For the Valentine's Day, a thematic selection from my pictures at the on-going protests in Bucharest (the events are covered more in-depth in my photography blog)
For the foreseeable future I do not intend to return as an organizer for Wiki Loves Monuments, five years of working on the Romanian edition is enough for a person, the time has come for new blood and new enthusiasm. Myself I am burned enough. And, arguably, any community project has to attract new contributors, if not perhaps it lived its life.
Note: I won't be totally out of the picture, if there is a Wiki Loves Monuments in 2016, I will most likely contribute some pictures and if the organizers will feel a need for punctual help or want to borrow some experience, I should be available.
With this melodramatic intro over, is the time go back to the topic: a "post-mortem" is a cold analysis of a project, made after its end, looking at what worked and what didn't. The intention for it is to be as objective as possible, a learning experience for future similar projects.
Ansamblul bisericii evanghelice fortificate din Archita by Silvia Nichita, released under CC-BY-SA, winner of the Romanian competition.The good
Having the fifth edition in a row happen and bring results in line with the previous editions is by itself a success. Is not trivial to have people volunteering to make it happen, sponsors to put money, contributors to participate... and having it work year after year.
It was also a success for the team when it managed to secure the funding, first with a sponsorship from Ixia which had put the things in motion and later a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, which allowed for a lot of activities to take place. It was useful to have the infrastructure already set-up on Wikimedia Commons, Romanian Wikipedia and the website, which is hosted by RLUG/ProLinux, as it was useful to have Asociaţia ARCHÉ handling the money, as a legal entity (traditionally, the project is run by an informal group of people and needs such legal coverage).
~6000 images uploaded in one month (~5600 at Commons and ~400 at Romanian Wikipedia) is a success. Compared with previous years, is not the best, nor the worst, but in the international context, we are in the top third of the 33 participating countries.
At the first sight, 127 participants is kind of low compared with previous years (only 2013 was lower) and definitely under the 200 mark we hoped for. But that mark was optimistic, there are not many Romanian Free Software/Free Culture projects with so many contributors.
For the Wiki Weekend expedition we had a few empty places on the bus, but in the end there are 600 images (504 at Commons and 86 more at Romanian Wikipedia) within the expedition category, which is 10% of the total images.
Photo exhibition in BucharestIt was for the first time we held an Edit-a-thon, so we lack terms for comparison, but any way you take it, especially for a first, is a success to have 10 participants, 702 images (628 at Commons and 74 more at Romanian Wikipedia) and 11 Wikipedia articles.
Also a first time was the new article writing contest, where 6 people added a total of 343 Wikipedia articles, most of which are stubs, but they are at least an inviting start. Lacking a reference point, I don't know how to call this other than a success.
The photo exhibition with winning images was open at F64 Cafe in Bucharest for about 3 weeks. The exhibition was quite small and its opening was pretty much an intimate event, so the impact was not impressive, but there is a chance for the situation to improve, if we stick to the plan and the exhibition will move to several other (and more visible places) in the coming months.
Also, a positive is the top 10 of winning images, this is good stuff. Not only by my subjective opinion, but also the fact that one of ours makes on the international winners list.
I left this for the last, since the social media impact is kind of a mixed bag: we ran a "photo of the day" thing for the entire duration of the contest (the month of September), which on facebook it was really weak, with a top of 22 likes for an image but on Google Plus it was much better (tenfold or better). Here I assume total responsibility for selecting and sharing the images and not spamming at all.
Wiki Weekend expeditionThe bad
From the things we did badly, the most important I consider is being late to everything. We were late to apply for the Wikimedia Foundation grant, which in turn was approved even more late. Not having the funds secured, we missed to opportunity to promote the contest in advance and may be an important cause for the somewhat weaker participation. We were late in planning and announcing the expedition, and this can explain the weak participation. We were late announcing the winners and were late awarding the prizes and opening the exhibition, thus breaking a few promises. In front of the community I can't say more than I am sorry, we did poorly with this, please don't judge us too badly for it.
We also had a problem with the jury: one of its members simply became silent exactly when he was needed to do his part of the work. So at the time when we were supposed to count the notes, sort the results and publish them, we were in fact searching for replacements for that jury member. That was a human resources error and a lesson: do not rely on people who don't care about your project.
Another failure was the attempt to collaborate with a traditional photography festival. There was no synergy and my estimate is that not even 1% of our final images came as a result of it. Personally I can't tell what went wrong here, as I was not involved at all with it, I could only speculate some obvious reasons, but prefer not to do that. Much like anyone else, I also wait for a more pertinent analysis.
We had no media partners, not for the contest, not for the exhibition, not for anything. This is related to the first bad point above, being late. We didn't know in advance what we will really do, so it was not possible to forge any media partnership nor to announce our intentions in advance.
There is also a problem with the source of the incoming images: the bulk of them came from very few people. 75% of the images were uploaded by the top 12 participants, or close to 60% by the top 5, or close to 23% by an one single person. This isn't healthy at all. Consider that the top contributor by number of images, who also was a big contributor last year, due to personal issues most likely won't be available next year, it starts to look grim. If it want to continue growing, the contest must find some new audience and new participants.
Biserica Calvaria de la Cluj-Mănăștur, vedere sud-vestică by Pan Ioan, released under CC-BY-SA, 2nd place in the national contest, 13rd place in the international contestThe ugly
The thing is, in any human activity there will be parts that go well (the good) and parts that go not so well (the bad), but there are also parts which are frustrating and no matter how hard you work, they will happen anyway. In my Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 experience, those all were related to the community.
Now I am not a newbie to the Free Software/Free Culture communities and know well what to expect: they do mirror closely any human community, so is to be expected to encounter politics, power plays, egos, hidden agendas, individuals with total lack of social skills and such. I do have the guts to deal with them, Hell! if needed I can be a versed troll too! I'm not crying here, just listing some ugly things people can expect.
Traditionally we targeted the Romanian Wiki Loves Monuments to people outside the existing Wikipedia community, since a major goal for the project was attracting new contributors. However, this edition we tried additional things, like the article contest, which was addressed to existing contributors and even to existing heavy contributors. It went with flames, accusation of cheating and strong language. Not nice at all!
Our organizing team as a whole was blamed for not having many Wikipedia contributions. Yes, it is true that myself, I contribute occasionally and my contributions are more likely to be to Commons than Romanian Wikipedia (as an user, I prefer to read the English Wikipedia anyway) and yes, is true two of my colleagues signed-up only a year before, when they joined the 2014 organizing team and their contributions were related strictly to the contest, but you know what else is true? For five years, every single year we ran calls for help and in all those years there was one single existing contributor even who really replied and joined the team (unfortunately, for logistic reasons his contributions were limited, he lives abroad, does not use social media and such). So I had no problem replying "pleas join the team and make this happen!"
But don't imagine this is limited to the local community! One example is when I had the idea that nominating some of the pictures as quality images can be in itself some kind of reward for their contributors. I did not run the nominations myself, so I was not the one to be the most frustrated, but I observed the process. Most of the pictures are rejected with negative feedback from a number of people, who sit themselves on large numbers (sometime thousands) of average pictures labeled as "quality" (while winners of national or even international competitions are not good enough).
And don't get me started on those clueless people who start talking trash on your grant request without reading it entirely or understanding the issue...
Conclusion
I guess any such writing needs a conclusion, so I'll try to come with one: running such a project can be fun, it can be even rewarding on a personal level, but for a finite while. Fresh air and a fresh perspective are needed.
For the last couple of years I didn't manage to attend myself the Linux Install Fest traditionally organized by ROSEdu at Politehnica University of Bucharest, which is a shame, since there is a lot of cool stuff going on. But such is life, there are so many things to do and so little time left...
However, I learned a bit from watching the graphs from the official website and the pretty pictures published by the local Ubuntu community.
I couldn't stop myself from playing a bit with the charts data and make my own one. Just don't read too much into it, I don't think it shows personal preferences or such (if you DO have a personal preference, you probably don't need an install fest):
Anyway, I just wanted to say: good work ROSEdu!
Organizing Wiki Loves Monuments in Romania this year was the hardest so far. Why so? We had a bigger budget, which allowed us to be more ambitious, so on top of the free photography contest for Wikipedia we had to manage a photo exhibition, a 2 day field trip, an additional contest for juniors, a team of volunteering interns and more. But it was rewarding, the results are notable: over 8200 pictures from 216 contributors.
I will tease with the top 3 photos from the contest, you can see all of them on our website.
1st place: Bogdan Croitoru with Monumentul triumfal Tropaeum Traiani
You can also see the winning pictures, along with highlights from the previous editions and winners of the section dedicated to younger contributors in a photo exhibition opened for 3 weeks at the National Library in Bucharest. After that, the expo will move for a couple more weeks at Universitatea de Vest in Timișoara.
I am a bit late writing about this here, but on September 1st a new edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest started globally, with 34 countries registered to participate.
It is happening in Romania too, for the 4th time (I am again part of the team) and for us the start is promising so far: in the mid of the 3rd day we are well past the 1k images mark, something which happened much later (7 to 13 days) in the previous editions. Let's see if the contributors (and this includes you, my readers!) will be able to keep up. BTW, this year our prizes improved too.
We learned (link in Romanian) the Romanian government is negotiating with Microsoft for a Windows XP support extension in the public administration. This is the free market at work and there may be solid arguments for doing so (yes, I would prefer my tax money to be spent on Free and Open Source Software instead of making business with a convicted monopolist, but realistically I don't expect this to happen in the foreseeable future).
My source of amazement is: once the patches and the delivery infrastructure are set for the first government (UK), then the costs for adding any subsequent government is approaching zero: computers in Romanian administration usually have Windows installed in English, so there is nothing to translate, the infrastructure to deliver patches is there and the network costs are the same or lower (presumably patches fro XP are smaller in size as patches for Windows 7).
Apparently ending support for XP makes a lot of business sense for Microsoft, they suddenly started receiving important sums of money for things they did only a week ago for free. Who would refuse that?
Yesterday evening I was at the university for a meeting when I noticed in a window a HC 85 computer, which was in the 80'ies a Romanian clone of the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum (at the time, it was state of the art for the local IT industry along with the PDP-11 clones). For me, it was nostalgia: one of its brothers was the first computer I ever put my hands on (as a high school student), it was the first computer I programmed on, it was the first computer I dreamed making games for (in assembly language, no less).
This Sunday, October 13, ROSEdu will organize in Universitatea Politehnica Bucharest its yearly Linux Install Fest, the biggest event of such type I am aware of in the country (last year there were 118 participants). Its main purpose is to help first year CS university students putting a Linux install on their systems, but LIF is open to everyone. So if you have troubles with your Linux install, no matter if your machine is a laptop or a desktop, Politehnica is the place to be this Sunday.
Unfortunately is not possible to take a 4.5 months old hacker from her basement to the mountains so I have to skip this year the FLOSSCamp meeting which will happen over this week-end, but based from the past experience is going to be fun and a chance to meet people from the Romanian FLOSS community. Hopefully, next year we may be able to attend it together.
As a conclusion, I should add the content of all articles seems to be inspired from each other and their base is my short paragraph accompanying the picture, from where they expanded. At no point the photographer was contacted to verify the story, to ask for more info, for a larger version of the image, for more images (of course I have more). Of course, nobody asked for permission to use (content from my blogs is CC-BY-SA, content from social networks is not) or to offer payment. When they put so much work in their content, why they expect any respect?
It seems like the LOAD (standing for Linux Open Alternative Day[s]) event is becoming smaller each year, my guess is that may be related to the perceived focus change from Linux as an alternative to the establishment to alternatives to Linux (Microsoft products, antivirus solutions for Windows and such). Anyway, what I wanted to say about it was I may understand to some degree Microsoft being there with presentations and as a sponsor (actually I don't, but this talk is for another day), I may understand almost all talks being about cloud (when the clouds run Linux), I may understand the antivirus presence (when they have Linux server products), I may even understand the opening saying "we move to the cloud, where is not important what runs on the servers, open or proprietary" (no, I don't), but FFS, I can't understand why, at such a Linux event, the laptop for presentations runs Windows 7.
With some fanfare (including a personalized logo), yesterday was the launch of YouTube in Romania. Beside some irrelevant content contracts nobody cares about, I am not sure of the purpose of such launch, I am publishing content on YouTube for over 6 years, but just out of curiosity I tried loading the .ro website this morning to be grated with this:
note: this is running an up to date Fedora 18 with an up to date Firefox 20. Fun stuff.
These days when we should start this year's edition of Wiki Loves Monuments (I had on my TODO to write a call for contributions, since the team is smaller) a scandal appeared: a local cable news channel aired a report about historical monuments plundered by internet-savy burglars (video and story in Romanian).
In August 2011 a historical monument, the wooden church in Urisiu de Jos was plundered. Stolen were icons and other works dating from the XVI century, valuated at over 100.000€ on the black market. In two months the band plundered a total of 8 wooden churches, historical monuments, stealing around 120 icons, valuated at over 1.000.000€.
I wrote a few words last week when Richard Stallman visited Romania and delivered a talk, then he was invited at the official launch of a local organization, Ceata Foundation (it is actually older, but until now it was an informal group which recently was registered officially), which is crafted very much upon RMS style: Free Software supporters but to the extreme, burning bridges with other local groups (for example harassing fedoraproject.ro contributors).
Time for a disclaimer: I worked for a couple of years with Ceata on various projects and even had some formal position inside, but left in the summer of 2011 entirely for personal reasons, it was NOT due to differences in our views on FOSS or leadership (which were plenty), I could easily handle that part. It was my private life. So yes, I have inside knowledge and could be suspected to hold a grudge, put I promise is not the case.
So, back to the point, Ceata managed a very powerful image move by bringing the most important guest for their core audience. And they scored a second image move: to get RMS to do an interview at a local TV channel, Nasul TV. It is a very small TV channel (I don't have them on cable, only few cable companies carry them) but is still a TV channel. Ceata put a set of requirements, which were accepted. The interview was broadcasted and is almost one hour long.
Do not have any bias, just watch the interview, after a very short introduction in Romanian, it is English with Romanian subtitles. I admit of watching only about 5 minutes, I know well the topic and I am just after attending in person one RMS talk, but for those who didn't, there is a lot of insight.
So far everything was positive, let's move to the "shoot in the foot" part: after the interview, Ceata is unhappy. They have a problem with the video format, they requested the WebM format to be used exclusively, but it was MP4 inside a Flash player. After talks, a link to the WebM version was added. Also there is an issue with Facebook page for the show being mentioned near the end of the interview, Ceata requested that part to be cut to no success. Then they have issues with the translation, things like the Romanian words used to translate "proprietary" or "non-free". And the big issue is with the license, the video recording was released as CC-BY-NC-ND, while the television does not understand the issue with NC (and imagine someone will sell their work for a profit), Ceata has a problem with the ND part: they can't replace the translation and can't censor the Facebook part (note: RMS himself uses CC-BY-ND).
So what a Free Software activism is expected to do? You can see it on their mailing list (in Romanian language): they are unhappy, threaten the TV channel, invite members to comment on the website, talk about a flashmob, boycott, even the "DDOS" word was heard (that mail is still up). Currently the flashmob is under planning, supposed to happen tomorrow morning (details in the linked thread). Focus was lost, it moved from the license to linguistics.
Next time with another such FOSS speaker will be around, expect him to be seen on TV. Or maybe not.
I hear he was here last time in the mid-90ies, but that happened ages ago and very few people know it ever happened, so when Richard Stallman came to Bucharest it was quite an event for the local FOSS community, many traveled long distance to see him talking. For me it was obvious to go there, I never attended one of his talks and it was a perfect opportunity to take some photos.
Open Source Open Mind or OSOM in short is the name of a yearly event "designed to reveal the general Open Source and Free Software concepts" (quote from its about page now at the fourth edition. It looks like so far it was very small and held at a couple of universities across the country. Honestly, I never heard about it. So when an invitation came to the official address, it got unnoticed.
Later, when one of the organizers contacted me personally, I gave it a second look and didn't like what I saw: the event is hosted at the Adobe Systems offices in Bucharest, by any means far from the ideal place for a FOSS event and as it conflicted with my day job, my reply was not a commitment "I may attend, but can't make a promise now".
In the meantime, they contacted a proper Fedora Ambassador, Chris from Greece. He got in touch with me, I expressed my doubts and reiterated the availability part: can't make a firm promise. And even if I go, I do not intend to keep a talk (sorry, but I can't give with a straight face promotional talks about software I find not functional in its default state). So he pursued the action inside Fedora and is attending the Romanian event with a talk, first time after 2009 when an international Fedora speaker visits the country.
Now I have a lot more free time and I understand quite a few ROSEdu people will be there too, so there is potential for quality time and good side-talks. I will attend (but only in the audience, not as a speaker) and report afterwards.
Being here, Chris wants to organize also a Fedora release event too, most likely held at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, but more info about that at a later time, when the details are set.
Honestly, it was a bit disappointing no Romanian picture made the international top 10 in the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 photo contest (we were used to the first place in the previous year after all), but here comes kind of a consolation prize: the first place in the GLAM contest.
Organized by the Europeana.eu culture portal, GLAM is a contest with photos of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Mmuseums: over 2300 photos from the over 350.000 submitted for Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 were tagged as such. 48 were selected and put to a public vote on Facebook (unfortunately in a walled garden). Now there is a winner, LibertinaGrim, one of the national winners with a detail picture from the Bran Castle (some of you may know it from the wrong, but popular, association with Dracula).
Together with the announcement, the portal's blog has a short story from the author, where she tells how and why she made it. Almost poetic "the colour combination between the wonderfully lit cross and the frozen trees in the background, the intriguing opposition between the warm and cold colour tones", read it!
Posts
All Comments
.jpg)
%2C_Sibiu.jpg)
