2022 Annual General Meeting/Candidate Statements
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AGM: Elections — Candidate Statements · Candidate Questions · Resolutions |
This page contains the statements of the candidates for the 2022 elections to the board of Wikimedia UK. Please submit questions for the candidates at 2022 Annual General Meeting/Candidate Questions.
Adrian Beidas
Two decades on, the Wikimedia projects remain at the heart of the knowledge revolution that the internet was supposed to bring. Straightforward information, mostly without spin, built and maintained through the ongoing collaboration of thousands of us. Twenty years ago, I had imagined that this democratisation of knowledge would bring a more enlightened world. Of course, I was wrong. The world today feels less enlightened than ever, and too much of the internet has commercialised or been flooded with poor quality information.
The open knowledge movement still has a long way to go. Although the Wikimedia projects remain in a class of their own, having created a major public utility by harnessing the power of mass collaboration, the brilliance of their systems remain poorly understood in the mainstream, and in many of our educational and cultural institutions. Similarly, too much publicly funded knowledge (created or owned by our universities and museums) gets locked up in copyright, so cannot be easily seen by the taxpayers who funded it. And there remains a huge communication gap between the academic world and the rest of the population.
Individual contributors have built these projects, but individuals rarely have the voice or the time to change the way our great institutions behave. That needs organisation, with Wikimedia UK leading the charge. Not just leading at home, but leading globally - we are lucky to live in one of the culturally-richest countries in the world.
I work in finance, with many of the UK's largest companies. I am also a trustee of a small educational charity. Since last year I have supported Wikimedia UK’s audit and risk committee. If selected as a trustee of the full board, I would like to help support the team in their work with the large UK cultural and education institutions.
Sangeet Bhullar
I joined the Wikimedia UK Board in Jan 2019, and it has been a privilege to be a trustee since then. I am especially interested in Wikimedia’s role and reach with young people and educators in primary, secondary and further education settings.
My own work focusses on digital literacy and wellbeing. Over the last 20 years, I have worked with thousands of young people, educators (schools, FE and HE), youth workers, librarians, families, children’s services and other professionals - promoting the ‘digital literacy’, ‘digital wellbeing’ and ‘digital citizenship’ knowledge and skills needed for effective online participation. I have done this through WISE KIDS, a company I founded nearly 20 years ago.
From my work with schools, colleges and even at undergraduate level, I have found a lack of awareness and understanding of open educational resources. In particular I have found educators who mistrust Wikipedia and who do not realise how it could be used as a vital resource and instrument for developing digital and information literacy. These skills are vital in a digital age, particularly to challenge misinformation and disinformation. As a trustee, I would like to promote the work of Wikimedia to young people and educators. Whilst the disruption from Covid has created a backlog of work for schools, I do believe a pro-active approach to engage schools and colleges to learn about the work of Wikimedia will bring great benefit. I believe that helping young people and educators to understand how content on Wikipedia or Wicipedia (Welsh Wikipedia) is generated and checked, as well as encouraging them to become content creators themselves on these platforms will go a long way to address information literacy skills.
I am also passionate about open educational resources and computing more generally, having had to learn to code in the late 80s. I am currently a member of the Welsh Government’s Digital Inclusion Programme Board, and the Wales Internet Safety Partnership. I would be very grateful to be considered for re-election, and will use my role to further the work of Wikimedia UK.
Vivian Wineman
Vivian Wineman was educated at City of London School and Yavneh Rabbinical College in Israel. He then read History and Philosophy at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge gaining BA and three years later an MA. More recently he gained a masters degree at University College London (Merit) and is currently doing graduate research there.
Subsequently he qualified as a solicitor gaining honours. He set up his own firm, David Wineman, with a partner which he ran for just over 25 years. It grew to be a 10 partner firm until he merged it creating DWFM Beckman in 2008. He served as a partner and then a consultant in the merged firm until 2011.
He has appeared on numerous Radio and Television channels and published various articles on communal and legal topics and topics of Jewish History as well as a book on the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 published by the Estates Gazette. For a number of years he was a Licenced Insolvency Practitioner.
In addition to running his own property investment and development company he has been an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London since 1984 currently underwriting through his own Nameco and through a Limited Liability Partnership. He is honorary legal counsel to the High Premium Group of Names at Lloyd’s.
He has lectured on Jewish History both at the Spiro Institute and Limmud a conference Jewish religion history and culture which takes place annually. He has lectured at conferences in the UK, China and Australia.
In the Jewish community, he was President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Chairman of the Membership Council of the Jewish Leadership Council from 2009 till 2015 when his term expired. He was Vice President of the World Jewish Congress until 2015 and Vice President of the European Jewish Congress(EJC) and was Chair of the Council of the EJC. From 2007 till 2013 he was Vice Chair of the Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom and from 2013 till 2016 was the Co-Chair of the Network. He was a Trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and a member of the Goodwill Guidelines Committee of the Conference for Jewish Material Claims against Germany and a Director of the Conference. He is currently a Trustee of the Council of Christians and Jews and of the Next Century Foundation a track two diplomacy group which is a UN registered NGO. He is president of the Institute of Polish Jewish Studies. He was previously Chairman of the New Israel Fund UK.
He is married with 3 children and lives in London. His hobbies include music, cycling, skiing and mountain walking.