Titelfoto: Diego Delso, Iglesia mayor, Ulm, Alemania, 2023-06-17, DD 57, CC BY-SA 4.0

In wenigen Tagen, am ersten September, beginnt wieder der Fotowettbewerb Wiki loves Monuments. Alle interessierten Fotograf*innen sind eingeladen, vom 1. bis zum 30. September Fotos von Kulturdenkmälern hochzuladen und mit ihnen am Wettbewerb teilzunehmen. Neben Ruhm und Ehre winken auch Buch- oder Fotoequipmentgutscheine im Wert von bis zu 300 EUR. Kulturdenkmäler sind denkmalgeschützte Gebäude, Industrie-, Technik- oder Gartendenkmäler.

Im vergangenen Jahr gehörte auch die oben abgebildete Ansicht von Münster und Stadthaus zu den Top-100-Fotos. Der spanische Fotograf Diego Delso war offenbar im letzten Juli in Ulm zu Besuch und hatte dieses Foto geschossen. Denn, das ist wichtig, die Fotos müssen nicht im September aufgenommen worden sein, sie müssen lediglich im September erstmals hochgeladen und für den Wettbewerb eingereicht werden. Also können auch viele Jahre alte Fotos oder gar Scans von Dias oder Fotonegativen am Wettbewerb teilnehmen – Hauptsache, Du selbst hast das Foto gemacht und stellst es unter einer Freien Lizenz bereit.

Aber auch wenn du noch kein Foto eines Kulturdenkmals gemacht hast: Selbst in kleinen Ortschaften gibt es praktisch immer irgendwelche Bau- oder Bodendenkmäler – vielleicht bist du bislang nur immer daran vorbeigegangen und hast sie gar nicht als Denkmäler wahrgenommen. Auf einer Extra-Seite sind deshalb Listenseiten und auch eine Karte aufgeführt, mit denen du die Denkmäler findest, von denen die Wiki-Community bereits etwas weiß.

Schau dich deshalb gerne mal um: Gibt es noch Kulturdenkmäler in deinem Heimatort oder deiner Umgebung, von denen es noch kein Foto unter einer Freien Lizenz gibt? Oder gibt es vielleicht eines, das Du noch einmal ganz anders und schön in Szene setzen möchtest? Dann probier Dich gerne mal aus – und wenn Du magst, reiche Dein Foto beim Fotowettbewerb ein!

LaTeX is an enormously powerful software package for digital text typesetting, which is mainly—but not only–used in academia for typographically beautifully set texts. From scientific papers to DIN-compliant letters (with fold and hole punch marks!) to theses or entire books (including all the graphs and plots in them), a great many things can be put into a respectable form with this typesetting system.

Die-hard users of this system have been meeting for a long time at decentralized regulars’ tables, but also at interregional meetings. The Bavarian LaTeX regulars’ tables have been organizing the annual Bavarian TeX conference BayTeX since 2003, and from 2006 to 2009 also with the support of the LaTeX regulars’ table Ulm and last time actually in Ulm in 2006.

All the better that BayTeX is returning to Neu-Ulm: On Saturday, September 7, 2024, BayTex will take place at temporärhaus! The event is expected to last from 10 am to 6 pm. You can find more information, the link to register and the opportunity to submit your own contributions on the event page Many thanks to Leah Neukirchen for the organization and the opportunity to host BayTex here!

You can tell it’s summer in the city: people frolicked on the Danube and other bodies of water in July and the streets emptied out as soon as the vacations began. For us active people, the summer is also more about swimming than being indoors, but there was still plenty going on in front of and behind the scenes!

Like almost every month, a lot has happened in the workshop and atelier: In the workshop, Seppi and Co are building new organizational aids week by week to be able to tidy up tools and sort construction aids into their right places. In the atelier, both the ceramics workshop and the photography department made huge progress in July. Firstly, Steffi and Patrick’s pottery kiln was delivered and they successfully fired their first pottery pieces in it. Do you want to engage in pottery too? Talk to them or keep an eye on our calendar for upcoming offers to learn or practice pottery together. On the other hand, the vh Ulm has closed down its former photo lab and we were kindly offered to take over parts of it. We are now one of several places where the vh’s analog photography equipment will be given a new lease of life, for which we would like to say a big thank you!

Our event and stage tech has also been given a delightful upgrade. The setup with the sound and lighting mixer was a little overwhelming for some people, so the stage crew came up with a way to make the technology easier to use. All the important things are now controlled via the home automation system and can be controlled with a click on a tablet on the wall. As reported, we were also on the road to collect photos under a free license for Wikipedia and Co—Spoiler Alert, this is also planned for August :)

In addition to all these individual activities, there was of course our regular programming: Starting with the sewing café, where not only items of clothing were repaired, but visitors also fitted and sewed airy summer clothes themselves. The RAD-ikal technisch crew met to work on measures and projects to promote cycling in the twin city. As announced, the Live Let’s Plays are now taking a summer break—but not without having organized one last event at the beginning of July. The group behind LoRaWAN and The Things Network offered two evening events, which could also be used to work in the open soldering lab. The group Capture the Flag, that playfully works with IT security, also met twice and F.U.C.K. again offered two events. Last but not least, the workshops were also open twice for Maker Monday—although one was postponed by a week due to Schwörmontag.

We also met in July for a house evening with all interested parties who are already organizing regular events or would like to do so. Here we discussed current tasks and to-dos.

There are actually a lot of these to-dos, combined with a few exciting additions to the numerous things that are already possible with us. But that will be the subject of an upcoming monthly review :)

Exactly two hours. That’s how long it took from the moment Martin Ansbacher took the traditional oath for the first time as the new mayor until Wikipedia author ThoBel-0043 uploaded his photo of this moment to Wikimedia Commons. And 16 minutes later, this picture was also in Ansbacher’s Wikipedia article, which had had to make do without a photo of him for the previous eight months.

Things were a little different in the previous 2015 mayoral election: Back then, we had built an OB-Mat as a decision-making aid for the election, and at that time we had explicitly asked the candidates for photos under a free Creative Commons license. This meant that the field was already tilled, so to speak, so that we could subsequently add portraits to the corresponding Wikipedia articles. This time we had decided against reissuing the OB-Mat. So the challenge for the volunteer Wikipedia community was either to get a photo under a Creative Commons license elsewhere — or to take one themselves.

At Ansbacher’s inauguration, this attempt only worked out moderately well – he can be seen in two of the photos taken with our house camera, but not really recognizable for an article picture. Schwörmontag, on the other hand, is of course the perfect opportunity for photos like the ones we want to have. Not only does the mayor stand on a balcony for an hour and can’t just wander off while you take his picture. There are also rows and rows of people in the audience of whom there may not yet be a suitable photo for Wikipedia.

For Martin Bendel’s article, for example, there has so far only been one photo taken of his side at the pandemic Schwörmontag 2020. Maximilian Fichtner, who was awarded the Ulm Science Prize, did not yet have an article photo at all. And there is currently not even a Wikipedia article about Marianne von Schwerin, who has also been awarded the Science Prize.

And sometimes older article images can also be updated in this way - the previous photo in the article about former Mayor Gönner was already 14 years old.

In principle, we really like doing this kind of thing. This is another reason why we bought a very fancy camera with powerful lenses as part of the 2021 DSEE funding and have been using it since then not only to document our own work, but also for free media for Wikimedia Commons. Because with every photo and every video in this free media archive, a shared cultural and historical memory grows that can be reused by the whole world. Although the press and public broadcasting stations also document what is happening in our city and around the world on a daily basis, this content is increasingly ending up behind paywalls and other obstacles in the private media, and public broadcasters have to depublish these works after a while. And these media files are not reusable anyway – neither for re-use in Wikipedia, nor for us here on the website, for example.

On the other hand, this work would not have to depend on volunteers like ThoBel-0043 and us. Public broadcasters and local authorities could simply place the photos they publish on their websites under a Creative Commons license of their own accord. And universities usually take photos of all their professors anyway – who, by definition, usually also meet the relevance criteria for a Wikipedia article. Since these works are paid for through broadcasting contributions and public funds anyway, it would actually be easy to say that what has been publicly funded should also become a public good.

Until then, there is still some convincing to do. The progressive political groups could of course do their bit. Ideally by passing ordnances that lay down this principle and have their administration publish their works under a free licence by default. But also by placing the photos of their elected representatives under a free license themselves. If you want to know more: We’re happy to help :)

You can find all photos of the Schwörmontag ceremony in the corresponding category on Wikimedia Commons!

PS: Two hours and 14 minutes after the oath, the Wikipedia article on Schwörmontag was also newly illustrated. The previous update from one OB to the next had taken four years. The local community seems to be getting faster :)

June began with a heap of warnings from the German Weather Service and the Bavarian Flood Information Service: Heavy rain was forecast and significant flooding was also expected for the Iller and Danube.

With several instances of water damage caused by heavy rain last year in mind, we began to take precautions. We had to check the drains around the building and the downpipes on the canopy in order to make sure that even a heavy downpour could drain away well. At the same time, we monitored the level of the Iller at the Kempten gauge, which would also affect the level of the Danube with a few hours’ delay.

During the hundred-year flood (of which we have experienced several in the region since then) in 1999, Neu-Ulm city center was spectacularly flooded. Since then, both cities have implemented comprehensive flood protection measures, including mobile levees, so that according to the Bavarian forecast maps a hundred-year flood would be unlikely to affect our house, which is operated jointly with the Haus der Nachhaltigkeit. However, according to the forecast, in case of extreme flooding exceeding the hundred-year-flood mark, we would have been right in the middle of it. So we had to check the basement and make sure that, if the worst came to the worst, there was nothing on the floor that would be spoiled by water, or could contaminate the water.

In the end, unlike the south-eastern district of Neu-Ulm, the city did not experience extreme flooding and the measures were sufficient. Nevertheless, it still looked spectacular in the town. We were out and about with our camera and documented the situation on June 1 comprehensively for Wikimedia Commons. Our images can be viewed in the categories June 2024 floods in Ulm and June 2024 floods in Neu-Ulm and may be reused under the terms of the Creative Commons license. Immediately afterwards, one of the photos was also one of the first images in the Wikipedia article on the floods in southern Germany in 2024 (diff).

The floods still hit us in the end. The Bavarian HND also measures the groundwater level at various measuring points, and it rose very rapidly as the flood crests of the Iller and Danube passed through. And so the water also slowly sept in at the lowest point in our basement. The area was cordoned off very professionally using equipment from our mini construction depot and the water was subsequently pumped out. For a few weeks afterwards, the drying equipment already familiar from last year’s water damage had to suck the residual moisture out of the basement.

Our regular activities

In addition to all the immediate danger prevention, our regular program naturally continued, to which we were once again able to welcome well over 100 people in June.

As usual, we had two open Maker Mondays with an open wood and metal workshop. The RAD-ikal technisch event once again focused on technical tools to promote cycling in the twin city, together with the ADFC. The Live let’s plays are now saying goodbye for the summer break, but still took place once a week with four editions in June. The core program still includes the bi-weekly evenings around The Things Network/LoRaWAN, which also opened our electronics workshop twice in June for all interested people. The CTF/PPP group met twice and is also increasingly appealing to young people who want to immerse themselves in the world of playful computer security. At the Sewing Café, visitors once again repaired the clothes they had brought with them or re-sewed summer items to suit the season. The F.U.C.K. group had two meetings in June for all non-male people who want to get involved with IT, and the Jugend hackt Lab once again offered its monthly meeting point for all young people who want to gain access to IT and free knowledge in a fun way. Free knowledge was also the focus of the third quarter of Wiki loves Basketball, where local activists created machine-readable access to the master data of basketball players in the semantic knowledge database Wikidata.

Like almost every month, there were a lot of caretaking tasks in June. The wood workshop, for example, is currently evolving from week to week, as the rather temporary initial set-up immediately after moving in is now gradually giving way to a more well-thought-out layout, which will also make the newly acquired machines easier to use. At the same time, we are systematically going through the stock that has grown over the years, and mark the equipment and tools that seem to be of little use to our workshop.

Things are also progressing in the atelier: Eli has built and tested another printing press. And the ceramics department is also nearing its grand opening. The clay separators have been built and at least temporarily installed, and the kiln has also been set up and is ready for its first tests. So if you haven’t visited us for a while, you should definitely catch up – because there are a lot of changes to discover.

Thanks to everyone who thinks of us

Whether locally or from afar, we are always happy about everyone who thinks of us and supports us. Be it through a regular or individual donation, for example on betterplace or directly, but also by mentions and telling our stories.

Special thanks this month to the multiple mentions on the panel “Caring for our Web – Software Projects as Care Work” at re:publica 2024. There, tante, who was recently a speaker at Denkanstöße 2024 in Ulm, explained from minute 0:50:07 onwards how a city can interfere with volunteering projects with a great deal of force and dominance. From minute 0:53:56, in response to a question from the audience, he briefly explains the story again and calls the city of Ulm’s approach “the best practice for doing it the worst way”—and Franziska Heine from Wikimedia Deutschland makes it clear that Wikimedia supports us at the new location and that the city’s approach is not a good example of how a municipality should deal with the local volunteer community. Thank you very much for these shout-outs—and of course also for the support from Wikimedia Deutschland, which enables us to continue pursuing our original and self-chosen mission!

May is over—and until the floods at the end of the month, it was almost business as usual. Almost, because in southern Germany it was another month in which there was a public holiday practically every week, which is why (and because of illness) a few events were canceled.

Nevertheless, we again had 16 events with the standard program: from the Sewing Café to RAD-ikal technisch and the OpenStreetMap regulars’ table, two Maker Mondays, two CTF meetings and two open electronics labs with The Things Network/LoRaWAN. Not to forget a meeting of F.U.C.K., a Jugend hackt Lab and four Live Let’s Plays.

As part of the Wikidata competition Coordinate Me, there was also a related meeting for interested parties to assign coordinates to Wikidata objects such as hospitals or government buildings. In addition to the public schedule, internal organizational and working meetings as well as a plenum of local climate protectors took place as usual.

So far, so unspectacular really. Until the last two days of the month, when there were more and more signs that we were threatened not only by persistent heavy rain, but also by flooding—which is why we cleaned the rainwater drains and prepared the house for all eventualities. The result in advance: our feet got wet, but there were no serious consequences. But that will be the content of the June report :)

April has been over for a few weeks now—we may only be reporting on it now because we first had to catch up and celebrate a milestone we reached in March ;) We count (rather conservatively) the number of visitors at all events and we already broke the 1000-person mark on Maker Monday on March 18. If that wasn’t a reason to celebrate!

Another reason to celebrate is the revival of the Jugend hackt Lab, which is now called Jugend hackt Lab Neu-Ulm. The kick-off event took place on April 27 and we are very pleased to be able to firmly anchor this young talent program in the twin city once again. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the newly found team of volunteers who have revived this program and are now running it!

Apart from that, we were back to normal in April with a solid 17 public events. Our machines and equipment were available at the Sewing Café, two open Maker Mondays and two TTN/LoRaWAN evenings with an open electronics lab – accompanied, of course, by a friendly exchange and working on things together. The RAD-ikal technisch continues to focus on interesting technology infrastructure for the mobility transition, the OpenStreetMap-Stammtisch was about free knowledge, the F.U.C.K. group met twice (increasingly with guests from far and wide), three Live Let’s Plays were about computer game culture and twice the CTF/PPP group invited people to playfully deal with IT security topics. A Küche für Alle was also held for the second time.

As always, there was also a lot going on outside of these public events. One group took care of a wall painting as a welcome message at the back entrance, which you can see in the cover picture. We are still busy with a lot of small expansion work on the lighting and home automation. And of course it was once again a point of honor to present our house to the new students at the start of the university semester—after all, we emerged from the student datalove group and still maintain contact with Ulm University today.

From Saturday, April 27 at 2 p.m., there will be another Jugend hackt Lab in the twin city—now on the other side of the Danube. The first workshop is all about learning to solder, as this is the basis for many hardware projects. And by the way, you’ll have built something nice in the end!

Anyone between the ages of 12 and 18 can take part and choose a soldering kit, assemble it and take it home with them. From an axolotl to a space girl pendant to a “Jugend hackt” alpaca and beyond, we have a whole collection of different kits to choose from. Beginners who want to learn how to solder for the first time are just as welcome as advanced users. Participation is free of charge, but a registration email to jhlab ‘at’ temporaerhaus.de will help us a lot with the planning!

Youth work is practically in our DNA: there were already many overlaps with STEM youth work in the student open data group at the University of Ulm. In 2015, we brought the youth development program Jugend hackt, which had started two years earlier, to the south with a weekend event at the University of Ulm and that’s where the idea for a hacker and makerspace in the city that is self-determined and managed by the community was born.

In addition to the weekend events held from 2015 to 2019, we have always been keen to offer youth programs throughout the year. The Jugend hackt program found an answer to this with the Jugend hackt Labs, which started in 2019—and we were very pleased that our community, alongside Fürstenberg an der Havel became the host of one of the first two nationwide labs, which was followed by 18 other locations over the years.

We are therefore even more pleased that after the premature end of our activities in Ulm and a year-and-a-half-long forced break, the Jugend hackt Lab in Neu-Ulm will return starting 27 April 2024. Last year, a group of volunteer mentors formed, who would like to continue this valuable and multiple award-winning program in the SpoSo rooms.

In future, the Jugend hackt Lab will be held once a month, alternating with open meetings and workshops on different topics. It’s not just about technology and learning to program: we see technology as a means of societal change and would like to invite young people not just to consume, but to use these tools to actively participate in their own environment and explore the political dimensions of free software, free hardware, open data and transparency.

Photos: Axolotl Fanclub Badge, CC BY-SA 4.0 blinkyparts.com; Lunch outside at the first Jugend hackt in Ulm, CC BY 3.0 Eva-Maria Kühling/Peter Wozniak; Jugend hackt in Ulm 2019, CC BY 4.0 Holger Dorn (Jugend hackt)

Sun! Rain! Sahara dust! Capricious weather! But at least it’s summertime! March brought us all of this, in addition to a total of 19 public events at the temporärhaus. This month, we would like to highlight the lecture on The Human Cost of AI, the workshop evening Wikidata loves Basketball and the three-day LokaliCon meeting of the local community rooms of Wikipedians from nearly all over Germany (which only counts once for the statistics despite the three days). In addition, a Kitchen for All took place for the first time as part of the Climate Alliance, which is also supported by Haus der Nachhaltigkeit.

As the input on the human costs of the current AI hype fitted in so perfectly with the Ulmer Denkanstößen, which started a week later, we were able to get Prof. Rebekka Hufendiek to moderate the event. Mophat Okinyi impressively explained the working conditions of Clickworkers in his home country of Kenya, for example, who not only make the training of “AI” possible in the first place, but also have to fight their way through hate and violence on the social networks of the relevant tech companies every day as the first moderation instance. Thanks to the CCC Ulm and Guido Sondern for arranging and collaborating on this programming!

As usual, there were also 15 regular events, from the OpenStreetMap-Stammtisch to the Nähcafé, RAD-ikal technisch, four Live Let’s Plays and two editions each of F.U.C.K., Maker Monday, CTF/PPP and the TTN/LoRaWAN evening, which, as reported, is now also an open evening for all things related to the electronics lab.

One of the F.U.C.K. meetings was about photography and how ASA/ISO, aperture and shutter speed interact. Almost trivial for Karo, who usually works on quantum optics during the day. Meanwhile, we also played with photography in general to upload images of objects under a free license on Wikimedia Commons. And as described, we would like to use our photocopter to be able to make aerial shots available to the world as Free Knowledge.

House construction work, house cleaning weekend, the woodworking workshop and the new atelier

In the monthly reports, we traditionally only include events that are aimed at the general public or groups from within the digital volunteering community. As has been the case since the beginning of community work at the Weinhof and also since the reopening in Neu-Ulm, these public events are always complemented by at least as many unofficial, internal and purely voluntary work meetings – if not more. Practically everything about the infrastructure, from the fast Wi-Fi to the access system to the drinks vending machines, depends on voluntary commitment—and that requires regular work assignments, which are of course more fun together than alone.

In March, this included a spring cleaning weekend at the beginning of the month, where we tidied up and reorganized our shared spaces together with the active members of the House of Sustainability, plus cleaning windows, floors and other areas. Among other things, we reorganized the electronics lab, dusted, cleaned windows and, last but not least, had brunch together.

We have moved things and equipment to new locations and, above all, tidied up the workshop. Due to a reorganization of the space together with the HdN, we can now set up an atelier space for embroidery, sewing, screen printing, lino printing, cyanotyping and all sorts of other artistic things directly on the other side of the electronics workshop \o/

We have dismantled one bay of the heavy-duty shelving in the wood workshop and procured the necessary shelving stands from Verein funds to create a two-bay heavy-duty shelving unit in the studio area to store all the art supplies. Everything we need for all our artistic activities is now stored there.

However, tidying up the workshop was not just about furnishing the atelier space. On the one hand, we moved one of the workbenches into the atelier so that people can work there in future. And the space freed up by the removal of the shelving is now being used as a place for another mobile workbench.

On the other hand, we now have space in the middle of the wood workshop for the other woodworking tools procured from the DSEE funding, which are now in place. In over seven years, we have been able to gain a lot of experience with running an open workshop—what do people want to build here, what equipment do they need and, above all, what equipment can you use to get good results even if you don’t work with it professionally every day? We don’t want to give too much away here and would rather describe it in detail in a separate post. But if you come to the Maker Mondays, you can already admire the machines - and work with them after running through an introduction workshop!

What’s next

March is followed by April—and on the one hand, a regular new program item from the volunteer work for the general public will be launched, which we will report on soon.

On the other hand, we are not the only ones who run our shared house, which is why we would like to explicitly refer you to the monthly program of our house-sharing partners at Haus der Nachhaltigkeit. The photo exhibition is still running in April and is accessible during general opening hours (see both our calendars). And the April program of the HdN includes gems such as a workshop against right-wing and discriminatory slogans by the VVN Ulm and the FCLR Ulm on 15.4. as well as the opening of the lending bar on 18.4., where you will be able to borrow practical items from a library of things.

Es lohnt sich also, beide Terminkalender im Auge zu behalten. Und wir würden uns freuen, euch bei uns begrüßen zu können – egal ob bei Angeboten des HdN oder bei uns und egal ob ihr zum ersten Mal da seid oder ob ihr wiederkommt!

So it’s worth keeping an eye on both calendars. And we’d be delighted to welcome you—whether you’re here for the first time or coming back!

This post is part of a series in which we want to present some of our new and valuable material that we were able to procure due to a grant by Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt.

Update: There now exists Drohnenfotografie temporärhaus as a category at Wikimedia Commons. All the pictures and videos we take will end up there, sorted by year.

Through our close connection to Wikimedia Deutschland and the many Free Knowledge projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and so on, we have always been very happy to contribute to Free Knowledge. For example, we have collected historical images of Ulm streetcars from the public and made them available to the general public under a Free License by using the Scanner Station of the Stuttgart Wikipedia Community.

But what we’ve always been missing a bit, also because other local spaces take such wonderful photos with them, is a drone with a good camera.

Thanks to funding from DSEE, we have now been able to purchase a DJI Air 3 drone. And that opens up a whole range of possible uses, e.g. great aerial photos of historical buildings, natural monuments and other interesting objects in the region. And, of course, all of this will then be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where it will be freely available to everyone. Perhaps we will soon be able to make submissions for the Wiki loves Monuments or Wiki loves Earth competitions.

After a few years of transition, the current EU regulation. has been mandatory for all drone models since 01.01.2024. Our drone is in open category A1, UAS class C1, which means that you can fly it with a corresponding license near (but not over) people and close to buildings. Therefore it is very suitable for our purpose. We also have a realistic flight time of approx. 30-35 minutes per battery, which allows relaxed flying and alignment for the photo – and we bought three of these batteries. The operator of the drone (not the pilot!) is temporärhaus e.V., which means that the necessary liability insurance for our members is covered by the association.

So what do we do with the drone or what can you do with the drone with us? We will regularly go on photo tours with the drone, and if you are allowed to fly the drone (A1 driver’s license), then you are welcome to come along and join us. We are currently planning the first tours, e.g. the Bundesfestung around Ulm are a good place to start. As soon as we have more information, you will find it here or in our calendar.

At this point, of course, a big thank you to Wikimedia Deutschland and the German Foundation for Commitment and Volunteering, whose support makes such hardware and projects possible in the first place.