Minutes 2011-06-11
Minutes of the Board in-person meeting in Birmingham on Saturday 11 - Sunday 12 June 2011.
Present:
- Roger Bamkin - RB - Chair
- Mike Peel - MP - Secretary/Minutes
- Chris Keating - CK
- Steve Virgin - SV
- Martin Poulter - MLP
- Fæ - Fæ
- Gemma Griffiths - GG (later sections only)
Strategy Meeting
The strategy meeting on Saturday 11 June was recorded in a report assembled by the facilitator, which is not publicly available.
The vision that emerged from the meeting was "Free knowledge for all", and the mission was "Wikimedia UK's Mission is to help people and organisations build and preserve open knowledge, to share and use freely."
Minutes and Reports
Apologies for absence
AT sent his apologises.
Approval of Minutes 26Apr11
The minutes at Minutes 26Apr11 were approved unanimously.
Review of executive meeting on 20 May 11, and approval of Minutes 20May11
RB and MP gave a brief overview of the highlights of the meeting. The minutes at Minutes 20May11 were approved unanimously.
Review email decisions
The following email decisions were made prior to the meeting:
- Funding for Liam Wyatt's attendance of GLAMcamp London, and other events around the UK in the same timeframe, £700 in total, from the "Culture and Heritage Projects" budget (1 May 2011).
- Modification of the expense policy in light of new HMRC regulations: mileage can now be claimed at 45p/mile for the first 150 miles of a journey, then 25p/mile for the remainder (5 May 2011).
- Funding for lunch at the Editathon, British Library event in June, £5-10/head, from the "Culture and Heritage Projects" budget (14 May 2011).
- Support for a 'University of Bristol Wikimedia Outreach Ambassador' (23-24 May)
- Funding of up to £2,500 for a stand at the CILIP conference (12-13 July, Hatfield), run by Oliver Keyes. Funding from the opportunity fund. (24 May 2011)
- Funding of up to £500 to broaden participation in the fundraising summit. Funding from the Chapters Conference and Wikimania 2011 budget lines. (26 May 2011)
- Funding of up to £40 to provide travel and lunch for Oliver Keyes and Tom Morris at their meeting with the Royal Society on 7 June. From the partnership events budget line. (3 June 2011)
- Purchase of wikimedia.ie (funding from the Miscellaneous Administrative and Office Costs budget) (4 June 2011)
- Funding of up to £400 to support Johnbod's attendance at CTM Dusseldorf (from the Culture and Heritage Projects budget) (6 June 2011)
The decisions were reviewed with no corrections.
Review email resolutions
The resolution at Resolutions 11Jun11 regarding banking was reviewed with no corrections.
Actions and reports
The reports at Reports 11Jun11 were noted with thanks.
Roger Bamkin (Chair)
Olympics - need to have a coordinator for our activity surrounding it. Agreed that SV will coordinate, to be handed over to volunteers later on.
ACTION: SV to coordinate activities related to the olympics.
Mike Peel (Secretary)
Fæ requested that GLAM would be covered in the report every 3 months.
ACTION: All to log into OTRS and look at the WMUK queue.
Blog license: agreed to be CC-BY-SA 3.0 unported.
Andrew Turvey (Treasurer)
- Review of upcoming fundraising-related deadlines
Not managed to hit any of the WMF-set deadlines for this. Needs to be rectified. Something that can be handled by staff; to be discussed later.
- Membership approvals
This was not discussed as AT was not present.
Chris Keating (Director)
Main thing is that a second thank-you email has been sent to all donors 6 months after their donations.
Martin Poulter (Director)
Campus Ambassadors - currently have 2; condensed training to come. Build towards event in early academic year. Could have higher education task force.
Fæ (Director)
Agreed that if Fæ needs to take taxis etc. rather than public transport, then this is OK (for personal reasons).
Steve Virgin (Director)
Invoices waiting from January + April that still need to be sorted.
ACTION: Executive to meet in person to resolve these issues.
Presentations: Polite to circulate these so that feedback can be sent, but they don't need formal approval. All public presentations should be open, transparent and uploaded to the wiki.
Discussions and decisions needed
Note that these items were discussed in a different order from the agenda; they are in chronological order below.
Reallocation of 2011 Budget holders
Expenses system needs to be revisited for security/financial control.
Budget holders updated on the wiki - changes made
It was decided to increase the partnership events budget line to £3k from opportunity fund.
ACTION: RB to talk to those attending Wikimania 2011 to find out how their attendance links in with WMUK. Also to email to the members/community offering support for attendance (with request for rationale).
ACTION: MP to come back to the board with a revised microgrants process.
Charity status
This was discussed in camera.
Fundraiser
Unanimous decision to participate in the fundraiser, with CK being the lead board member, assisted by others.
It is expected that there will be a related financial outlay of ~£10k in hiring contract staff to support the fundraiser.
GG joined the meeting at this point.
PR
GG presented an improved plan - presentation on the board wiki.
Action on all to keep GG informed of activities, and involved in them from the start.
Staff
Overview of Job Descriptions given.
There was agreement to go ahead and hire the chapter manager and office manager as full-time positions, via the recruitment company recommended by AT and RB (ProspectUS). The other three positions will be discussed another time / put on hold.
One of the tasks of the chapter manager will be to work out where the best place for the office is. Note that their work will include travel to London, Bristol, and other cities around the UK.
It was also agreed that we should hire people to work on the fundraiser, sysadmin and charity status on a contract basis.
AOB
No AOB was raised/discussed.