Minutes 2013-01-24
These are the minutes of the meeting of the Executive Working Group, which was held on 24 January 2013 by telephone.
Present:
- Jon Davies [JD]
- Chris Keating [CK] (Chair)
- Mike Peel [MP] (Minutes)
- John Byrne [JB]
The meeting started at 7.30pm.
QRpedia agreement progress (SC/JD)
This was not discussed as Saad wasn't present.
Financial audit preparations (JB)
Richard (UHY) visited the Office this week and last week, doing a systems audit in connection with the financial audit and switchover.
The audit is looking like it will be quite smooth, with Richard S and Richard N on the case. Jon is expecting that the audit senior might come into the office during the audit process this year. There are more transactions on the system than last year, but there hasn't been a huge increase. A new version of Sage has been ordered (cost just over £500 including VAT), which will allow two people to be connected at any one time and also allows several other people to have logins. The old version could only be used on a single PC. MP asked a question about what technical support this needs from our developer contractors, e.g. server hosting.
ACTION: JB to talk to RS about the technical setup required for Sage. Information to be communicated to the WMUK tech list.
CK asked about tracking progress towards implementing changes based on last management letter and Garfield's letter. JB replied that we were on track before Christmas, and everything should be in hand. One exception is CiviCRM integration with payment processing for technical reasons.
ACTION: JB to report about changes implemented based on the last management letter and Garfield's letter at the next board meeting (in the treasurer's report).
JB will also produce a new version of the proposed financial policy revision, which will include some extra items from Richard N. Three changes that need to be made to the finance policy based on the review of the midas agreements.
ACTION: JD to ask RN/RS to insert the finance changes from the review of the midas agreements into the draft revised finance policy.
JB is optimistic that we will have the signed-off audit figures by the AGM. JD noted that we will be starting to draft the annual report in the next few weeks.
Wikimania
An MoU for the bid is being drafted, which sets out how we will work with the bid committee to support the bid, with the bid team leading. The aim is to make a decision about the MoU at the next board meeting.
ACTION: JD to send JB a copy of the draft Wikimania MoU for his comments.
Agenda 9Feb13 (CK)
Agenda items
This was discussed. Items needing discussion or decisions should be moved out of JD's report into dedicated agenda items.
Report filing deadline
The report deadline has been set as the 30 January. It needs to be confirm whether this has been circulated to the committees.
Invited attendees
Invited attendees include the Board, Associate, JD, RS, Compass, potential new trustee, Wikimania bid team representatives (Ed + James).
Logistics
JD confirmed that this is in hand, and is being planned by the office.
Do we need a May in-person meeting or extra phone call?
It was generally thought that we could do with an extra in-person meeting in May.
ACTION: JD to set up a doodle poll for a potential extra in-person board meeting in early May.
2013 board meeting schedule
The schedule looks broadly OK, but we need to check what the deadlines are for next year's FDC process and make sure we have meetings that can provide JD with the strategic input that is needed and so that we can sign off the budget in time for the start of the financial year.
The proposed meeting on 8-9 June wouldn't be a full weekend board meeting, rather it would be an hour or so after the AGM to sort out officers and so forth. The conference events are spread over two days, so we could potentially have a whole day board meeting on the Sunday. However, this would be rather close to the AGM for a detailed meeting. We could however do some induction/get-to-know sessions.
A May 2014 meeting could also be added into the schedule if needed.
MP would also like to see calls being added to the schedule.
CK plans to plan out the broad agendas for the future board meetings soon.
The board meeting schedule will be discussed at the board meeting on Sunday 10th.
AOB
This was discussed in-camera.
The meeting closed at 8.38pm.