Free travel-shirts signed by Jimmy Wales and others up for sale
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The idea of the free travel-shirt arose during the meet-up of some Wikipedians in Hanover, Germany, on 3 March 2009. The objective was to raise awareness on a global scale of the international movement for free knowledge, and to bring Wikipedians all over the globe closer together. It was intended to remind Wikipedians that they are part of one of the world’s most important networks ever launched, and to reinforce the foundation’s mission statement “to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally”.
The idea was that the shirts would circle the globe much like the torch relay before the start of the Olympic Games, and that this would attract new editors to Wikipedia and raise the profile of the Wikimedia Foundation. A blueish T-shirt from Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. (size L) with “Enzyklopädist” written on it (German for “encyclopedist”) and a white T-shirt (size XL) embossed with the English Wikipedia logo were taken to many different places. Wikipedians were asked to pose for photographs holding or wearing one of the shirts, with distinctive motives, features and people as evidence of the long journey the shirts have been on. These pictures have been uploaded to Commons at Free travel-shirt 2009 and added to the organization page on metawiki m:Free Travel-Shirt.
At the end of the journey, the two shirts came back again to Hanover for the start of this year’s CeBIT on 2 March 2010. Since June 2010, they have been up for auction for the benefit of Wikimedia Foundation Inc.: white shirt, blue shirt.