pierre Faoro - Deputy Director at the Direction Générale de l'Enseignement Postobligatoire (DGEP) du canton de Vaud

Mme Véronique Avellan - Deputy Director, Coordinator of the school libraries for the Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire de Lausanne (BCUL)

Mme Joelle Fabre - Deputy editor-in -chief at the newspaper 24Heures

We have had excellent media coverage for the project ( should these links only be in the press coverage section?).

Written press

(fr) 23 September 2014, 20 Minutes, Un projet Wikipédia pour les gymnasiens

(fr) 6 October 2014, La liberté, A la rencontre de Wikipédia

(fr) 5 January 2015, RTS Télévision, Wikimedia propose des permanences pour accueillir de jeunes novices parmi les contributeurs

(fr) 20 January 2015, 24 Heures,Des gymnasiens boostent les communes sur wikipedia

Radio

(fr) 22 January 2015, LFM Radio, Les gymnasiens lausannois à la rescousse

Television

(fr) 24 February 2015, RTS Télévision, VD: le canton lance un concours Wikipedia auprès des gymnases

Observations

Wikivillage's first edition demonstrated that although getting wikipedia into school projects was a time and cost consuming activity,it is absolutely worth it to build long term relationships with the local schools. The pedagogical gains from the contest are numerous:

Each student who participated was able to research, read, summarise and reference information from primary and secondary sources.

Learned the wikicode and exchanged with the community of active contributors on Wikipedia

Discovered the Wikimedia Commons database when taking photographs to illustrate their articles

Developed critical thinking

Connected with their heritage and met local personalities by going on site ( historians, architects, political people for instance)

The resources used for this project where staff time and prizes for the contest. We have planned to continue Wikivillage next year for the 2015/2016 edition, using the same theme and to extend its borders by implementing it in another 3 cantons : Geneva, Fribourg and Bern.

Project links:
- www.wikivillage.ch
- wikipedia page

Higher Education

UNINE

Last fall, 21 students took part to a pilot Education program were the goal was to create articles about Phytochorions. The main article, as well as 20 related articles were created during this course. For more information, see the Project page on the french Wikipedia.

HEG Geneva

A team of 5 students worked on a project related to the representation of women in sports on wikipedia as part of a project called "produit documentaire" which is part of their curriculum for their bachelor studies "Information Documentaire". Their project participated to reduce the gender gap issue on wikipedia particularly concerning content related to women in sports by creating lists of names and by creating new articles. Indeed, thanks to their work 25 new articles were created providing visibility to swiss female professional sports player. Out of those articles 20 were written in french and 5 were done in german. Their contributions reduced by 4% the proportion of swiss female professional spors players who did not have a wikipedia page.

List of swiss female sports players in French: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sportifs_suisses_par_discipline

List of swiss female sports players in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Delphique/Liste_der_Schweizer_Sportler_aller_Disziplinen

Zurich University of Applied Science

At the University of Applied Science in Zurich, Charles and Muriel presented Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Movement to 25 students, 1 professor and the director in order to provide them a look behind the scenes of what the projects and the movement are really about.

SUPSI (School of Applied Science) of Lugano

The collaboration of Wikimedia CH with SUPSI is continuing on several projects financed by public administration or by European funds such as:

Wikipedia Primary School
Alps on Wikipedia
Path of Certification

University of Applied Science Bern, School of Education

In autumn 2014, we were presenting Wikipedia to 75 future Gymnasium teachers (secondary school) at the Pedagogical University of Bern:
As part of the University degree "teacher education" in the the class "Information- and Communication Technologies", we got the chance to present Wikipedia as a tool which can be used in class and integrated in the curriculum. This presentation has been taken over by a volunteer in the past years, but Wikimedia CH was happy to help out due to the fact that this volunteer is no longer available to host these sessions. The presentation was specifically about Wkipedia, it's mode of operation and editing system, it was followed by a subsequent question and answer session. The audience of future gymnasium teachers was incredibly motivated and highly interested, asked a lot of thought-through questions. We used this opportunity to promote our Wikivillage project (collaboration with schools in order to contribute "local" content to Wikipedia through students) and will be given the opportunity to present Wikipedia again in 2015.
We are glad that Wikipedia is (becoming) part of the curriculum of teacher education in the Canton of Bern.

Master of Advanced Studies in Archival, Library and Information Science

Our CSO was invited to teach during the module "Open Data - Open Knowledge Daten und Wissen digital publizieren"/"Open Data - Open Knowledge Publier des données et des connaissances numériques" of the Master of Advanced Studies in Archival, Library and Information Science

Misc

guide to informatics for seniors

GLAM

Wikipedians in Residence at the Swiss National Library

Wikipedians in Residence with the Director of the Swiss National Library

MEDIA Category on Commons to see the digitized collections: Upload by the Swiss National Library on Commons

Certainly one of the highlights of the year 2014 was the 6 month engagement of two "Wikipedians in Residence“ in the Swiss National Library in Bern. The Swiss National Library was profoundly forced to challenge and question their processes. Only thanks to the amazingly dedicated team at the Swiss National Library and the very committed Wikipedians in Residence, it was possible to sustainably establish processes which enable and facilitate the NB to contribute to Wikimedia projects in the long term.

Ortsteilansicht , Samedan, 1912
Camera by Albrecht Meydenbauer
Plan der Bahnhoferweiterung Winterthur 1894-1895
Plan der Bahnhoferweiterung Zürich 1865 - 1871
Saint-Moritz Bad in 1906
Basel, ca. 1890

A dozen of presentations & workshops were animated, a few hundreds of documents were uploaded, many meetings have occurred to implement an openGLAM strategy in the Swiss National Library processes and anchor it sustainably. The real impact of the collaboration will be observed over a longer period of time, as the Swiss National Library is now ready to run this strategy by themselves.
Learn more about the Wikipedians in Residence and the Swiss National Library’s amazing work in the following paragraphs:

* Wikipedia Presentations & Workshops

The WIRs started their work with a bilingual presentation to present the Wikipedian-in-Residence concept and inform all stakeholders about the collaboration of the NB and Wikimedia CH.

Already this first session was attended by around 50 people.

Furthermore, WIRs held two presentations (one in French and one in German) to provide a look behind the scenes and deeper insights into the World of Wikimedia and Wikipedia.

Also these presentations were attended by around 30-50 people

Moreover, the WIRs took the chance to present Wikipedia/Wikimedia and it’s opportunities for GLAM partners at the Library Science Talk in Geneva (CERN) and in Bern (Swiss National Library). The WIR also provided insights with a presentation during the annual meeting of the SKKB, whereby the SKKB is the organisation of the cantonal libraries.
In order to motivate beginners to contribute to Wikipedia, a total or four Workshops were given- A total of about 18 articles (15 in German and 3 in French) were created during these workshops.
But not only workshops were held, also Wikipedia Writing Ateliers were introduced, which took place 3 times in 2014, for long-time Wikipedians as well as for newbie-editors. The hosting of these ateliers will continue in 2015 where already a total of 6 writing ateliers are planned in the Swiss National Library.
Last but not least, another result of the WIR engagement was the "Edit-a-thon“ about the 1st world war, a collaboration with the Swiss National Library, the Swiss Federal Archives and Wikimedia CH. Around 30 people attended this event.

Wikipedia presentation at Swiss National Library

* Facilitation of the upload of collections to Wikimedia Commons

The Swiss National Library uploaded of a few hundreds of high quality pictures during the year 2014. Here are some details:

In particular, one complete collection of 120 pictures of the ballooning pioneer Eduard Spelterini were digitised and uploaded
Furthermore, one huge collection of several thousands of traditional paintings and drawings about Switzerland were digitised and uploaded
Communication: In order to enable the Swiss National Library and its employees to communicate with Wikimedia Communities in the future, training session were provided during which insights were given on how to communicate through the official Wikipedia account and on how to upload pictures on Commons. Moreover, the WIR’s also provided training to employees to enable them to work with the GLAM wiki toolset.
IT infrastructure was set up to allow easy uploads of all newly digitised content (with the appropriate licences). Furthermore, a presentation/teaching workshop was organised in autumn 2014 to show other swiss libraries how to deal with the GLAM wiki toolset.

* Communication

In order to keep the public and the broader communities of GLAM etc. informed, a Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook account called „SwissGLAMmies“ was setup, especially to advert Swiss GLAM uploads to Wikimedia Commons.
Commons:Swiss GLAMmies|Swiss GLAMmies
http://swissglammies.tumblr.com/
https://twitter.com/swissglammies

Swiss Parliament: Library partnership

In 2014, our CSO initiate a new collaboration with the Swiss Parliament Library. Every month, the Swiss parlement library provides Wikimedia CH a list of books which are given away to the public. WMCH communicates these lists into the communities and offers these books to Wikimedians in Switzerland. During 2014, a total of 77 books were given to members of 19 Swiss wikipedians.

Wikipermanences

Wikipedia Einführungsveranstaltung in the Central Library of Solothurn

Wikipermanences have been organized in the French-speaking area since April 2014. In Lausanne, Geneva and Neuchâtel, a total of 4 libraries kicked off the programs during the 2nd quarter, the City Library of La Chaux de fonds joined in September. Additionally,last October, there were also 4 Wikipermanences (Wikipedia Einführungsveranstaltungen) in the Central Library of Solothurn, hosted by 1 Wikipedian and 1 staff member of WMCH.

Lausanne and Neuchâtel are two different types of Wikipermanences. In Lausanne, volunteers are always present to answer questions from newbies and help them become Wikimedians. WMCH staff helped during the first few sessions to ensure a smooth process. Whereas in Neuchâtel, we do not have an active community of volunteers, but an important potential to recruit new Wikimedians. WMCH staff is trying to build a new community from scratch, eventually these new Wikimedians will then take the lead of the Wikipermanences sometime in the future.
The Wikipermanance in the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne was the subject of a documentary for the Swiss French speaking television channel RTS Télévision

Digitisation project

Digitisation of Types
Digitisation of a specific fungi herbarium, as well as the improvement of the Wikipedia article about the author Ludwig_Emanuel_Schaerer
Digitisation of an Atlas of Botany

Valdensia

The Valdensia project is a collaboration between Wikimedia CH and the Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire in Lausanne (BCUL) with the aim of importing biographies of notable people from the Canton of Vaud into Wikipedia; it is a rare example of a GLAM collaboration that involves text rather than images.

The first stage of the collaboration was conducted in 2011, with the import of about 800 biographies. In 2014, we started a second phase, including the import of approximately 400 new biographies of musicians from Vaud, which is now close to being completed.

The collaboration will continue, with the possible import of music sheets or photographs into Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons.

For more information, see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Valdensia

GLAMWiki Toolset

Since the 1st of April, Rromir Imami started an internship focused on the GWToolset. The goal is to test it and evaluate its usability by GLAMS. Rromir will eventually use it to upload the Neuchatel and Lausanne Herbarium sheets, more than 120 000 pictures.

Program: Alpine space

LabisAlps donation

The aim of the project has been that to create a "virtual" library in Wikipedia to help the researchers invested on the topic of the Alps to have all the tools immediately available.

The secondary purpose was to "train" volunteers on-line about how to write a good article and how to contribute to create a "scientific" article especially by having a researcher available for any questions.

For this project, we worked with the group of the AISA (International Association of the History of Alps) with the idea to generate new projects around this theme.

Engraving from De re metallica di Georg Agricola, Basilea, 1556
Engraving from De re metallica di Georg Agricola, Basilea, 1556
Aegidius Tschudi, author of the Chronicon Helveticum
Alexander Burgener, Swiss mountain guide
Horace Bénédicte de Saussure
Christian von Mechel, Descent from Mont-Blanc in 1787 by H.B. de Saussure

The result has been the Project of Alps where the researchers can find articles, bibliography and material to help their work.

Total of articles uploaded in Wikimedia projects from their scientific bulletin: 62 articles in Wikisource
Total scientific bulletin released in CC-by-SA eligible to be uploaded in Wikisource: 237 articles [1] in CC-by-SA
Two presentations done in scientific meetings:
- A presentation to the General Assembly of AISA (International Association of the History of Alps)
- Presentation planned in 2015 to the University of Palermo
Two presentations done to the students:
- The first one in an article in the bulletin of the University of Lugano ([2])
- The second one in the University of Padua to the students following a Master in history
Total of bibliographies: 20 bibliographies of relevant books and research about Alps
Relevant books selected by a scientific committee: 10 books before the 19th century
- One book uploaded in Wikisource: De re Metallica (576 pages)
- Illustrations from a book (310 illustrations)
Total of pages reviewed and integrated: 12 articles
Total of meetings done with GLAMs: 10 meetings to describe the Project within the Alpine Region
Users involved: 10 users

The records:

Biggest number of languages involved in a GLAM donation: Italian, German, French, English, Latin and ancient French
First document in Latin language uploaded within a GLAM project (De Re Metallica)

Wikimania Esino Lario 2016

The working team of Esino Lario during the visit of two members of the Wikimania Committee in July 2014

The bid of Spring 2014 for Esino Lario to host Wikimania 2016 was officially supported by Wikimedia CH. We are delighted that the outcome was positive, Esino Lario will indeed host the event.

In 2014 a working team of 57 Swiss and Italian volunteers as well as chapter staff was set up [3].

Since December 2014, the working group meets once a month to plan the event.

Alps on Wikipedia

The Alps on Wikipedia (in Italian "Il paesaggio culturale alpino su Wikipedia: Valorizzare il paesaggio culturale attraverso dati aperti, Wikipedia, Siti e allestimenti analogico digitali") is a project which focuses on open data and the Creative Commons attribution-share alike license to provide access to existing content on the Alps (cultural and natural heritage, geography, anthropology...).

The project was submitted in 2012 to the European Commission Interreg programme by SUPSI (in Switzerland) and Comunità Montana Valsassina Valvarrone, Val d’Esino e Riviera and Comune di Esino Lario (in Italy) and it has been fully financed by the Interreg programme in 2013.

The project has been supported by:

Ecomuseo di Esino Lario (Italy)
Fondazione Valle Bavona (Switzerland)
Museo Cantonale di storia naturale of Lugano (Switzerland)
Wikimedia CH
Wikimedia Italia

The outcomes to be delivered within 2015 are:

20 GLAM institutions and public administrations in Italy and Switzerland supporting the project by releasing a selection of their content with an open license or as open data
Development of a specific system of certification for Wikipedia
Integration of GIS and Wikipedia
Website with historical territorial archives of Valsassina
Dataset and maps with archival documentation of Barzio, Concenedo, Primaluna, Esino Superiore, Esino Inferiore
Analog and digital museum design of Museo delle Grigne in Esino Lario and Museo della Fornace in Barzio
Production of communication materials related to Valsassina

Wiki4alps

The photo contest "Wiki Loves Monuments" dedicated to cultural heritage in the Alps took place last Autumn. Facts & figures:

A total of 2.681 photos, 138 participants (96 new users, 21 still active, 18 "recurrent") (59 German speakers, 42 English speakers, 20 French speakers, 12 Italian speakers, 2 Romansh speakers, 5 Other languages).
A Swiss participant was in the top 100 of uploaders (Mauro Cassina with 731 photos).
The website experienced 62.000 unique visitors.

We would like to warmly thank the jury for their great work. The winners will be announced during the General Assembly 2015 on the 21st March.

Werdenberg Castle. View from South-East
Kraftwerke 2. Ausbau mit Staumauer Lago Bianco Süd
Schnurrenloch, altsteinzeitliche Wohnhöhle, Ausblick aus der unteren Höhle
Unteres Türmlihaus
Chiesa parrocchiale della Beata Vergine degli Angeli di Lavertezzo
Pont sur le Rhone, Saint Maurice

Wikiexpeditions

Despite the relatively bad weather, two "experimental" wiki-expeditions occurred.

14 August 2014: Val Verzasca (3 participants)
21 August 2014: Malvaglia (3 participants)

The photos have been uploaded within the Wiki4Alps contest.

Some examples of the results of these wiki-expeditions can be found here:

International support & exchange

Pre-conference on International Volunteer Support

Wikimedia CH co-hosted the pre-conference "International Volunteer Support" during Wikimania 2014 in collaboration with Wikimedia AT & Wikimedia DE in order to enable people being involved in volunteer support to exchange experiences and ideas as well as share best practices. Similar to GLAM or Education, we're intending to establish an international network of "volunteer supporters" in the Wikimedia Movement and this pre-conference laid the basis for this future development. A total of 19 people from several different countries and chapters, such as Wikimedia Mexico, Wikimedia UK and the WMF, attended this pre-conference.

Community Village at Wikimania

During Wikimania, Wikimedia CH took the chance to be part of the Community Village. The community village was the location for user groups, chapters, staff and like-minded organisations to share a common space during Wikimania and present their activities to the Communities. At the end, 37 organisations were represented in the Community Village. The Community Village was initially an idea of Nicole Ebber (WMDE) and Charles Andres (WMCH) and was initially launched in 2013 during Wikimania Hongkong (back then it was called "chapter village"). Wikimedia CH is glad to see this initiative evolving over the years and becoming a fix part of the Wikimania conference concept.

Wikimedia Hackathon

Pictures:

In May 2014, a total of 159 people from over 30 different countries participated to the Wikimedia Hackathon in Zurich, which was held at the Youth Hostel and organised by Wikimedia CH. A total of 30 scholarships were granted. In order to give you a deeper insight, we herewith quote the following paragraph from the post of Guillaume Paumier on the Wikimedia Foundation's blog:
" The Wikimedia technical community is largely disseminated across the globe; Events like the Zürich hackathon are opportunities for developers to collaborate more closely, and also to socialize with comrades whom they otherwise mostly interact with online.
One of the main topics of interest during this event is MediaWiki-Vagrant, a portable MediaWiki development environment that makes it easy to learn about, modify, and improve MediaWiki’s code. In Zürich, developers are teaching each other how to use this tool, as well as automating it further.
Another topic of interest is Flow, the new discussion system poised to replace the antiquated “talk pages” where editors discuss how to improve Wikipedia articles and other pages. Flow brings a more modern and user-friendly experience, as well as many features that users have now come to expect of online discussion tools.
Maps are also attracting a lot of participants, who want to join forces and combine efforts to offer a unified user experience across various tools that display maps. Examples include maps embedded in Wikipedia articles, Wikivoyage travel guides, and mobile apps that combine maps with text to show location-aware content.
These are just a few of the pieces of technology that participants are excitedly discussing and coding on, along with Wikidata, improvements to the development toolchain, VisualEditor, automated code testing, many more."
Last but not least, we would like to thank Manuel Schneider for his wonderful work which contributed to the Hackathon being a raving success.

Wikipedians in European Parliament / Wiki loves Parliaments

In February 2014, a total of fifty volunteers coming from nine different countries took photos and videos of members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Wikimedia CH supported this initiative by advertising the event and by getting in touch with several other European chapters which then decided to support the event by covering the travel costs of their local volunteers. We also did all the evaluation scripts to automatically gather the status before and after the project in terms of language versions of articles and Wikidata statements. From Switzerland, one volunteer and one staff member participated. The staff member was taking WikiTV video statements of MEPs.
The results can be found on Wikimedia Commons on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WIKI_loves_parliaments/European_Parliament_2014. French TV coverage, 0'45 interview of Stephane Coillet-Matillon from WMCH. twitt, twitt 2, twitt 3

Communications

Swiss media coverage

August

(de) 9 August 2014 Tagesschau, SRF-1 Wikimania in London

June

(fr) 24 June 2014 On en parle, La 1ère, Les premières wikipermanences en Suisse

May

(fr) 23 May 2014, "les Démineurs", GRRiF, Wikipédia rend les Démineurs moins bêtes
(fr) 6 May 2014, L'Impartial, Wikipédia pour tous

April

(fr) 5 April 2014. Le Temps. Les WikiPermanences accueillent les contributeurs novices durant la pause de midi

March

(fr) 24 March 2014. La liberté. Une Wikipermanence voit le jour à Lausanne
(fr) 25 March 2014. 24 Heures. Lausanne a sa «Wikipermanence»
(fr) 25 March 2014. 20 minutes. Rencontre branchée

February

(fr) 6 February, France3, Journal Wikipedia au Parlement européen
(fr) 7 February, France2, Geopolis, Wikipédia tire le portrait du Parlement européen
(de) 25 February 2014. SRF Kultur. Machen PR-Agenturen Wikipedia kaputt?

January

(de) 26 January 2014. persoenlich.com. Wikimedia CH: "Wikipedia geht es um Bildung als kostenloses Gut"
(fr) 17 January 2014. RTS La Première. "On en parle": Wikipédia a 13 ans.
(fr) 7 January 2014. Agefi. Wikipedia: l’importance capitale des small donors

Press Releases