Summary

This report presents activities by theOhio Wikimedians User Group during their third year, July 2018 - July 2019.
Throughout the year, Ohio Wikimedians User Group membership grew from 14 to 25.
The major projects for the group this year were helping hostWikiConference North America 2018 in Columbus, Ohio; initiating WikiProject Cleveland Museum of Art; edit-a-thons and workshop at the Ohio State University; and Wikimedia Movement Strategy.
Projects
WikiConference North America (WCNA) is the annual conference of Wikimedia enthusiasts and volunteers throughout the continent. In 2018, WCNA came to Columbus, Ohio from October 18-21. The theme for the year's conference waspossibility/posibilidad/possibilité.
The first two days, Thursday and Friday, were the pre-conference activities: A hackathon, tech demos, and the annual Culture Crawl, a day-long event where the conference collaborates with local museums, libraries, cultural, and metropolitan institutions to host free backstage tours, edit-a-thons, and more. These crawls are a fantastic opportunity for conference attendees to experience the local culture, as well as collaborate with local institutions to improve Wikipedia's coverage of local topics, and to upload new images to Commons. The conference's tours took place at the Ohio Statehouse; State Library of Ohio; Columbus Metropolitan Library; Thurber House; Orton Geological Museum; and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
Saturday and Sunday were the main conference days, which included over 60 community presentations, round-table discussions, panels, and lightning talk sessions. On behalf of the Ohio Wikimedians User Group,Kevin Payravi (SuperHamster) presented on theWikipedia Connection student organization. The User Group also hosted a lunch meetup.
Ohio Wikimedians who helped organize and run the conference include:
A more detailed report about the conference is available atGrants:Conference/WCNA/WikiConference North America 2018/Report.
On January 23, 2019, theCleveland Museum of Art announced its conversion into anOpen Access institution. TheCreative Commons Public Domain Dedication was assigned for the Museum's images and data.
At the Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access means the public now has the ability to share, collaborate, remix, and reuse images of as many as 30,000 public- domain artworks from the CMA’s world-renowned collection of art for commercial and non-commercial purposes. In addition, portions of collections information (metadata) for more than 61,000 artworks, both in the public domain and those works with copyright or other restrictions, works are now available.
In June 2019, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ohio Wikimedians User Group, and Neal Stimler (who had previously led the implementation of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access program) started collaborating to startWikiProject Cleveland Museum of Art on the English Wikipedia, dedicated to improving Wikipedia with photos provided by the CMA, as well as improving articles related to the Museum, its artworks, and artists featured prominently in its collections. A sister WikiProject was also createdon Wikidata, to serve as a hub for improving the status of CMA works on Wikidata, and for documenting the coverage and quality of existing items.
At the Ohio State University, theWikipedia Connection student organization continued to run through the end of 2018, hosting weekly workshops and helping host WikiConference North America 2018.
Unfortunately as members have graduated, the student group has gone on hiatus starting in 2019.
As a Wikimedia affiliate, the Ohio Wikimedians User Group has been engaged in theWikimedia Movement Strategy process.
Events
The following are events hosted or supported by members of the Ohio Wikimedians User Group. See event pages for further details and statistics on each event.
Acknowledgments
The members and organizers of the Ohio Wikimedians User Group and Wikipedia Connection would like to thank the following for their help in supporting the Wikimedia movement: