[okfn-be] Collaboration with Wikipedia

Sat Jan 7 19:36:22 UTC 2012

Hi Maarten,

Personally I find this a great idea! Being an umbrella organisation is 
something we have set as a goal at our first meeting.

Would you be able to attend our first general assembly? Let's discuss 
this in person with all the members.

http://wiki.okfn.org/Chapter/Belgium#Meetings

Kind regards,

Pieter

On 01/07/2012 08:29 PM, maarten deneckere wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> some more about a possible cooperation between the local community of 
> Wikipedia and a new "free data organisation".
>
> In Belgium we have been trying to set up a local Wikipedia 
> organisation. They alreay exist in >30 chapters. Romaine and I are 
> long time editors, and are working on this. The goal would be to 
> transform the Belgian Wikipedians (nl/fr/en/de) into colleagues by 
> monthly meetings, organising events, contacting governmental 
> organisations. Creating a new organisations allows us to get some 
> funding, allows us to contact governmental organisations, ... Setting 
> up has been a long struggle due to the language barrier and the lack 
> of interest.
>
> I know you guys are busy organising a new entity. I would be 
> interesting if the organisation could accommodate small groups of 
> interested people in open source data (eg. Openstreetmap, irail, wiki, 
> hacker organisations, ...) under the okfn umbrella. Some people that 
> decide to raise money to buy a new GPS-device for tracking OSM data, 
> want to hire a freelancer, ... could do this with the money they 
> raised. But legally everything would be under okfn.
>
> This allows the different volunteers to work within a light, existing 
> organisation. They can focus on the growth of their group, up to the 
> level that they decide to start up a new legal entity. Such "umbrella 
> organisation" would really foster smal opensource initiatives in Belgium.
>
> Working with Wikipedia has some advantages:  we already organised some 
> big events (eg. WikiLovesMonuments: 6000 participating images by 200 
> persons). We got governmental funding by all three (!) Belgian 
> heritage agencies. We can ask for grants (that's why you saw Jimbo 
> Wales on each Wikipedia page begging for money!). You can find 
> examples on meta 
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index/Requests>. And at least, 
> we have big impact (# page views and visitors, connections with press)
>
> What are your thoughts on this?
>
> Grtz,
> Maarten
>
> Skype: mdeneckere
> gsm: +27 71 491 31 38 <tel:%2B27%2071%20491%2031%2038>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
iRail vzw/asbl
+32(0)486/747122

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