Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-15/News and notes

Brief notes

 * Wikimania 2015 is happening: Wikimania 2015 is now in progress&mdash;for 15-19 July Mexico City will host the biggest annual gathering of Wikimedians anywhere in the world. Unfortunately the Signpost will not have a presence at the conference; are you an attendee interested in helping compile coverage? Drop a line for us on the talk page. Presaging the conference, activity has lit up on the previously quiet wikimania-l mailing list. R
 * Board of Trustees: Wikimania will once again this year serve its role as the traditional re-seating point for the Board of Trustees, at which time this year's newly community-elected Board members will replace their respective outgoing trustees. This Wikimania in particular will also see through the election of a new chair and vice-chair to the Board. The annual Board of Trustees forum will take place: questions from the community directed at the Board are being collected at Board of Trustees noticeboard talk page on the meta-wiki. R
 * Quoth the chemist: Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing), Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society of Chemistry, announced a chemistry-quote competition to take place on Wikiquote, with cash prizes. Also on the mailing list is a link to the video of a presentation given by Mabbett on the use of Wikidata in OpenStreetMap. R
 * Fiscal year: Per an email in wikimedia-l, the Wikimedia Foundation's fiscal year is now over, and the fundraising department is set to begin work on next year's fundraiser. Details on the Foundation's impression of its activities will be posted to the fundraising reports once the report is compiled; for now there is a summary on the meta-wiki of near-future efforts to come. R
 * Erasmus Prize award ceremony: Three members of the Wikimedia community, chosen for diversity, will be presented the Erasmus Prize at an award ceremony on 25 November. A guest list for Wikipedians has been compiled on the Dutch Wikipedia, with sign-ups having closed on 12 July. For more information on the nature of the award refer to previous Signpost coverage. R
 * This Month: The June edition of the GLAM newsletter is now published, as is the June edition of the Education newsletter. R
 * Visiting Scholar positions: The Wikipedia Library (WMF) and the Wiki Education Foundation have partnered to put together a second round of Visiting Scholar programs. Applications are currently being accepted for positions at McMaster University, University of Washington, DePaul University, University of Pittsburgh, and the Smithsonian Institution. For more information on the outcomes of the program's first round see previous Blog coverage; a further blog post with more details on the matter has also been distributed (two, actually). R
 * WMDE fundraising report: Wikimedia Germany have released their detailed fundraising report on the meta-wiki. Wikimedia Germany's size and fundraising power are anomalously successful in the movement: the Chapter-Wide Financial Trends Report published in June had to correct many of its results to account for the heavy positive skew Wikimedia Germany in the statistics. An executive summary was published as a blog post in May. R
 * New WM-UK CEO: In a post to the wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia UK announced the hiring of a new executive CEO for the organization, Lucy Crompton-Reid, previously with the theatrical charity Apples and Snakes. A press release is available on the Wikimedia UK blog. R
 * Semantic Wikimedia Survey: The Semantic MediaWiki, a popular knowledge-base extension to the movement's base MediaWiki platform, is looking for feedback on a user survey ahead of a meeting at this year's Wikimania. R
 * p➞q: Wikipedia now has a channel on the notification-and-information-management website If This Then That. A number of recipes exist for things like setting your phone wallpaper to the Wikipedia Picture of the Day and getting the day's featured article in your inbox. R