#mwhack11; two concurrent events - #WikilovesMonuments

At the Berlin hackathon there was a big meeting working hard to get the organisation right for Wiki loves Monuments. There were people from all over Europe and from what I saw they were having a great time. They had their own hackers and having their own event at the same time and place proved to be a stroke of genius.

With all these people being together at the same time, you get to speak to many of them. I met Jane this way and we had a good time talking about several things including a retired photographer, Bob van der Lans.

Mr van der Lans took over his father's photography store in Hillegom in 1958 and took pictures for several local businesses for over 5 decades. He still takes pictures for the Keukenhof, a flower show in Lisse. Since retirement, he has given away parts of his archive, which included thousands of photo negatives on various subjects, such as all editions of "Sail Amsterdam", all versions of various flower shows and parades.

Bob van der Lans

In May 2011, he gave his personal archive of Dutch and European monuments to Wikimedia Netherlands after reading about Wiki Loves Monuments in his newspaper in 2010. He has acquired a digital camera and laptop and plans to continue photographing monuments. None of his former monument pictures have been previously published.

The challenge is to digitise these pictures and put them on Commons. Given that this is a true collection, with annotations on the back, it will be a lot of work...
Thanks,
      GerardM