GLAM-WIKI/Attendee mailouts/Email 2

Email 2 - July 12

Dear GLAM-WIKI attendees,

Less than a month to go! I hope you are looking forward to it as I am - the first time anywhere in the world where Wikimedians and the cultural sector will come together to talk with rather than about each other. GLAM-WIKI is now subscribed to near capacity, with representatives from across Australia and NZ in all cultural sectors as well as government.

For all recent registrants, you may wish to look at the previous email sent out to attendees. The text of which can be found here. I especially encourage everyone, if you've not already, to watch the three short videos linked in that email which explain quite succinctly the ideas of "web 2.0", "a Wiki", and of the Wikipedia community itself.

In this email there are four things I'd like to mention in preparation for the event: Accomodation, schedule, preparation and privacy.

1) Accomodation

If you are travelling from outside of Canberra then you'll probably be wanting somewhere to sleep. We have managed to secure discounted rates from two local hotels:

a - Forrest Hotel
(5-10 minute taxi ride away but not walking distance. I've stayed here many times - can recommend it)
Book over the phone and ask for the ‘Government rate’ to get this discount.

Standard hotel room: $130 per room per night
Full hot buffet breakfast: $20 per person per day

Forrest Hotel and Apartments 30 National Circuit Forrest ACT 2603
T: +61 2 6295 3433
W: [1]

b - Olims Hotel
(this is in walking distance to the Australian War Memorial).
Book over the phone and quote the code 'GLAM-WIKI' to get this discount rate.

$145 per night (standard room)
$19 Breakfast

Corner of Ainslie & Limestone Ave Braddon, 2612
T: +61 2 6243 0000
W: [2]

c - Canberra City Youth Hostel (this is of course the cheapest, no special discounts available).

$29.50 per night (10 person room)
$32 (8 person room)
$93 (twin room)
$142 (family room with ensuite)

7 Akuna Street, Canberra City 2601
T: +61 2 6248 9155
W: [3]

2) Schedule revamp

Following the first draft, published in the previous attendee email, the event program has been expanded most notably the law stream.
http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM/Schedule

If you have any specific questions you would like covered in any of these sessions please advise and we'll make sure they are put in the moderator's notes.

3) Preparation

Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to find this out, and don't worry, there's no test and you don't have to tell us the answers to these questions if you don't want to. But, knowing these figures in advance will be helpful in some of the sessions.

a - In preparation for attending GLAM-WIKI it would be very helpful if you could ask the web-manager at your institution what percentage of inbound traffic to your website comes from people clicking through via Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects. What do you expect this percentage to be and are you surprised by the answer?

b - Please think of a topic that is integral to your institution (e.g. for the Australian War Memorial this might be "Australian military history") and type it into Google. Does a Wikipedia article appear in the first page of the results? Does it appear above your own institution's website? Does your institution have a mission statement that includes a phrase along the lines of "The [institution] is dedicated to helping people of all ages learn about [aforementioned topic]"? If so, has your instution previously investigated trying to fulfil this mission with Wikipedia as a one of the 'strings to its bow'?

c - Are you able to roughly calculate the financial cost to your institution of administering copyright/access to your institution's own and/or controlled and/or out-of-copyright content? Are you also able to roughly calculate the amount your institution makes in revenue as a result of this administration (for example, through content sales)? Is there a significant positive difference between these two numbers?

4) Privacy

We in the global Wikimedia community take identity privacy very seriously and as you may know it is perfectly permissible to remain an anonymous editor within our projects. And so, whilst Wikimedia Australia will not be publishing the list of GLAM-WIKI attendees' names, we thought it proper to ask permission to publicise the name of the institutions that will be represented at the event. If you do not wish to have your organisation named as being represented at the event please inform us.

Once again thank you for your time and your interest,
I look forward to seeing you at the War Memorial in a few weeks.

Sincerely,
Liam Wyatt, VP Wikimedia Australia & Convener of GLAM-WIKI

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata