Minutes 2012-03-27
Minutes from the board meeting of 27 March 2012, held via Skype between 19:30 and 22:30.
Present:
- Roger Bamkin [RB] (Chair)
- Mike Peel [MP] (Minutes - support)
- Fæ [Fæ]
- Martin Poulter [MLP]
- Steve Virgin [SV]
- Chris Keating [CK]
- Jon Davies [JD]
- Richard Symonds [RS] (Minutes - lead)
Minutes and Reports
Apologies for absence
Apologies: AT
Approval of minutes
These were not covered as the minutes still need work on their formatting; the approval of the minutes was delayed until the next meeting.
Review email decisions
- Decision to appoint James Farrar and Richard Symonds as tellers for the 2012 trustee election in May (24 February)
- Decision to approve changes to the Whistle-blowing Policy as per [1] (5 March)
The decisions were approved, with no corrections.
Actions and reports
RB talked about his and MP's visit to Manchester to discuss GLAM projects, and his hopeful visit to Estonia to talk about QRPedia.
MP said that he had approved two microgrants - including one in Northern Ireland, to research the Titanic. He also asked about membership approvals, and when these might be approved: RS will be sending round an email later this week.
JD discussed problems with delays in applying for the Unity Trust bank account, and potential delays in paying supplier invoices and individual expenses.
ACTION: RB, MP, AT, JD to organise an exec meeting asap to discuss banking arrangements. RB to talk to AT regarding payment delays.
CK: CK had a meeting with 15 or so institutions doing WW1-related events, which will push the WW1 project forward. There is also a proposal to fund a WiR at a specific London GLAM. 2012 fundraiser planning will start after the WMF board make a decision on fundraising and funds distribution. CK is willing to take a lead on this, but the office will do the majority of the work. CK would like potential strategies for Wikimania to be discussed with the WMF staff at the Berlin conference.
Fae: Daria and Fae went to the BL to discuss GLAM-WIKI 2012. Fae is impressed with Daria's planning, and is hopeful that we can live-stream the event. The British Library WiR is moving forward, but has gone to a second round of interviews. These took place on or about 27 March. Fae is hopeful for an announcement early next week. The National Archives have uploaded their first image, which is of high web quality. There is a potential for 40,000 more images to be released over the summer by the National Archives, and possibly a WiR. Fae has also asked for the GLAM toolserver project to be delayed slightly, as WMDE have dropped out of funding, and there are questions as to how co-ordinated that chapters are on this. At the chapters meeting over the weekend, Fæ will talk to the other funding partners. If the funding plan is not secure following that meeting, then the funding will be released for other activities.
MLP: MLP has been less active but catching up with emails and discussions. The EDU-WIKI related Leicester visit with Daria has been postponed until the end of the month.
SV: SV would like people to read his report on the wiki, and asked if there were any questions. RB suggested that ARKive should ideally be closed off by Monmouth. SV is also forming a communications strategy in partnership with Monmouth Council, the CIPR, and the PRCA. This is part of a bridge-building exercise between the PR community and Wikimedian community. The PRCA or CIPR may give a talk at the AGM about what they have been doing, and how they would like to move forward with the community, or possibly just a discussion with WMUK members to understand their points of view. The idea is that, by the AGM, the community will be ready to have a full discussion.
JD: Data protection insurance is very expensive - Jon is going to find out why and report back. JD is convinced that SB has the Annual Report well in hand. SV was worried that we were up against the clock: JD will talk to SB and see if we can work out a way to reduce his workload. Fae experienced the trustee induction and found it useful. Pension Schemes are ongoing. SV asked as to whether we should talk about 'QR Codes' or 'QRPedia' with Monmouthpedia: this is something that will be discussed later. JD has also produced a draft 5-year plan, which he would like the trustees to look at before we make it available to the community, so that they can weigh in with ideas. Trustees agreed that this can be released to the community for comment: MP thought the 5 year plan was 'a good start'.
RS went through his budget at File:March2012 Report to Board - Richard Symonds.pdf - RS will document a move of £20,000 from mass upload to 'GLAM Outreach', which will be used to fund Monmouthpedia (due to a 3 month delay in the expenditure from the mass upload budget).
Discussions and decisions needed
Conflict of Interest - Monmouthpedia
RB has a conflict of interest here, as he part-owns the IP rights for QRPedia. There were a few questions for Roger as to how the 'transfer' of IP rights from RB and TE to WMUK. RS raised questions as to the long-term future of WMUK funding QRPedia's development, and that we can promote and maintain it properly. The board then had an in-camera discussion, without RB, about Wikimedia UK's stance on this issue.
QRpedia. This was discussed in camera.
ACTION: RB, JD, Fae, Terence Eden and RS to meet to take the transfer of ownership of of QRpedia forward.
Report back as per action - RB. RB, TE, JD and Fae will meet to discuss the next steps for QRPedia and Monmouthpedia in a frank discussion, before having a formal agreement drafted.
Six month review for CE - RB/?
JD will email around a six-month review document to the board tomorrow (28th March). There will be a full board review of JD's first six months at the Monmouth meeting.
Chapcom - CK/RB/Fae - Financial support to Chapters Council?
How much are we looking to put forward towards the Chapters Council? Some chapters are committing 5%, some less - MP suggested that we might be able to put forward monetary contributions.
DECISION: The board are happy to support "a fair contribution" when the exact shape of the council is decided.
Chapter-selected board seats
This was mostly discussed in camera. MP was keen to clarify that the voting should *not* happen at the conference, and that we should discuss possible candidates with other chapters.
Wikimania & our position in the event of a successful UK bid
Covered in CK's report
AGM -agree programme for 2012 AGM (see JD report)
JD: Fantastic location, room for up to 100 people, with an optional extra room of £500 for one room. JD pointed to his draft AGM2012 document, which has several questions for the trustees to answer. The main issue, which all trustees were concerned about, is that there is only one room, which makes it diifficult to run parallel sessions. MP suggested that we split the single day between 'content' and 'UK specific projects'.
ACTION: RB, JD and MP to discuss possible AGM speakers and arrange who will be speaking and how to split the time.
Train the trainers - MLP
MLP explained his proposal to 'train the trainers' in June, with us expecting to pay approximately £6000 for a two day session training a dozen elite trainers. MLP wants to have this as a "train wikipedians how to teach people" event rather than training partner organisations about Wikimedia. RB suggested the idea of training in action
ACTION: JD to put out a tender to the Wikimedia community to look for people who can deliver a training session in line with the one we are investigating.
AOB
Gifts in kind of hardware
The board have no problem with accepting in-kind donations from organisations, as long as there is not too much advertising or bias towards a specific supplier, and that we make an effort to be seen as 'agnostic' when it comes to technical gift donations.
With regards the offer of a donation of tablets and mobile devices running a closed source operating system to support the Monmouth project, MP encouraged RB to solicit similar donations from suppliers using open source software.
Next Meeting - in-person on 21-22 April 2012, at Monmouth.
ACTION: RS and JD to come up with a list of those people attending the Monmouth meeting for the purposes of planning meals, hotel rooms, etc.