Minutes 2010-09-11
|
Wikimedia UK Board Meeting Minutes
Saturday 11 September 2010, 10.30-18.00 BST, in person, Better Bankside Community Room, London.
Present:
- Andrew Turvey (AT)
- Mike Peel (MP)
- Thomas Dalton (TD)
- Steve Virgin (SV)
- Joseph Seddon (JS)
Apologies for absence
Steve has to leave at 3pm, Tom arrived at 11am.
Approval of Minutes 10Aug10
- ACTION: MP to move confidential GLAM-WIKI material onto the board wiki. (Done)
- ACTION: TD to communicate with new member.
JS, MP, TD, AT, SV happy with the minutes, subject to those changes.
Email decisions
- Approval was given regarding who would be given first interviews for the Office Manager position.
- Authorised our lawyers to talk to WMF lawyers regarding transferring money (and also charity status)
Actions and reports
AT - Chair (Andrew Turvey)
Andrew's report was noted.
Four applications were received from people located abroad. Next time should specify in the advert that they must be located in Great Britain or Northern Ireland.
Proposed response to Charities Commission: not yet been sent around to the board, pending changes from the lawyers. Only got one person working on this, so prioritizing fundraising agreement over CC response.
Auditing accounts: AT to send the list of documents that the accountants require to TD.
Managing office manager's workflow: Andrew suggest having a page on the board wiki where we have a task list. Anyone can add to this list, with a time estimate of how long it will take. AT would then go through and prioritize.
Worth setting up an office wiki? As much as possible should be transfered from the board wiki onto the office wiki.
Should have an internal wiki rather than an office wiki? Probably not, due to confidentiality agreements.
ACTION: AT to request a draft contractors agreement from the lawyers.
Four levels of wiki access:
- Board wiki
- Office wiki (with content from the current board wiki). Staff and contractors have access.
- Internal wiki (glamplan merged in)
- Public wiki
Toolserver Association: they are happy for there to be two delegates, but only one voice. TD to be added; he will go through AT (unless AT is away).
BLW prizes: AT has started. Some prizes will start 'expiring'; we'll need to provide alternative prizes.
MP - Secretary (Mike Peel)
Mike's report was noted.
BLW domain: AT has received a letter about the domain renewal.
ACTION: AT to send BLW domain name renewal invoice to TD to pay.
Treasurer (Thomas Dalton)
Tom's report was noted.
No news from Pawel. Has not yet sent the invoice for the toolserver association. Outstanding fee for the lawyer has been paid, but no acknowledgement received.
TD apologises for not doing much since the last meeting (due to relocation).
ACTION: AT to update Companies House with TD's new address.
Membership: outstanding one from last week. Lodewijk has also applied.
TD has sent a letter to the bank making sure that they can process cheques made out to Wikimedia UK.
Geonotice asking if people want to join WMUK?
Three new members were unanimously approved.
Membership renewals notices are in progress.
WMF grant: this was a startup grant, and we are now self-sufficient based on the fundraiser.
OKCon: have yet to give any money to OKF from this.
Consensus that it would be worth having an in-person meeting to talk about OKCon funding - last year and future years - as well as to talk about other ways that we could work together. JS and AT to attend; SV as backup. Action on JS to organise. Board is happy to fund travel for AT and SV.
Need to see budget from last year's conference. Should cover the extra costs that were not paid from the entrance fees last year? or the whole venue costs? JS to track down the costs; unable to make a decision at this point in time.
Restricted foundation grant: was very useful; need to write a report on this (TD + AT). Surplus left over to be offered back, or alternative option is for it to become unrestricted.
SV - Steve
Wikimedia Conference venue: Steve will be approaching sponsors for the fundraising event, and also Watershed. Will likely be the Watershed as the venue; not yet clear how much it will be. Variety of room sizes available - from rooms that seat 16-17, up to 100-150.
Charted Institute for Public Relations: invited to give a talk along the lines of the one given by SV and AT at Kaizo. SV and AT will give this talk. There was agreement to put out a blog post about this talk, and email a link to the blog post around to local journalists etc. SV to draft the blog post and send it around.
Arkive: Rand + SV met arkive after the fundraising meeting. Rand was going to talk to Frank about this, however Rand's forthcoming departure from the WMF has likely aborted this. MP to provide SV with a link to CC-BY-SA attribution in place on Wikipedia; SV can then renew the arkive link and take the project forward himself.
ACTION: MP to send SV a link to CC-BY-SA attribution in place on Wikipedia.
ACTION: JS to send around a copy of the Bundesarchiv agreement (in german) to the board.
AGM, fundraising summit, 10th anniversary. Number of high level people interested in doing something significant for the 10th anniversary celebration.
Sponsorships: have approached HP labs with regards AGM, fundraising summit, 10th Anniversary celebrations + GLAM Wiki.
Somali Project: an existing project has been working with the Somali community over the course of the last 5 years and has collected a lot of material on Somali history going back around 500 years. It is a language that has only been documented since the 1930’s, so this is significant. Currently in English (SV believes but doesn’t know for sure). Looking forward to forthcoming meetings to explore further. There is an agreement in principle already in place that this material could be used if we get a Somali Wikipedia Project off the ground. The groups behind this project are the Amana Educational Trust, the Somali development group + another (SV forgot the name).
Bristol City Council are prepared to support this project, were it to launch, with reconditioned PC’s and Wi-Fi support. The council have a number of initiatives to promote integration across ethically excluded minorities. If this project gets off the ground they’d like to be involved. The commitment is one of cash and resources.
ACTION: SV to continue meetings with the Somali groups
Several possibilities of 'edit parties' for topics e.g. electoral reform, and equal opportunities. No concrete decisions made yet.
JS - Seddon
JS will be speaking at the Science Museum conference. Not much else.
Decisions needed
Office Manager Interviews
This was discussed in camera.
MP - GLAM-WIKI: approval of budget, outline schedule
The budget and outline schedule on the glamplan wiki were shown to the Board and verbally described.
Entrance fees: probably shouldn't be £0 for WMUK members as this could be viewed as members being financially rewarded for their membership (means that membership fees would not be eligible for gift aid). Better to set a standard attendance fee for Wikimedians, and give free invitations to specific wikimedians if appropriate.
Everyone comfortable with budget, including all of the optional extras. Also want to have more complete handout, containing WMAU recommendations, case studies, description of WMUK, etc.
Potential sponsorship could come from Orange and O2? MP to ask Liam to investigate.
ACTION: JS to contact WMF regarding sponsorship - pound for pound. Fixed amount of £5k.
ACTION: AT to investigate the situation with paying VAT on Liam's pay.
Fundraiser update - see Minutes 20Jul10
This was delayed until a future meeting.
MP/JS - AGM update - see Minutes 10Aug10
This was delayed until a future meeting.
Microgrants update - see Minutes 8Jun10
This was not covered.
AOB
MP: Wikipedia's 10th birthday events: edit day in London / VIP event (see Jimmy's email)
Jimmy sent around an email to the board proposing a VIP event to celebrate Wikipedia's 10th birthday. There was a desire on the board to do something that involves the community / is a 'public' event as well. Following discussion, a preliminary plan was formed along the lines of:
- Thursday evening: hold a VIP event along the lines of Jimmy's email. Given our resources, it would be desirable to be a minor partner with this, with the WMF taking the lead.
- Friday evening: Possibly host a public talk? There aren't as many benefits from this as there are from the other activities.
- Saturday/Sunday: potentially host an edit party or set of parties in different cities (with video links?). Could include an overnight element.
It was agreed to ask Jimmy to investigate the costs, and also explain the plans in more detail - in particular we would need to know what kind of things Jimmy will do and what will we do.
The board very briefly discussed the idea of Bristol 'doing something' and initially dismissed it (mainly due to lack of detailed information). It did so on the grounds that it was believed it was too much work and that jimmy was supposedly flying in to London and straight out again to Germany after the VIP meeting. This was not certain. JS agreed to ask him what his provisional plans were. If Jimmy was flying in and straight out again, the meeting felt it to be unlikely that he would be prepared to travel to Bristol for an event. Although considered to be unlikely by the Board meeting, nothing more could happen until JS had reported back on Jimmy’s plans.
It was decided to discuss this event in more detail at the November meeting.
ACTION: JS to contact Jimmy Wales to ask about his travel plans, the event costs and division of the workload for the potential 10th anniversary celebration event.
Surveys
SV brought a proposal to the board for an "e-democracy" style survey to get detailed information about Wikipedia's users and to generate ideas for improving the movement. This was briefly discussed and the board expressed doubts on whether it would be possible to carry out such an ambitious plan with the resources available to us. Due to limited time available to discuss it, a ballpark figure of £5000 was chosen as the limit of what we could spend and SV was asked to investigate what was possible within that budget and to report back to the board for futher discussion. JS agreed to investigate what other chapters + the WMF have done.
At this point, Steve had to leave the meeting.
Misc actions
ACTION: AT to go forward with Wikipics/usability
ACTION: AT to contact WMDE about how we spend the toolserver-allocated money
Book Sprint
Wikimedia UK in 2013 and how we get there (including Executive Directors Committee)
Wikimedia UK Book Sprint: where do we want to be in 2013?
- Fully professionalised chapter
- Supporting non-UK chapters with historical links to the UK
Projects:
- Culture
- Education
- Academic
- Community
- Multilingual
- Wikipedia Academies / Workshops. Target audiences/locations aimed at getting people involved in editing Wikipedia. Two Wikipedia academies a year? Also workshops (~6 per year?).
- Academic/external peer review process of Wikipedia articles?
- Content partnerships (led by board members)
- Fostering Wikimeets in different cities
- Community editing sessions in libraries/museums/universities/schools/etc. (parallel to meetups?)
- Yearly UK Wikimedia conference
- Fundraising/international meetings
- Wikimania???
5 November 2013: WMUK 5th birthday celebrations
| Year | Budget | FT staff |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | £50,000 | 0.2 |
| 2011 | £125,000 | 1.5 (+ events, 0.5 x admin [starting from August with managed office]) |
| 2012 | £200,000 | 3 (+ fundraiser/sponsorship) |
| 2013 | £300,000 | 5 (+ developer, CEO/grants) |
Other possibilities: media contact.
(All amounts are 50% of the total raised - starting to get grants etc. in 2013)
Also contractors for tech work etc. Potentially sharing full-time staff with like-minded organisations?
Asking Foundation to pay for first year of fundraiser/grants staff member?
WMUK Board: aim to diversify it and make it richer in experience
- Board Interest meeting on Saturday 12 February. First of an annual event?
- Trustee Proposition. Separation of executive decisions from the full Board.
- 7 board members (maybe 9 by 2013)
- 4 community-elected members, 3 expert seats proposed by the outgoing community-elected members of the Board at the AGM (subject to community approval) - 2012?
- Quarterly in-person meetings (in addition to AGM). 2011: also interim online meetings in between in person meetings.
- ExecCom for 2011, transitioning to CEO in 2013 (with ExecCom oversight). ExecCom meetings as required.
- Community appointments for 2 years (half elected each year) - avoids 'lame duck' period, adds continuity. Institutional memory. 2011.
- Advisory Board???