Conference Committee/Planning meeting 10/Minutes

Present:

• Harry Mitchell (HJM; chair)
• Mike Peel (MP; board liaison)
• Daria Cybulska (DC; office liaison)
• Katie Chan (KC)
• Rock drum (RD)
• Tom Morton (TM)
• Toni Sant (TS; for EduWiki)

Minutes

Housekeeping

• Apologies for absence etc.

Internal business

• One year old; TM noted that the commitees seem to comprise of same old faces
• New members;
  • ACTION: KC to process feedback forms from the AGM and pass any details onto HJM. Done
• Roles; DC, MP happy to continue as staff and board liasons, respectively, for the time being
• HJM offered to hold the position of chair on the committee; no objections were raised

WikiConference UK 2013

• HJM; how did we feel it went? Pointed at the /Lessons page
  • TM: everyone seemed happy
  • HJM: just under bugdet
    • DC: if we'd have had more people then it would have been more expensive
• Discussion of feedback
  • Venue & Location
    • Train travel was a pain because of engineering work
      • MP: next time it would be worth checking for engineering work in advance and advising attendees.

• MP: feedback from the board meeting, nothing much to report :)
  • HJM asked MP to pass on any comments from the forhcoming board meeting
• DC: is anyone writing a report from the Committee to the Board
  • MP: good idea, we do have things to report

• ACTION: write a report for the board r.e. committee, 2013 conference etc. Deadline: 3 July

• Discussion of feedback from the conference
  • TM: tech/speakers/presentations - needs to be more streamlined
  • MP: we need someone responsible for tech support

• • MP: where were the plug sockets??
    • TM/DC: the other side of the room
    • MP: we need to signpost them

• Discussion of alternating location

• Location of breakout rooms.
  • HJM: bit out of the way
    • KC: it wasn't far... but downstairs
    • DC: which means people didn't really know what was going on
      • HJM: Breakout rooms ideally need to be visible from plenary room
  • HJM: milling aorund/food in the plenary room meant people stayed there
    • TM: needs the food to be in the middle of the two rooms!
      • MP: was like this at GLAM-Wiki and that worked

• Name badges: we need to work on this.
  • DC: eventbrite did actually ask what people wanted on their badges
  • Worth thinking about still
  • HJM: People pay very little attention to these things; if we can make it more striking, we should

• HJM: On-wiki registration
• KC: might not be using EventBrite next year
• DC: difficult to manage between two different systems and keep the lists in sync
• HJM: Wikipedians really like wikis so we should try and meet that expectation (complimentary to formal registration, not in place of it)

• Should we have pre-vote checking of membership and different badges/lanyards when they register, to make the vote better.
  • General discussion about this; it would be quite a faff
  • MP: can we hand out ballots at the registration desk - when signing in
    • RD: that means we need to check at the registration desk
    • TM: requires a teller at the desk
  • RD: at EGM during GLAM-Wiki non-members would have been segregated to help with vote counting
    • HJM: does this put across the wrong message?

• Advertise the Friday night meetup in advance better
  • It was an informal event so no one really mentioned it externally... it just happened
• Discussion was on the internal lists, not wikimediauk-l - should it have been more public?
  • HJM: would that not annoy the many more members who weren't coming Friday night?
  • DC was going to suggest a dedicated mailing list for the conference, as chapters conf and wikimania do.

TS joined the meeting at this point.

• Clash with ORG conference
  • HJM: unfortunate. When do they schedule their conferences?
  • DC: well in advance, before us
  • Anyone involved with ORG?
    • DC & Jon have contact - maybe check with them when deciding on the next event.

• Speakers overran
  • HJM: need to be stricter on timekeeping
  • TM: need more session moderators, but they need to be more proactive. Explicit time for questions at the end
  • DC: that was the plan but it didn't quite work out
  • HJM: we just need to be more rigid on times and keep on top of speakers; moderators need to be more assertive with speakers
  • HJM: timing wasn't awful, could have been better but pretty good

• Feedback on talks
  • Everyone seemed pretty happy with the content/talks
  • HJM: Malta Music Memory Project was mentioned several times in the Feedback in a negative way
    • TS: speaker did feel afterwards he hadn't delivered well
  • KC: feedback was most concerened r.e. technical content
  • HJM: what can we do about this?
    • DC: find out from the communtiy what they want, and commiunicate this more carefully to speakers
  • RD: notes for speakers r.e. what is appropriate
  • Somebody suggested general "information for speakers" to be distributed in advance; consensus was that this was a very good idea

• ACTION: Put together notes for speakers at future conferences & generally working on the speaker management stuff

Travel:

• General feeling that 2 hrs was the limit
  • HJM: but unfortunately we didn't ask where they were from!!
  • KC: the form is selective because it was filled in by people who chose to travel in the first place
  • HJM: wherever we put it someone will have to travel
  • TS: discussed a rotation system used for EduWiki (example at WikiConference UK_2013/Lessons)
  • General feeling was that we are happy with the current London/non-London rotation for the time being

WikiConference UK 2014

• HJM: when should it be held? We can push the 15-month limit and hold it in September to give maximum time for accounts, or somehow incorporate it into Wikimania
• The committee discussed the benefits of holding the conference during Wikimania
• MP: we could just say it was at Wikimania and specify a date closer to the time, as we only legally need 21 days' notice
• How many days after the main conference will the Barbican hired for?
• Could hold the conference during the hackathon, on the second day.
• Could voting be scheduled in advance for those who didn't want to take part in other parts of the AGM?
• The AGM this year was 105 minutes. The elections and specifically the Q&A portion is the most time consuming part. (Could questions be asked in advance via the tellers?)
• RECOMMENDATION: The committee's recommendation is to hold the conference at some point within the dates currently specified for the conference and pre-conference activities at Wikimana 2014.
• (Distant) second preference: Hold WikiConference UK 2014 in September at a location to be determined

EduWiki conference 2013

• TS is looking for clarity in terms what role ConfCom will play in the event
• The education commitee will not be directly involved in the organisation of the conference
• HJM would like to see ConfCom involved in EduWiki and in all UK Wikimedia conferences in the future
• On-wiki job list?
• ConfCom can advise on schedule
• ACTION:: TS to update ConfCom via its mailing list as planning for EduWiki progresses.

AOB

• Date of next meeting TBD va maiing list - may be needed after July board meeting (possibly depending on board's decision on 2014 AGM) and/or later to discuss EduWiki; meeting with JK/ES at a time to suit them is desirable