Re: [Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
I like the idea, and I can see the benefit to the local organizations - having quality T-shirts that are unique to the local area, that are both pretty and informative, and are more worthwhile than the standard name+picture etc. It's worth noting that this can be done without WMF approval so long as the logos aren't used (i.e. you can use the pictures and text, giving attribution, and still get 70% of the benefit). It's worth bearing in mind, thought, that Wikipedia text is not written in a particularly exciting/interesting way. ;-) The central question, though, is whether this helps us achieve WMUK's main objective - collecting and spreading free knowledge. Money isn't the main aim here, really, as there is lower hanging fruit there (e.g. applying for grants from foundations, as the WMF is showing can be done well at the moment, or from generic funding agencies for specific projects). Offline visibility of content in general, though, is good - it helps to spread informative content into places that people might not expect it. At the moment, the balance seems to be skewed a bit too much towards the money side of things though, from what I can see. I also wonder whether doing this in concert with charity shops in touristy areas, rather than for-profit tourist shops, might be a better approach from a charity/non-profit-minded perspective. Mike P.S. With volunteer time: Tango, it's worth remembering that the first step towards having more of this is to support volunteers with ideas. ;-) On 25 May 2010, at 03:27, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] wrote: On Mon, 2010-05-24 at 03:30 +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 24 May 2010 03:28, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org wrote: Why not? The main reason not to do it is the amount of work involved in setting it up. At the moment, we are limited far more by volunteer time than money. We need convert money into time by hiring staff, not time into money by forming this kind of partnership. I think there needs to be a benefit in addition to the money if this is going to be worth doing. I have to disagree. And, will try to do so as reasonably as I can. You are quite correct that the WMF, and chapters, having staff is a key priority. I am, thankfully, not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV). It is the expertise of such people that could see boilerplate agreements drawn up that volunteers/members such as myself could take to local suppliers. From there, you might only build a £300-400 pound/year income with one supplier. But, join the dots, ... Take it around the UK. How many cities? How many articles for local places? A few hours of a lawyer's time to craft good 'standard' contracts, an hour or two of the time of volunteers like myself; it pays for itself very quickly, establishes a steady income stream, and encourages people to contribute because a tourist from the other side of the world might go home with the text, or picture, from an article they've contributed to. It fits with the attempts at some sort of rapport with museums. Their gift shops will sell T-shirts; think the British Museum doing a tee with an excerpt from the [[w:Howard Carter]] article, a related picture they've donated to Commons, and a payment to the WMF to put the enWP logo on it. Cafepress sucks, is overpriced, and 'over there'. Long-term I'm not talking about shifting a few dozen T-shirts; more like thousands per-year, per-city. To the intelligent tourist, it is embarrassing to go home with an I visited X, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt - with a Made-in-China label on it. No. With a little luck, and some help from a UK-based equivalent to Mike Godwin or Dan Rosenthal, you could have a lot of local companies looking to give money to the WMF, and protecting the trademarks for us. Seriously, just look at your local city, and its heritage. Look at the Wikipedia[1], and Commons[2] stuff for Edinburgh's most famous green space. Nothing featured pic/article-wise there. Good enough for a T-shirt though, and a real incentive for people to get featured material around that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_Street_Gardens [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Princes_Street_Gardens This ended up overly-long; but, I assume people will see why I immediately thought of Thomas as 'doing an an Iain (Dr No) Paisley impression'. Again, Kul is CC'd. I know how busy he's usually kept, and how careful the WMF is in entering into any agreements. It may be quite some time before he could comment on what I'm suggesting, but this is preemtive action; such businesses are usually poor when it comes to respecting copyright. More likely they'll defy the requirements to work within the legal framework and hope they don't get caught. It doesn't have to be like that, but a flat no is opening the door to the Wild-Wild-East flooding the EU and US with counterfeit goods bearing WMF logos. What, above
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
On Mon, 2010-05-24 at 03:30 +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 24 May 2010 03:28, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org wrote: Why not? The main reason not to do it is the amount of work involved in setting it up. At the moment, we are limited far more by volunteer time than money. We need convert money into time by hiring staff, not time into money by forming this kind of partnership. I think there needs to be a benefit in addition to the money if this is going to be worth doing. I have to disagree. And, will try to do so as reasonably as I can. You are quite correct that the WMF, and chapters, having staff is a key priority. I am, thankfully, not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV). It is the expertise of such people that could see boilerplate agreements drawn up that volunteers/members such as myself could take to local suppliers. From there, you might only build a £300-400 pound/year income with one supplier. But, join the dots, ... Take it around the UK. How many cities? How many articles for local places? A few hours of a lawyer's time to craft good 'standard' contracts, an hour or two of the time of volunteers like myself; it pays for itself very quickly, establishes a steady income stream, and encourages people to contribute because a tourist from the other side of the world might go home with the text, or picture, from an article they've contributed to. It fits with the attempts at some sort of rapport with museums. Their gift shops will sell T-shirts; think the British Museum doing a tee with an excerpt from the [[w:Howard Carter]] article, a related picture they've donated to Commons, and a payment to the WMF to put the enWP logo on it. Cafepress sucks, is overpriced, and 'over there'. Long-term I'm not talking about shifting a few dozen T-shirts; more like thousands per-year, per-city. To the intelligent tourist, it is embarrassing to go home with an I visited X, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt - with a Made-in-China label on it. No. With a little luck, and some help from a UK-based equivalent to Mike Godwin or Dan Rosenthal, you could have a lot of local companies looking to give money to the WMF, and protecting the trademarks for us. Seriously, just look at your local city, and its heritage. Look at the Wikipedia[1], and Commons[2] stuff for Edinburgh's most famous green space. Nothing featured pic/article-wise there. Good enough for a T-shirt though, and a real incentive for people to get featured material around that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_Street_Gardens [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Princes_Street_Gardens This ended up overly-long; but, I assume people will see why I immediately thought of Thomas as 'doing an an Iain (Dr No) Paisley impression'. Again, Kul is CC'd. I know how busy he's usually kept, and how careful the WMF is in entering into any agreements. It may be quite some time before he could comment on what I'm suggesting, but this is preemtive action; such businesses are usually poor when it comes to respecting copyright. More likely they'll defy the requirements to work within the legal framework and hope they don't get caught. It doesn't have to be like that, but a flat no is opening the door to the Wild-Wild-East flooding the EU and US with counterfeit goods bearing WMF logos. What, above all, we can't afford is volunteer time policing that. Brian McNeil. -- Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news. · Freelance, community-accredited, journalist. Wikinewsies do not officially represent the Wikimedia Foundation, its chapters, or any of the officially registered projects; all work is done on a freelance basis. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil | http://www.wikinewsie.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
[Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
Since I pulled out of Board candidacy because, well, I've insane work requirements/issues at the moment, ... My list access is sporadic intermittent. I've found what seems like a really good T-shirt shop in Edinburgh; and, they do print-to-fabric instead of crappy transfers or expensive, and likely to crack, screen printing. The main reason for me seeking such is to get accredited reporter tees for Wikinewsies; however, depending on the Chapter's mandate to fundraise and permissions with relation to logos, my chat with the owner indicated he'd be delighted to do local-area tees, with Wikipedia/Commons content appropriate to the area (Think T-shirt with WP logo, image of Edinburgh Castle, and intro text from the associated article.) To be blunt, the CafePress offerings are overpriced, and just not tempting enough for people to buy. I've CC'd Kul as he's likely to have the effective final say on drawing up deals with local businesses like this. But, I'm hoping the idea has appeal to a lot of UK Wikimedians. Thoughts? I've - finally - got a couple of days off (well, I'm doing 1830 to 2230 overtime today, Monday), but can have a chat with the guy in the shop this afternoon, or Tuesday. There's potential for something a million times smarter than the I visited location, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt stuff; with most reasonably-well-made tees costing around £20 to buy, but there being a 100% markup, I think it'd be easy to ask for a £1/tee licensing fee for the logos. Does WMUK have that authority? For the Londoners, I think the corollary would be shirts featuring the enWP text for Carnaby street, but only available from a couple of shops in the street. It seems the headache in the past has been looking for a global supplier; turn this on its head, license locally, and have tourists collecting Wiki-related T-shirts for the places they visit while supporting the WMF... Brian McNeil. -- Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news. · Freelance, community-accredited, journalist. Wikinewsies do not officially represent the Wikimedia Foundation, its chapters, or any of the officially registered projects; all work is done on a freelance basis. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil | http://www.wikinewsie.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
On 24 May 2010 00:29, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org wrote: I've found what seems like a really good T-shirt shop in Edinburgh; and, they do print-to-fabric instead of crappy transfers or expensive, and likely to crack, screen printing. The main reason for me seeking such is to get accredited reporter tees for Wikinewsies; however, depending on the Chapter's mandate to fundraise and permissions with relation to logos, my chat with the owner indicated he'd be delighted to do local-area tees, with Wikipedia/Commons content appropriate to the area (Think T-shirt with WP logo, image of Edinburgh Castle, and intro text from the associated article.) To be blunt, the CafePress offerings are overpriced, and just not tempting enough for people to buy. I've CC'd Kul as he's likely to have the effective final say on drawing up deals with local businesses like this. But, I'm hoping the idea has appeal to a lot of UK Wikimedians. Thoughts? I've - finally - got a couple of days off (well, I'm doing 1830 to 2230 overtime today, Monday), but can have a chat with the guy in the shop this afternoon, or Tuesday. There's potential for something a million times smarter than the I visited location, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt stuff; with most reasonably-well-made tees costing around £20 to buy, but there being a 100% markup, I think it'd be easy to ask for a £1/tee licensing fee for the logos. Does WMUK have that authority? It is an interesting idea. I don't think WMUK has the authority to do it unilaterally (we can sell t-shirts to members at cost price, but once you start to get commercial we need to consult the WMF), so you were right to CC Kul. What do you see as being the benefits of doing this? I think the financial benefits wouldn't be worth the effort (we make hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from donations, I wouldn't expect us to make more than a few thousand pounds a year at £1 a t-shirt). Do we think the PR/marketing side of it would be a significant benefit? ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
On Mon, 2010-05-24 at 00:49 +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 24 May 2010 00:29, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] Does WMUK have that authority? It is an interesting idea. I don't think WMUK has the authority to do it unilaterally (we can sell t-shirts to members at cost price, but once you start to get commercial we need to consult the WMF), so you were right to CC Kul. What do you see as being the benefits of doing this? I think the financial benefits wouldn't be worth the effort (we make hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from donations, I wouldn't expect us to make more than a few thousand pounds a year at £1 a t-shirt). Do we think the PR/marketing side of it would be a significant benefit? Well, it's the think small, but multiply by hundreds of places sort-of idea. You go into one of these places that makes up tees, with a design featuring WMF-owned logos, and they will - most probably - just print the thing for you. The clincher is, WMUK, and parent WMF, will see nothing financially. If you strike a deal, and local Wikimedians do the designs to appeal to those who frequent the locale, or are there as tourists, you give the person running the business something they can sell and we're required to put in very little effort. A pound for every T-shirt that tourists buy with a WP logo, a photo, and the text: Edinburgh Castle is a castle fortress which dominates the sky-line of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, from its position atop the volcanic Castle Rock. Human habitation of the site is dated back as far as the 9th century BC, although the nature of early settlement is unclear. There has been a royal castle here since at least the reign of David I in the 12th century, and the site continued to be a royal residence until the Union of the Crowns in 1603. Why not? -- Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org http://www.wikinewsie.org | http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] T-shirts
On 24 May 2010 03:28, Brian McNeil [Wikinewsie] brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org wrote: Why not? The main reason not to do it is the amount of work involved in setting it up. At the moment, we are limited far more by volunteer time than money. We need convert money into time by hiring staff, not time into money by forming this kind of partnership. I think there needs to be a benefit in addition to the money if this is going to be worth doing. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
