Meeting:2023 AGM/President's Report

WMAU President’s report 2023

WMAU AGM 6 August 2023

Amanda Lawrence

This has been a huge year for Wikimedia Australia as we began the first year of our three year strategic plan supported by 3 year funding from the Wikimedia Foundation. Having an increase in funding over a longer funding period has allowed us to hire full time staff for the first time which has been a major boost for Wikimedia Australia’s capacity to serve the community and build interest and engagement with Wikimedia projects.

This is reflected in the activities undertaken over the past 12 months. Our 2022-2025 Strategic plan is based on three pillars, Engagement, Equity and Inclusion, and Capacity Building

Engagement

• Over the past year Wikimedia Australia:
• Ran 72 events including the ESEAP conference in Sydney in 2022.
• Created new content for our website, and further engaged with the community through expanding our social media presence and a new announce mailing list with nearly 500 subscribers
• Established a new partner projects funding program and supported 5 new projects with organisations.
• Facilitated and provided additional support to three Wikipedians-in-Residence throughout 2022/23, including Australian music through The Record project, our First Nations WiR at State Library of Queensland, and the APO First Nations WiR.
• Collaborated with a number of large organisations across the GLAM and education sectors including ACMI, State libraries of QLD and NSW, University of QLD and Sydney, UTS, RMIT, University of Divinity, Jumbunna Institute, Paroo Local Council, Franklin Women, ADM+S, Analysis & Policy Observatory, National Gallery of Australia, and many more.

Equity and Inclusion

Indigenous engagement

Increasing our engagement with Indigenous communities is a key priority of the Strategic plan. To improve our understanding of the issues involved, WMAU partnered with the Jumbunna Institute to conduct a review and produce a report on metadata issues for Indigenous content on Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Australia and First Nations Metadata: ATSILIRN Protocols for Description and Access: A discussion paper provided a range of recommendations and suggestions for promoting deeper engagement with First Nations communities which we will be working on over the next year.

We also established a research project with Professor Bronwyn Carlson from Macquarie University to undertake consultation with Indigenous communities on their experience and perspectives on engaging with Wikimedia. This is now in progress.

Global and Regional Engagement

Wikimedia Australia continues to work closely with the Wikimedia Foundation and the global community to advance the capabilities and sustainability of the movement. Several of our members have been involved in movement initiatives such as Movement Strategy implementation, the Movement Charter, the Global Code of Conduct and elections for the Board of Trustees.

WMAU is a key member of the ESEAP (East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific) regional cooperation hub, and in 2022 we volunteered to host the ESEAP Conference in Sydney in November 2022. It was wonderful to welcome the ESEAP community to Sydney in November as the world opened up again. Relationships across the region were strengthened by reconnecting at the ESEAP conference in Sydney and the Worlds of Wiki research conference at the University of Sydney. It was a huge effort for the Board, staff and volunteers I would like to thank everyone involved for a huge effort in achieving what was a great success.

At the conference the ESEAP community decided to established an ESEAP Hub Interim Steering Committee to begin planning the ESEAP Hub and working towards a grant for a staff member to support regional collaboration. The WMAU Executive Officer, Belinda Spry, is on the committee and has since been participating in Community meetings. The next in person ESEAP meeting will be at Wikimania in Singapore in August this year.

Our close relationship with our friends across the Tasman in Aotearoa New Zealand continues, and the Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand was established as an incorporated society in March this year, so I offer our congratulations to WANZ and their new committee for this important step.

Capacity Building

WMAU Staff

In the past year we farewelled Caddie Brain as Executive Officer and welcomed Belinda Spry to the role. Belinda came in as we were full steam ahead with the ESEAP conference and brought her unwavering good humour, energy and organisational skills to the event. She has since reacquainted herself with Wikipedia editing and is already running workshops to teach others.

We are sad to say farewell to James Gaunt, the WMAU Project and Communications Officer who has done a fantastic job developing content and promoting WMAU and also running The Record project on Australian music. Thank you for all your work in supporting WMAU.

We are thrilled to welcome two new part-time staff members:

• Alison Hall, Communications Officer
• Alice Woods, Project Officer

WMAU Board 2022-2023

Thank you to the WMAU Board members for 2022-2023: Amanda Lawrence (President), Bunty Avieson (Vice President), Pru Mitchell (Treasurer), Alex Lum (Secretary), Kelly Tall, Peter Neish, Jeremy Ludlow and Tom Hogarth.

Farewell to outgoing Board members

A special thanks to Alex Lum and Pru Mitchell who are leaving the Board.

Pru Mitchell has been a major force behind the success of Wikimedia Australia and has made an enormous contribution to the organisation and the Wikimedia movement. Pru joined the Board in 2013! She was Vice President 2015-2018, President 2017-2020 and Treasurer 2020-2023. Her dedication, hard work, wisdom and experience has been crucial to the organisation’s growth and development and we are deeply grateful to her.

Alex Lum joined the Board in 2019 as Vice President and was then President in 2021 and Secretary in 2022. He has contributed enormously to the community through Wikimedia projects and training and particularly his endless enthusiasm and expertise on Wikidata.

Both Pru and Alex have made and I’m sure will continue to make an extraordinary contribution to Wikimedia projects and to the Wikimedia movement in Australia and globally.

We are very pleased to welcome to Emily Mietsch and Elliott Bledsoe as newly elected Board members and look forward to your contributions to WMAU over the next two years.

WMAU Membership

Membership numbers remained stable at 67 members.

Craig Franklin Award

On behalf of Wikimedia Australia I am very pleased to announce the inaugural Craig Franklin Award. This award recognises a project or program that has made a positive impact on the Wikimedia movement in Australia over the past year.

It honours Craig Franklin, a generous and prolific Australian Wikipedian, who died in 2018. This award celebrates his achievements and dedication to the free knowledge movement in Australia.

Craig was a founding member of Wikimedia Australia, and served as President and Treasurer. He ran Wikimedia events in Brisbane and developed Wikimedia Australia’s relationship with the State Library of Queensland that remains strong to this day.

We are grateful for his work as a passionate advocate for Wikimedia platforms. Through this award we hope to honour Craig Franklin’s work, and the work that is currently being done across the Australian Wikimedian community.

We would now like to announce the winner of the inaugural Craig Franklin Award for 2023:

Franklin Women

Franklin Women is Australia’s only professional community dedicated to supporting the careers of women working across the health and medical research ecosystem. Their vision is for a health and medical research sector where women thrive.

They have recognised the importance of Wikipedia in achieving this aim and have held two workshops in 2019 and 2022 to increase the online representation of women working in health and medical research. As they say “learning how to edit Wikipedia is a wonderful (and fun!) way to combat this gender bias and help make the internet a little bit better.”

The Franklin Women workshops have created 51 pages, added 1000 refs and involved 60 new women editors. In the last year Franklin women also commissioned a series of high quality videos on how to edit Wikipedia featuring Caddie Brain. The More Than A Day videos have been viewed over 2000 times on YouTube, giving a simple guide for how to edit Wikipedia and getting more women editing or written about on Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Australia would like to thank Franklin Women’s founder Dr Melina Georgousakis for the work Franklin Women has done to help introduce new editors to Wikipedia. On behalf of Wikimedia Australia, thank you Franklin Women for all of your work, and thank you Dr Melina Georgousakis for accepting this award on behalf of your organisation.

Special Resolution to change the Wikimedia Australia Rules of Association

The WMAU Board proposes two changes to the rules of Association to be voted on at a Special Resolution at the AGM. Resolution 1. That Wikimedia Australia adopt the 2012 model rules with minor amendments Resolution 2. That the Term of Office for committee members be extended to two years (and other minor amendments). Anonymous voting to occur via a Zoom Poll - please answer Yes or No to both questions. This motion was passed and the new rule were adopted prior to electing the next Board.