Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Czech Republic/Annual report 2011

Annual report

This Wikimedia Czech Republic activities report covers the period of time between 8th January 2011 to the General Assembly on 17th March 2012. It is to be presented by the Board of Wikimedia Czech Republic.

The described period was marked by internal conflicts and unstabilities. As a result, there were two General Assemblies (April 2011, June 2011). On the second GA, a new chairman was elected, quickly replacing the older one (Jan Lochman, Juandev), elected only in January 2011. The new chairman is Michal Reiter, also known as Limojoe.

The Chapter also had troubles to find a responsible person to become the financial manager of the chapter. Gampe become our financial manager in January 2012. As a result of a complicated situation in both Grants, the Board decided to make personal changes to its committees. It can be said that hardly anything remained on its place during the second half of 2011. Yet, we hope that by solving this problems, we managed to stabilize our chapter.

The period of instability did however have some negative impact on our chapter. Several projects were halted or slowed down significantly (i.e. the OGDN professionalization) and our reputation with foreign partners was harmed.

On the other hand we marked several succeses. Wikimedia Czech Republic negotiated and signed the Chapter Agreement with Wikimedia Foundation, thus formally entering the family of Wikimedia chapters. WMCZ initiated numerous activities in the areas related to its purpose - to promote free content and freely distributed information. The most important ones follow:

A concert for 10th anniversary of Wikipedia that took place on 15th January 2011 (in the Parish house of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethen, Prague-Vinohrady)
3rd regular Wikiconference, which took place on 26th November 2011 in the National Technical Library, Prague.
Several minor activities for interested sympathisers of the Wiki movement - Photographic workshop, regural meetings in Prague and the 'Idea' conference are some examples of these.
Good public relations and media - organization of the "Wikipedia 200 000 articles" milestone press conference (July) and several interview of some members of WMCZ with nation-wide media.
The presence of our chapter during various fairs and other activities (Open Source conference, NG market, Museum night)
The third and fourth run of the Prizes for developement of Czech Wikipedia were formally finished.
Protected areas program and its own activities - cooperation with universities or the Memory game
The GLAM program continued to operate. Its main goal is to cooperate with museum and archive-related institutions.
The Ambasadorship project (then renamed to "Students Write Wikipedia") was initiated - its goal is to support and promote Wikipedia at schools.
Tracker, the program that allows management of grant requests, went online.

Besides that, it is an interesting fact that in early March 2012 the number of members of Wikimedia Czech Republic rose to 40.

Overcoming the crisis, Wikimedia Czech Republic continues in its effort to fulfill its goals and still has a good chance for future growth.

Detailed reports about various areas of our activities follow. Finance-related topics are mentioned in the previous section of this report.

Members and internal life of Wikimedia Czech Republic

The membership count between two regular General Assemblys went up. As of early March 2012 we had 40 members, during the last regular GA it was 29.

The board has currently four members. The fifth one was not appointed. For the period ending by this report, there were 16 board meetings total, plus the Board made several meetings on the internal wiki.

At the beginning of 2012 Gampe became the financial manager, replacing Limojoe, who was in charge of this agenda for a long time, yet only temporarily. The decision of the General Assembly to solve this problem till 31st August 2011 was therefore solved with a great delay.

Several Bylaws changes were approved on both extraordinary General Assemblies. Plus there was a mail vote. Its main goal was only one - to approve a new modification to the Rules of Procedure, so the number and the length of speeches during GAs could be limited. This will help to eliminate whole-day GAs.

Regural community meetings (both for Chapter members and interested supporters of the Wiki Movement) became a new tradition. These meetings take place each month in Prague, in the Roura bar for the last time. Since May 2011 there have already been 10 meetings.

A decision was made intended to open the internal wiki to public, however due to several uncertainities it was not executed. There are still many personal and confidental data on the wiki that cannot be exposed to everyone.

International cooperation and relations with WMF

As it was mentioned before, the Chapter Agreement with Wikimedia Foundation was signed. Based on this document, WM CZ represents Wikimedia Foundation in the Czech Republic

The representatives of Wikimedia Czech Republic participated on various international activities, both in the region (Central and Eastern Europe) and throughout the world.

Jan Lochman (Juandev), Petr Brož (Chmee2) and Danny B participated on the Wikimania Conference (in Haifa), the most important Wikimedia meeting globally. All three participants talked to other representatives from various chapters, as well as with WMF. They informed them about our projects and also got some new information and energy for other activities, initiated during autumn 2011 or right now. Our position in various globally hip wiki-activities as well as our most genuine ones was clarified.

Members of Wikimedia Czech Republic also cooperate with Wikimedia Polska. They participated on the Wikiexpedition project for the second time and in September 2011 they also visited the 10 years of polish Wikipedia conference in Poznań. That was a good opportunity not only to present our activities or get new informations, but also in developing regional cooperation. During our expedition to Poland we also visited the WM DE office in Berlin.

During January - April 2011 the cooperation with German OGDN (Organizational growth and developement network) project was successfully going on. There were several meetings, that were dedicated mostly to the professionalization of our chapter. Aside of several German guests (Anna, Sebmol), our chairman Jan Lochman (Juandev) and several other members of our chapter (Danny B, Jirka O., Packa, Frettie) participated on the event. Several topics were discussed, for example a possibility how to make our chapter more effective by using: more convenient facilities, more effective (and paid) workforce and more professional methods of work, already well-known to many developed and stable non-profit organizations.

In October 2011 we were visited (after a long time) by the representative of Wikimedia Deutschland (Sebmol). The trip was a part of the OGDN project. We discussed several issues and many of our ideas were matured by this more experienced Wikimedian. However, the original complex idea of professionalization of Wikimedia Czech Republic did experience a lot of complications.

Czech Wikimedians are also active in GLAM projects, that was represented on some of the conferences during 2011 and early 2012 (New York, Amsterdam, Belgrade). They shared their knowledge and experience with others as well as gained new information.

An active cooperation was initiated in the Wiki Loves Monuments contest, which is supposed to take place this year. Wikimedia Czech Republic closely cooperates with Wikimedia Poland. However, Czech Republic did not participate in this contest in 2011.

The chairman of Wikimedia Czech Republic participated on most of the acitivies of international nature. Other members of the Chapter (members of the Board or regular members) are also active.

Mediagrant and Presentation & Outreach

During the beginning of the described time period the situation in both Grants was considered unsatisfactory. Such a conclusion was expressed on the General Assembly in June 2011. Therefore, personal changes of the Grant Committee were made. Nowadays we see the situation of the Mediagrant as a very good one; when speaking about Presentation & Outreach, new deputees are still needed in order to reach a better reaction time. Until now, the chairman of Wikimedia Czech Republic was also a person responsible for communication between the Grants and Wikimedia Foundation.

The need for a tracker was solved by introduction of a software written by one of our members (Che). As of now, it is used by both grants.

Aside from various activities (fairs, concert, photographic workshop, purchase of various equipment (camera, GPS navigation etc), Wikimedium magazine, propagation stuff (polo shirts, memory game etc) and subgrants trips was funded.

Public relations, promotion and publishing

Three issues of the Wikimedium Magazine were published since the last General Assembly.

Wikimedia Czech Republic participated on six fairs and similar events. There was a concert commemorating the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia and 3rd regular Wikiconference. When the milestone of 200 000 articles passed, we held a press conference. During the whole year 2011, various projects were presented in mainstream Czech media. Three members of WMCZ (Chmee2, Jan Spousta and Limojoe) had an interview in national newspapers.

Several of our projects initiated their own promotion ideas, such as the Memory game of the Protected Areas project etc.

We intend to redesign our webpages. As of now, there are preparations underway.