This year, Wikimedia Chapters from all around the world and the Wikimedia Foundation from San Francisco met in Berlin for their annual Chapters Meeting. Together with Don Dahlmann, I facilitated the sessions.

Participants discussed such diverse topics as the technical development, the platform’s user interface, the state of Wikipedia in their respective countries, strategies to win new editors and ways to promote the encyclopedia in developing countries.

Don and I made sure everything went smoothly and on time, moderated workshops on specific topics, and visualized and documented outcomes.

To look behind the scenes of Wikipedia and meet the people that help build Wikipedia as a free and open, crowd-sourced and hyperlinked knowledge platform was a very inspiring experience to me. I look forward to seeing how the plans discussed at the 2010 Wikimedia Chapters Meeting will be put into practice.

Photography Credits:

Left © Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0
Right © Nicole Ebber / CC-BY-SA-3.0

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Becker’s eleven short documentaries take you through Eastern Europe and the lives and stories of those involved: How do people active in the tearing down of the iron curtain remember this historic year in retrospective? How has it changed and shaped their lives? The documentaries, funded by the European Commission and produced on behalf of Tipik communication agency, are subtitled in all 22 European languages. You can watch them here.

I had the chance to work with Patrick Becker and research eyewitnesses for the documentary in Berlin.

On the picture you see an image of the film with journalist Roland Jahn of “Kontraste” television news program, who organized press coverage on East Germany before and during the peaceful revolution.

An active member of the “Friedensgemeinschaft Jena” (peace community Jena), Jahn was taken away the right to study and imprisoned in the GDR. He was forcibly expelled in chains from the GDR in the early 80s, a bundle in a train. From West Berlin, he continued to support the opposition as a journalist.  A clandestine camera team filmed for Jahn in the East, and he broadcasted the pictures on West German television.

Though illegal, it was possible to watch West German television in East Germany. The footage compiled by Roland Jahn and his team showed an image of the GDR that was not state-censored. State authorities considered Jahn such a major threat that they carried out one of the biggest secret service campaigns ever in GDR history.

But Jahn continued to report and, in 1989, broadcasted spectacular pictures that brought the possibility of change into people’s minds. It was his cameramen who shot the only pictures of one what is considered to be the most important demonstration before the Fall of the Wall, in October 89 in Leipzig, from the top of a churchtower.

You can also see painter Katrin Hattenhauer, one of the initiators of the Leipzig demonstrations, in the “Germany” documentary.