Amsterdam gets the GLAM treatment, fundraising marches on, and a flourish of new admins

GLAMcamp Amsterdam

For expanded coverage, see the upcoming December edition of This month in GLAM, which is excerpted here.

The Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums initiative (GLAM for short) organized and executed GLAMcamp Amsterdam this week, on December 2–4. The event, which took place at the MediaMatic Lab in Amsterdam, was "a workshop targeting a small group of community-focused and technology-focused Wikimedians to kickstart the key elements of the glamwiki.org project." The meeting was attended by over 40 Wikipedians from 22 different countries, and was hosted by Wikimedia Nederland.

GLAMcamp Amsterdam is the second such workshop of its kind, and follows on the heels of GLAMcamp NYC earlier in May of this year (see Signpost coverage). According to the organizers, "Rather than [being] an open community conference like Wikimania, this is a workshop targeting a small group of community-focused and technology-focused Wikimedians to kickstart the key elements of the glamwiki.org project. Attendees will also include key representatives of GLAM (and related) institutions who have a strong relationship with Wikimedia already."

After an opening address by Wikimedia Nederland's Jessica Tangelder, the first major event was the Mass Upload & Metrics project, led by Maarten Dammers, in which participants discussed how mass-uploading images to Commons, especially from museum repositories, works. A public workshop and an announcement of a free content search interface from developer Thijs de Boer followed.

The lightning talk submission board that anyone could edit

Next came the three keynote speeches. The first was from Dr. Margriet Schavemaker, Head of Collections and Research at the Stedelijk Museum on "Tricks and traps of sharing modern collections online". Next, David Haskiya, a product developer for Europeana, discussed the compatibility of the Europeana strategic plan with Wikimedia, and Frank Meijer closed off the workshop with a presentation on the collaboration of Wikimedians and the Tropenmuseum, where he is Project manager of Museum digitization.

Saturday began with a set of lightning talks on topics ranging from the GLAM newsletter to freedom of panorama (or lack thereof) in France and archaeology and its compatibility with Wikimedia. Parallel sessions during the day included how to initiate a GLAM program in a new country, how to improve internal communication, and drafting a "freedom declaration". There were also sessions on QRpedia, development of glamwiki.org and Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in 2012. In the evening Wikimedians were given a backstage tour of the Amsterdam Museum. The final day of the event saw the last few lightning talk submissions before breaking out for the penultimate parallel sessions, which covered improving documentation, best practices, statistics and metrics. The evening was spent on a guided tour of the Rijksmuseum.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to GLAMcamp Amsterdam.

Brief notes

Fundraising 2011 continues: The 2011 Fundraising drive continued this week with the addition of two new community banners, one of Karthik Nadar, an Indian editor who highlighted his work on the 2011 Mumbai bombings, and one of Susan Hewitt, highlighting the importance of thousands of dedicated contributors. To date, donations have brought in over 15 million US dollars for the Foundation and its Chapters, according to preliminary figures.

Office hours: This week saw three office IRC meetings. Geoff Brigham, the Wikimedia Foundation's new General Counsel, talked with community members on December 2 about his background and the WMF's legal strategy; the article feedback team held one later the same day; and the new editor feedback response team held theirs on December 4.

Wikimania 2011 videos published: The video footage from Wikimania 2011 in Haifa has been published, and is available for viewing on their YouTube channel. As Wikimedia Israel spokesperson Itzik explained, "It was harder than we thought – to record three days, in five simulation high-definition cameras, and than edit, upload and tag them...what we thought will take us few weeks, took about two months – but I'm happy that we finish with that finally." The HDD footage will be sent to the Wikimedia Foundation next week for archival and uploading to Commons; links to all the videos and resources from attendees can be found on Wikimania 2011's main schedule. A Flickr stream is also available.

French debate freedom of panorama: In France, a modification was proposed to the law to allow freedom of panorama (following work and discussions undertaken by Wikimédia France). During the debate at the National Assembly (in presence of the Minister of Culture), the amendment was dubbed the "Wikipedia amendment" by an opposing MP. One of the two MPs proposing the law responded by talking a bit about Wikipedia. See the complete debate and Wikimédia France coverage.

2011 Foundation audit released: The 2011 Foundation audit has been released. The financial report covers July 1 2010 through June 30 2011, and determines the Foundation's financial position for the coming year. It was an excellent year for the Wikimedia Foundation from a financial perspective. The 2010–11 plan had called for a 28% increase in revenue, to $20.4 million, and to double spending to the same amount. In reality, the Foundation both over-earned and underspent, closing with $12 million in reserve, up from $7 million the previous year.

New administrators: What was looking to be Wikipedia's first month without new administrators since October 2002 was averted by a remarkable string of four successful RfAs this week; The Signpost welcomes CharlieEchoTango, Guerillero, Tom Morris and MichaelQSchmidt to the administrator ranks.

Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: the Polish Wikisource reached 20,000 text units, the Korean Wiktionary reached 300,000 entries, the Burmese Wikipedia reached 10,000 articles, and the Tagalog Wiktionary reached 15,000 entries, a 10-fold increase in only four days.