We pre-recorded the interview, and it was broadcast at the unsociable hour of 3am this morning. Fortunately, it’s also online, as part of the Outriders podcast (indexed under today’s date, 20 November 2012), so you can hear it at your leisure. It takes up the first twelve minutes of the show.
We discussed QRpedia, my current role as Wikipedian in Residence with Staffordshire Archives and Heritage Service, and my favourite Wikipedia article, The King of Rome.
My friends Kate Sahota, Dan Slee and Simon Whitehouse, and Liz O’nions from our sponsors Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, and I ran the ‘Hyperlocal West Midlands‘ (‘HyperWM’) unconference today; the third of these annual events, for local government and other public sector workers, and hyperlocal bloggers interested in working with them. As usual, I got to be compère, a role which I greatly enjoy.
It was great to see many old friends, even though the opportunity to chat to them was of necessity limited.
For the event, we produced a newspaper. Yes, a real newspaper, made from dead trees. The idea was to give some information to the many attendees who are not yet fully engaged with the digital world.
Two of my articles were included, a shortened version of my blog post “Tips for Unconference newbies“, and the following, written specially, and reproduced here in its original form, before Dan got his sub-editing mitts on it, and with added links:
Open Up Your Content
No doubt you’ve heard a lot about open data (and if you haven’t, you soon will do). But what about “open content”? And what is open content?
The commonly accepted definition refers to content (text, images, audio or video) which may be used by anyone, freely (free as in speech, and as in beer), under what is known as an open licence. The “four Rs” apply: people should be able to Reuse, Revise, Remix (combine with other content) and Redistribute (give away or sell) the content. There may be a requirement to give attribution (in other words, you have to say who the author or owner of the content is) and an open licence does not negate moral rights (so you shouldn’t misrepresent the author or owner).
Open content sources include all of Wikipedia (except a few images, such as DVD covers), everything on Wikimedia Commons, many images on Flickr (check the individual licences, or use the “Creative Commons” option in their advanced search) and much, much more, and you can use any of that, on your website and in your paper publications and reports. For free!
So how does open licensing work, in the public sector?
Suppose you’ve written an FAQ about food hygiene. If a blogger, or a neighbouring council or health authority, or suchlike, ask for permission to use some or all of it, you’d probably say “sure, just give us a mention”. If you receive a request for a photograph of your new chief executive from the same people, you’d probably provide them with one. You’d do that, even for a local newspaper which makes money by selling adverts, and by being sold in newsagents.
An open licence, such as one of those provided by Creative Commons as a set of boilerplate terms which you can use without paying a lawyer to write them, simply formalises such sensible responses.
Better still, you can apply an open licence in advance of receiving a request, or many such requests, thereby relieving you of a tiresome administrative burden.
If you have useful content (of course you do!), and you’re not going to sell it (of course you’re not!), make it available (on your website, or a third party one like Flickr or Wikimedia Commons), and let the community you serve and the world at large benefit from it. You might be surprised at the uses they put it to, and how you and your customers can benefit from them.
(the relevant HTML markup being <a href="http://pigsonthewing.org.uk">Andy Mabbett</a>).
Why?
For two reasons. Firstly, though Twitter is fun, and I use it a lot, it’s ephemeral, and not everyone reading those post will want to use it. My website, on the other hand, has more about me and the work I do. Secondly, I need the Google juice (the value afforded to incoming web links by PageRank, the Google search algorithm ) more than Twitter does.
This isn’t just about me, though. The same applies every time a blogger or other web page author — and that probably includes you — links to anyone or any organisation, with their own website or blog. Please don’t just link to their page on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or on some other social networking site. Of course, do that as well, or if it’s the only online presence they have.
But if they have a website, as I do, please make that the primary destination to which you link. And hopefully, they will reciprocate.
A little while ago, my friend and fellow Wikipedia editor Andrew Gray (he’s the Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library!) mentioned to me that Wikipedia could do with more sound files. We discussed recordings of music, industrial and everyday sounds (what does a printing press sound like? Or a Volkswagen Beetle? What do different kinds of breakfast cereal sound like when milk is added?), as well as people’s voices, so that we have a record of what they sound like.
Beethoven’s Trumpet (With Ear) By John Baldessari, at the Saatchi Gallery. Photo by Jim Linwood, on Flickr, CC-BY
In the spirit of Wikipedia, all such recordings would be open-licensed, to allow others to use them, freely. They can then be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (the media repository for Wikipedia and its related projects) in an open format, namely Ogg Vorbis (that’s like mp3, but without patent encumbrances).
So I’m working on a new initiative to provide short (under ten-second) open-licensed audio clips of examples of the speaking voices of notable people (i.e. people who have Wikipedia articles about them).
What To Do
As a pilot, I’m asking some of my (cough) celebrity friends to kindly record the following, or a variation of their choice, with no background noise:
Hello, my name is [name]. I was born in [place] and I have been [job or position] since [year]
Once they’ve done that, they can convert the file to Ogg Vorbis using this free tool and then upload it to Wikimedia Commons, with an open-licence, with no “non-commercial (NC)” or “no derivatives (ND)” restrictions, (e.g. CC-By or CC-By-SA), and add the category “Voice intro project”.
If that’s too much fuss, they can e-mail it, or its URL, to me (andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk), using common file formats like mp3 or .wav, stating that it’s under one of those licences, and CC the mail to: permissions-en@wikimedia.org to formally record the open licence. Then I or other Wikipedia editors will make the conversion.
Alternatively, perhaps, they can point to a suitable, open-licensed, example of their speaking voice, which is already online.
Anyone Can Help
If you’re not the subject of a Wikipedia article, you can still help, by recording and uploading to Wikimedia Commons audio files, as described above, of machinery or everyday activities and occurrences.
Updates
A couple of Wikipedia article subjects have asked why they would do this. In short, so that there is a public — and freely reusable — record of what they sound like, for current and future generations. And so that we know how they pronounce their names.
I’ve been asked about multi-lingual recordings. The best thing would be separate files, one in each language, please.
If you have a microphone on your computer (doesn’t work on iPhone/iPad), it’s possible to record directly into the Vocaroo website, and just email or tweet me a link. But you still need to agree to an open licence!
I’m working with a large public-sector organisation who have a considerable — and potentially very useful — body of data. They’re keen to open it up, and would like to encourage people to use it by having a hack event of some kind. At the same time, it’s gratifying that they’re clear that they don’t wish to unfairly exploit anyone.
We’re considering a number of options, and would welcome comments and additional suggestions.
The event could be held in the Midlands; over one day or two, on weekdays, weekend, or Friday-Saturday. Or a competition could be announced online, with a virtual or real-life “dragons den” type event, for people to present things they’ve worked on at home.
You won’t need one of these to take part… Computer Museum: Cray-2 by cmnit, on Flickr, CC-BY
Should we set a specific challenge, or just ask people to do something interesting with the data?
I’ve suggested prizes might be offered for both the most compete solution, and the best idea, whether compete or not. There might be prizes in other categories, such as the best idea by a young person or the most accessible product, or different categories for commercial and hobbyist entrants.
The data holders might also like to consider developing business relationships to the developers of one or more of the products, separate to any prize giving; rights in all the entries would of course remain with their developers, otherwise.
How would you like such an event to happen? We’re aware of the Hackday Manifesto, but what else is best practice, and what other pitfalls should be avoided?
[This post is rather overdue. Apologies to those of you who’ve been waiting for it.]
Saturday
Saturday at Wikimania started with an interesting plenary by Wikimedia Foundation Chief executive Sue Gardner, whom I’d had the pleasure of meeting, when I produced and engineered the live-streaming of a Wikimedia-UK board meeting, from the British Library in November 2011.
After lunch, it was my turn to face the spotlights I gave a presentation on the development of, and my work with, QRpedia, as part of a workshop I led with Lori Byrd Phillips and John Cummings, who have deployed QRpedia respectively at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and as part of Monmouthpedia. After they had both spoken, we led the participants in hands-on exercise to create QRpedia QR codes, which they will hopefully in their home towns around the world. One participant tweeted:
this qrpedia session has, thus far, been the least schizophrenic and most concretely useful bit of #wikimania
We then had a mad dash to the theatre next door, to hear the closing plenary, by the Official Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero (I’d met him at the launch event and found him both approachable and witty. He wouldn’t let us have back their copy of Magna Carta, though). His speech was both complementary to Wikipedians and very inspiring; I do recommend you watch this video of it:
Then, we all piled outside for a group photo. See if you can find me!
Image by Adam Novak, CC-By-SA
A spare couple of hours gave time to return to the hostel, which I did by taking a meandering walk, freshen up, a then take another long walk, trough a part of town new to me, past many embassies, to Dupont Circle, for the closing party, with more plentiful free food and beer. The former was delicious, the latter as mediocre as I was sadly coming to expect. Yet another long walk got me to my bed.
Sunday
Though that formally ended the conference, the next day was given over to an unconference. I attended a useful session on browser tools to assist power-editing, then led a session on “Templates (Infoboxes): rationalisation and metadata emission” (trust me, that will mean something to technically-minded Wikipedia editors). This was one of the Wikimania’s highlights for me; not because I led it, but because the attendees gave me answers to some issues that had been vexing me for some time, and have continued since to work collaboratively with me, on-line, to resolve them. I also got to meet “Quarl” , who some years earlier had helped me immensely, by doing the coding of an idea I’d had, which became the template (“{{Coord}}“) now used over a quarter of a million times on the English Wikipedia (and many more in other languages) to display coordinates and emit them as metadata (a ‘geo’ microformat). These are used by partner organisations, like Google (for the Wikipedia layer on their maps) and by Yahoo. And I hadn’t even realised Quarl was at Wikimania!
The flip side, though was that the unconference was poorly attended, and petered out, so after lunch, I sloped off and decided to visit some of the museums I’d thought I would have to miss out on. I first called at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, specifically to see their three steam locomotives, the earliest of which, the John Bull, was made in England in 1831. They also had a Washington streetcar and a vehicle from the Chicago “L” overhead railway, plus several road vehicles. I then went over to the National Archives, where I saw not only the aforesaid copy of Magna Carta, but also the three “stars” of their exhibition, the original Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
My next call was the Old Post Office, whose tower is available to visit, giving splendid views over all of Washington, and Ronald Reagan Airport in neighbouring Virginia. It also allowed me to see a horrible storm brewing over Arlington Cemetery, so when I left I headed straight for my hostel, and made it just before a downpour started.
Once the rain had passed, I had a last couple of beers in another local bar, part of the Capitol City Brewing Company group, whose beer is brewed locally. I tried the “Amber Waves” and “Pale Rider” ales, which were good by local standards.
Monday
I was not sure what to do with my last day in Washington, but luckily was persuaded to visit the ‘other’ Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport. With John Cummings, I took a long bus ride to the airport, then he and I and some other Wikipedians shared a short taxi ride to the Museum. Wow. I got to stand next to the Space Shuttle ‘Discovery’ (admittedly, I’d seen it before, but only as a point of light, transiting in orbit from over Ireland to over Germany, viewed from my front garden!), a French Concorde, a Blackbird spy plane and, some unique German oddities from the last weeks of WWII, and, chillingly Enola Gay, the single vehicle that has killed more people than any other in our planet’s history.
We then had to take a shuttle bus to the airport, a bus back to Washington, pick up our bags from the hostel (the museum’s own publicity material said we couldn’t take luggage to the museum with us; annoyingly that turned out to be untrue, but caused us to waste over two hours), then take another bus back to the airport.
The flight home took off at dusk, and from my window seat I saw New York, Long Island and Cape Cod, all lit up. I then slept like a log until we were over Ireland. My trip home was really smooth. The Heathrow Express train to London, my tube train, my train home from Marylebone, and my bus from central Birmingham to my house were each waiting for me as I arrived and departed a soon as I boarded. It was like clockwork. The next day I slept late, but had no jetlag.
Conclusion
I confess I made my first trip to the USA expecting not to like it; for it to be too brash and aggressive. I was wrong. I loved it, and I’d go back tomorrow. The people were fantastic, and I barely scratched the surface of the cultural and historic interest Washington has to offer, let alone the rest of that vast country.
Wikimania was fascinating. I met so many people I’d corresponded or worked with online or who were new to me, and I continue to chat electronically with many of them. I’m buzzing with ideas for things we can do on, and with, Wikipedia.
But most of all, I remember a Wikipedia editor who asked for a volunteer to push his wheelchair round the Capitol tour. He was from Israel, and the guy pushing his chair, with whom he was sharing a lot of laughter, was from Iran. Enough said.
The weather cooled somewhat. I arrived at George Washington University by Circulator bus, then spent the morning in two GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sessions, listening to presentations on a collaboration with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and a panel with various national GLAM project coordinators. I also met the editor who put up the first QRpedia code in Australia.
For a change from GLAM, the post-lunch session I chose to attend was about anther area of interest if mine, mobile access to Wikipedia, where I learned that Wikipedia’a Android app is already fully translated in Welsh, and the mobile website just a handful of phrases away from being so. My Welsh-speaking colleagues back home have already agreed to my suggestion that they close that gap. That will be important for our Geovation bid and other projects using the Welsh language.
A walk to historic Georgetown followed, for a fringe event, the Wiki in Education meetup, generously hosted by the Saylar Foundation, who fed and watered the unexpectedly large crowd at their riverside premises. It was great to meet so many people, including a lot of professors and other educators, who are passionate about using Wikipedia and sister projects in their teaching. I picked up a lot of tips for my plans to liaise with language educators in the UK, to get Wikipedia article translations set as homework for their students.
On leaving Georgetown, a screaming flock of Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) flew over us. Though I’d already seen individuals, this was the first time I’d heard them. They’re very different to the Swifts we get in the UK, being smaller and paler.
A group if us took the Circulator back across town to 6th Street for a couple of beers at the “Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar“, a pop-up venue created as part of a fringe festival. I enjoyed a Doggie Style (!) Classic Pale Ale by Flying Dog and a Pitch Black IPA by Widmer Brothers. For the first time here, I saw moths flitting about, but wasn’t able to get close enough to any to recognise, or photograph them. We also saw a couple of historic buildings, jacked up in mid-air, on Jenga-like piles of wood, as the area around them is redeveloped.
Thursday was the first day of Wikimania proper, and I arrived at George Washington University by bike. The day began with keynote speeches. Sad to say, while Jimmy Wales is clearly a confident and proficient speaker, the content of his talk was quite uninspiring. The talk on increasing Wikipedia’s diversity, and in particular attracting more female contributors was far more interesting and thought-provoking. We all have a duty to do more in this regard.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into either of the first two sessions I wanted to, at first, as both rooms were packed to overflowing. Clearly, larger rooms should have been available. However, as the crowds thinned, I did manage to hear the end of the first GLAM session.
I was then interviewed on camera, for a Wikimedia promotional video. Though only seconds are likely to be used, I was questioned under bright lights for over half an hour, after first being subject to a makeup session, “to cover up blemishes”. Cheek — I don’t have any!
I then found two of my female friends, both upset that only male-fit T-shirts were left available to them, due to under-ordering. So much for doing more to increase diversity!
After lunch, I took my seat for a set of GLAM presentations, only to be asked to facilitate the session, with just a couple of minutes notice. The non-arrival of one speaker and technical issues with another’s laptop left me having to fill time, so I took the opportunity to again proselytise about QRpedia (thankfully, the audience were mostly different to that I’d spoken to on the previous day).
A brief rest at a fellow delegates’ neighbouring hotel was followed by a Metro ride to the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism, for another reception, where I had an interesting chat about our comparative health care systems, with American doctor, Roy Poses, President of the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine, one of the session panelists, and chatted to a high-school student from Pennsylvania, who was attending Wikimania, chaperoned by her non-Wikipedian mother. Truly, a fascinating spectrum of people were attending, and made welcome.
I started yesterday by joining a guided walk around Arlington Cemetery. The hostel I’m staying at offers regular tours to various venues and areas, led by local volunteers. A short Metro hop took us under the Potomac River and into Virginia, the state from which the cemetery overlooks Washington. In fact, from the top of the hill there, you can see three states, the third being Maryland.
Arlington is as sombre and as impressive as you would imagine, and impeccably maintained. As well as its famous military burials, dating back to the civil war, it has the graves of John F Kennedy and wife Jackie, and his brother Edward. There’s also a monument to those lost in the Lockerbie bombing and a tomb for unknown soldiers from various conflicts. Before leaving, I was lucky enough to see a very smart, male Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina).
My next call was George Washington University, venue for the Wikimania conference. After a great lunch and yet more catching up with friends, I attended a “Wiki Loves Libraries” event, to which librarians from other institutions had been invited. I gave a lightning talk on QRpedia, and had some useful discussions about Authority Control and Wikidata.
Then it was time to turn to the hostel, which I did by bike, to freshen and smarten up, before travelling to the Library of Congress for the formal reception event kindly sponsored by Google. Fine food and free beer certainly helped the mood, and I caught up with more people I’d met in Amsterdam, and met the official Archivist of the United States.
I particularly enjoyed viewing a display of significant American books including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which was written in my home town, Birmingham, England!
The view of the sunset behind the Capitol building was breathtaking. A courtesy bus took us to Dupont Circle, where a group of Brits and one German-Namibian found a bar for more refreshments (I enjoyed the best beer I’ve had here so far, an oatmeal porter), and put the World, or at least Wikipedia, to rights. There are some very interesting issues for Wikipedians in Namibia, where internet connectivity is patchy, and where source material is often not readily available. Work is underway to provide a self-contained, offline version of Wikipedia for schools there. We also enjoyed some pretty loud rock music, including the sublime ‘Freebird‘. The 18-year-old me who bought that on a 12″ single, would never have dreamed he’d one day listen to it in an American dive bar.
I started today by cycling east, up (and I emphasise up!) Capitol Hill, and to The Capitol Building or, rather, past it, as there is oddly no stand for hire bikes near that building. I found one a couple of blocks beyond The Capitol, where the streets are filled with picturesque residential buildings, of greater age than the anodyne office blocks in much of central Washington. It felt a bit like finding Notting Hill where Whitehall should be. I walked back to the Capitol for the first Wikimania activity — a guided tour of that building. We visited the interior of its vast rotunda, and its crypt, as well as a hall full of statues which was once where the House of Representatives met. The audio-visual presentation and museum-type displays in the new, underground, visitor centre gave me a much better understanding of the history and working processes of the US democratic system than I’d previously held. We also saw a real live congressman (I have no idea which).
Afterwards, I walked a couple of bocks to the north-east, to Union Station, to take a look at some real American trains (I’d only so far seen those on the metro).
On leaving, I asked a passer-by for directions to my bus stop, and he offered to walk with me as he was going that way. He turned out to be US government attorney and professor of law, and we had an interesting conversation about the pleasures of travel, and the use of Wikipedia in education.
I used the Circulator, a bus which runs across town, and costs only a dollar per trip, allowing one to hop on and off as often as desired within two hours. As it passed my hostel, I nipped in for a wash and brush up, and stopped at a roadside farm produce stall to buy a peach, picked in nearby Loudon County, Virginia, just three days ago. It was without doubt the best peach, and possibly the best piece of fruit, I have ever eaten.
I hopped back on the Circulator to George Washington University, to register and and pick up my delegate pack and speakers’ badge for Wikimania, the conference I’m attending. I had intended to depart again immediately, and walk around Georgetown for an hour or two, but more of the UK contingent had arrived, as well as some more of my friends from last December’s GLAMseterdam, and I finally met the delightful Lori Phillips, the Wikipedian in Residence at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, with whom I’m co-presenting on Saturday, so I lingered to chat, instead. The provision of free muffins and bagels, and drinks, did not influence my decision, at all.
At 5pm, a bunch of Wikipedians met up and took the Metro to the impressively maintained (and vandalism free, unlike many in the UK) Congressional Cemetery, where I was pleased to see an extensive deployment of QRpedia, by Peter Ekman, whom I had been happy to advise remotely. It was great to meet him too. We had a guided tour of the cemetery from its Program Director, RebeccaBoggs Roberts, during which we observed monuments to, and the burial places of, many notable characters, including J. EdgarHoover and composer John Philip Sousa. There were plenty of birds (no new ones) and a new Swallowtail butterfly, and I finally managed to find one of the big and noisy cicada-type insects which one hears here every evening.
We returned by Metro, timing our trip perfectly, as it started to rain just as we entered the station. When we came to leave at the other end, it was coming down like a tropical monsoon, and we were forced to shelter in the station entrance. While we did so, two metal manhole covers were noisily blown out of their seating by the air pressure inside the drains.
Eventually, the rain subsided and we made a dash for the hostel, thankfully arriving without a soaking.