$500,000 grant, Wikimania, Wikipedia Loves Art winners

On the Wikimedia Foundation blog this week, head of communications Jay Walsh announced a new unrestricted grant:

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its work bringing free educational content to everyone on the planet. With this grant, the Hewlett Foundation acknowledges the important role Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects play in making educational information freely accessible.

"The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," said Barbara Chow, director of the education program at Hewlett. "We look forward to a fruitful relationship."^{[grant 1]}

Wikimedia Foundation deputy director Erik Möller, writing on the foundation-l mailing list, said the grant was "designed to advance the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole".^{[grant 2]}

The Associated Press reported on the grant and The Register offered an analysis of Foundation funding.

Wikimedians have begun reporting their first impressions—generally positive—of the city of Buenos Aires, the site of Wikimania 2009. The conference will run Wednesday through Friday (26–28 August), with registration, the Wikimania Codeathon, and a presentation by Richard Stallman kicking things off on Tuesday. Many conference attendees are active microbloggers, and there is likely to be considerable discussion of the goings-on under the hashtag "#wikimania" on Twitter and identi.ca.

The winners of the Wikipedia Loves Art event at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK in February this year were announced last week. The winners were:

1st: vavaval (Val_McG and dj_photo) – 142 points

2nd place: opalartseekers4 (Forever Wiser) – 88 points

3rd place: ukfgr (the wee pixie and -mrsraggle-) – 82 points

4th place: veronikab – 75 points

• Sign-up has begun for the 2010 WikiCup competition.
• TomStar81 has written a summary of the tightening of guidelines for classified projects from the Military History WikiProject.

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Congratulations to those Wikipedians who were involved in obtaining and/or receiving the Hewlett-Packard grant. It is wonderful that HP is recognizing (and in a big way) your work in "bringing free educational content to everyone on the planet." As a new user/editor, I want to extend my thanks to all Wikipedians, especially those who spend countless hours as administrators, arbitrators, committee members, et al. You are helping make our world smaller and smaller. Eagle4000 (talk) 18:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]