Stuff involving volunteers
So far in 2011 Wikipedians have written and translated 1,200 new articles to allow the Derby Museum & Art Gallery’s collection to be read in over a dozen languages using QRpedia codes. Derby Museum using multilingual QR codes on Vimeo. This has resulted in high search rankings for the museum and greater public engagement. Well […]
Yesterday Bristol Wireless volunteers Jim and your correspondent attended the afternoon session of the two Wiki Wildlife Edit-a-thons (news passim) that were jointly organised by Wikimedia UK and Wildscreen’s ARKive project, the Bristol-based digital archive of the world’s endangered species, which has kindly donated 200 items from its text archive on endangered species to help […]
Last weekend your ‘umble scribe found a comment waiting in the moderation queue from Shearon, an old friend of Bristol Wireless. Shearon used to call in to see us regularly for a chat and Linux/networking advice when we were based in St Werburghs Community Centre. Shearon’s comment is as follows: yo woodsy how u keepin […]
Bristol is well known for its links with natural history and wildlife. The city is the home to the BBC’s Natural History Unit and Bristol Zoo is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. To build further on this base, there’s a Wikipedia sprint coming up soon in Bristol in aid of ARKive, the organisation dedicated […]
I’m writing this at the instigation of fellow UK Wikimedia member Matt Jukes following on from last week’s successful Bristol Girl Geeks vs Wikimeet event (news passim) with a few thoughts on a couple of the barriers to contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects and raising the project’s woeful gender imbalance (87% male in […]
Last night saw another first in collaborative events in Bristol when Bristol Girl Geeks got together with a bunch of local Wikipedians plus trailblazing female Wikipedian Fiona Apps, who helps Wikimedia UK with outreach work (news passim). After we’d all got a glass of wine and some nibbles, Fiona was introduced and gave a brief […]
Some weeks ago we gave advance notice of the forthcoming Bristol Girl Geek Dinners and Wikipedia event on Thursday 18th August (news passim). Further details have now emerged. It’s being held at the Merchant Venturers Building, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB (map) and starts at 7.00 pm. The main aim of the […]
Following on from its first manifestation (news passim), a second Bristol Wiki Academy is now being planned to take place shortly on Monday, 4th July 2011. It will be hosted jointly by the BBC Anchor Project and Wikimedia UK. The details, including the venue, are still being worked out. However, the purpose of the day […]
Are you enthusiastic about Debian and thinking about contributing? If yes, then the Debian Women project and the OpenHatch project want to teach you the basics. They’ll be will be holding an IRC event on Saturday 7th May to help people that want to compile their first Debian package from source, and apply their first […]
Our friend Emma Harvey (a fine exponent of singing the ‘Free Software Song‘. Ed.) at Trinity Community Arts has sent out an email today to let people know Trinity is looking for volunteers to assist in developing its work. Amongst the types of volunteers wanted, we noticed the following: IT Assistant to help us build […]
Bristol Wireless has been using wikis for years to document and plan the development of the co-operative and its work, so we were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the Bristol Wiki Academy at the weekend (news passim). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Wiki Academy to be organised in […]
It’s a busy day in the lab, with volunteers Michael, Jim, Rich, Acesabe and yours truly present and it’s a real hive of activity, the silence punctuated by the gentle tapping of keyboards. Acesabe is up to something to do with networking of which ordinary mortals like your ‘umble scribe is not meant to wot […]
When: Saturday 19 March 2011. Arrive at 9.40 a.m. for a 10.00 start, continuing until 4 p.m. Lunch will be provided. Where: Room 1.06, Merchant Venturers School of Engineering, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, BS8 1UB (map) What: A non-technical event for individuals and organisations interested in working with Wikipedia and its related projects. Explore […]
One of the facts that came out of Jimmy Wales’ recent talk in Bristol (news passim) was that the majority of contributors to Wikipedia (aka ‘Wikipedians’) are male. Indeed, only 13% of current contributors are women. News now reaches the lab via Collective Action in Australia that a Women for Wikipedia campaign is running between […]
Arriving at the lab on Tuesday this week, your correspondent was pleasantly surprised to see that an additional batch of LTSP thin clients had been set up in the lab. He was even more surprised to observe that all 4 new machines were in use and a full-blown lesson on use of the Linux command […]
For a couple of hours earlier today, Bristol’s Victoria Rooms, a part of the University of Bristol, today became the Wikitoria Rooms, courtesy of the presence of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, who was in Bristol as part of Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary celebrations (Wikipedia was actually launched on 15th January 2001. How the world has […]
A pleasant surprise awaited your scribe on his arrival at the Lab yesterday: one of the happy smiling faces lurking there was Mark, who had to bring a halt to his volunteering activities last year to find a job to pay the bills. Anyway, Mark now has some spare time on his hands again and […]
From today’s inbox. The Debian Women project is pleased to announce the forthcoming start of a series of training sessions which will be held on IRC by experienced community members. The main goal of this initiative is to encourage more people, and specifically women, to contribute to Debian while introducing them to different aspects of […]
Bristol Wireless volunteer Acesabe is doing some testing in the lab at present. Over the last couple of days, he’s taken a WRAP board (like the one shown below) and installed Voyage One on it. Voyage itself has been described by Carla Schroder, author of Linux Networking Cookbook as: “Voyage is a very stripped-down Debian […]
Bristol Wireless will be officially reopening the Computer Room at Windmill Hill City Farm, Philip Street, Bedminster on Thursday 21st October after a brief period of closure. To mark the reopening, we’ll be holding an open access drop-in session from 10am-4pm on that day to encourage new internet users to get online as part of […]