Reports 8Sep12

Below are the Board and Staff reports to the Board Meeting on 8 September 2012; see Agenda 8Sep12.

Templates for actions: {{done}} Done, {{cf}} Carried forward, {{canc}} Cancelled.

If something needs discussing for longer than a minute, then please add it to the Matters Arising section on the agenda.

Chris Keating (Chair, Fundraiser)

Chair

• Arranging facilitator & programme for 2013 Activity Plan discussion
• Progressing agreement regarding QRpedia

Fundraiser

• Handover of the day-to-day work for the fundraiser to Katherine pretty much completed

Outreach

• Further conversations with JISC and other colleagues regarding University Wikimedians in Residence - hope for progress at EDU-WIKI
• WWI and NMM projects stalled due to lack of my time. Floated the idea of a paid coordinator position for the WWI project (link.

Decisions needed

Michael Peel (Secretary, ConfCom, Tech)

For my work in progress, please see the scratchpad at User:Mike Peel/Workspace.

Secretary and Trustee duties

Done

• Have spent a significant amount of time working through emails and talking by telephone about various issues.
• Attended Wikimania on behalf of WMUK, and talked to many people there.
  • One specific highlight: have been contributing to discussion about the future of Wikimania scholarships
• Visited the Wikimedia Foundation (hopefully part-funded by WMUK assuming my hotel costs are reimbursed), and talked to staff there about many issues.

Decisions needed

• With our new structure of Committees, I would like to propose that we set out a requirement that only current members of Wikimedia UK can serve on a WMUK committee. This proposal is more aimed at encouraging our key volunteers to become members, rather than trying to discourage people from getting involved in our work.

1. Suggest not "requirement" or we'll end up with things agreed but then we find someones membership lapsed and its all a mess. Victuallers (talk) 18:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

• We need to modify Finance Policy 2012 to include
  • Deprecation. As a result of our 2012 audit, Jon recommends that we deprecate our assets on the basis of a lifetime of 3 years. I note that this lifetime may vary based upon the lifetime of our assets - e.g. mobile phones will deprecate on a shorter timescale, while books will deprecate on a longer timescale - but overall, 3 years is probably a good rule overall.
    • Specific proposal: To create section 6.4 to read "The value of any such asset will nominally be deprecated on a three-year basis for the purpose of monthly deprecation values. The specific value of the asset will be assessed each year prior to our financial audit taking place."
  • Trustee authorisation limits. We seem to have been assuming that funds delegated into our budget lines can be simply authorised based on the budget available, regardless of the specific activities that the funds have been allocated to, or amount of money that has been allocated. I would very much disagree with this approach. To formalise a better understanding of the delegation of budget responsibility, I would propose that:
    • Funds are specifically delegated to the initiatives that are explicitly described in the respective activity plan. Should an initiative not be specifically included in the activity plan, then the Board needs to approve such an expense.
    • The Board must be informed of any expenditure that exceeds £1,000, and the Board must be given a 24 hour period in order to raise objections to this expenditure. Should any trustee object to the expenditure, then a formal decision must be made about said expenditure.
    • The Board must formally approve of any expense that exceeds £5,000. (Note that this budget limit will naturally be increased by the Board over time.)
    • If the combined (rather than individual) expenditure that has been delegated to the Office exceeds the limits set out above in between Board meetings, then the Board must be made aware of the excess and given at least 24 hours to raise objections to spending the additional funds.

Conference Committee

Confcom

• ConfCom is proposing to become the "Conferences and Major Events Committee", and to look after major events, in cooperation with other relevant subcommittees
• Cross-fertilisation of committees desired; once the GLAM and Education subcommittees have established themselves, we will seek a member of each to join ConfCom or nominate a member of ConfCom to sit on the GLAM/Education committees
• Appeal to go out (towards date of next meeting) on UK mailing list for more volunteers to join ConfCom and/or the Wikimania 2014 working group
• Next ConfCom meeting to be held on 24 September; meetings are monthly and we are experimenting with meeting on a Monday evening
• Wikimania 2014 working group (led by Ed Saperia, reporting to Confcom) meeting weekly on a Sunday afternoon

WikiConference UK 2013

• Appeal has gone out to UK mailing list to seek provisional quotes for venues per board decision at previous meeting to hold WCUK 2013 outside London on 8 June 2013
• ConfCom will evaluate quotes and proposed venues as they come in (to ConfCom mailing list) and compile in a Google Doc, which will be shared with the board.

Wikimania 2014 bid

• Ed Saperia chairs a Wikimania 2014 London Bid working group that meets weekly and reports to the Conference Committee.
• It's currently putting together a detailed sponsorship pack/website, and actively contacting and having meetings with potential sponsors and partners.
• The plan for the conference is largely unchanged from last year's bid:
  • 2 + 4 day event at The Barbican
  • Mornings of scheduled sessions
  • Afternoons of facilitated unconference
  • Cultural events each evening
  • Wikimedian conference in the conference centre on upper floors
  • Ground floor foyer open to the public for education, exhibitions, public sessions (how to edit, what is wikipedia, etc)
• Jon Davies suggested budgeting the equivalent of a full time member of staff for working on the bid which sparked much debate:
  • For: The event is growing very large (1500-2000 people), and a lot of work needs to be done well before the bid stage to plan for such an event and secure sponsors/partners.
  • Against: Other bids have typically have little or no funding in the past, and it seems contrary to the volunteer ethos.
  • Discuss an appropriate grant (if any) for the organising committee.

Decisions needed

• The Conference Committee is requesting an extension to its role such that it also covers major events. A decision is needed to approve this extension of responsibilities.

1. Recent and upcoming major events have been the photography thing in Edinburgh, MonmouthpediA Day, Wikimania, National Eisteddfod, Wiki Takes Coventry, Training at Hertford Uni, Mozilla camp, Train the Trainers ... would some or all of these by in the proposed scope? Would the committee run these events, ask for a report, control the budget or ? Victuallers (talk) 18:25, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

   I think you may be conflating "important" and "major". Of those you list, Wikipedia Takes Coventry (and Wikimania if you mean the 2014 bid) is the only one that would fall squarely within the definition we have in mind, in that it was almost entirely a WMUK event and ConfCom organising it wouldn't have risked stepping on anyone's toes. We would be happy to help with things like MonmouthpediA Day if the organiser requested our assistance. The rest are small enough (by number of attendees) to be dealt with by relevant subcommittees/staff/volunteers. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Harry Mitchell

• Currently acting as chair of ConfCom; see below for report on that committee's activities
• Wikipedia Takes Coventry
• Would like to speak briefly about the organisation of this meeting

Technology

• Have set up a blog for GLAM-WIKI US.
• Board and office wikis updated to 1.19.2.
• Please see the description of the proposed Technology Committee, which we need to Discuss

John Byrne (Treasurer)

For finance reports see 2011-12 Audit page on Office

Glamcamp report:

GLAM-CAMP. Preparations for GLAM-CAMP proceeding, with the programme sorted, allowing for some unconference elements. Currently 30 attendees out of 40 places. Geonotice only just gone up & hoping for more local additions. Rather hard to get activists involved so far. We are paying some European flights. Total T&L should be less £5,000 to £7,000 . Purposes include planning content for the main conference next year, & updating the international GLAM community on developments in the field. TOURS There are two exhibition tours in the week before at the BM & BL. So far booking very slow, but Geonotice has gone up. Canada National Archives digitization idea seems to be getting approval on their side & AHRC. BL Wikipedian in residence is very likely to be funded for a further 6 months. Not much engagement with Wikipedian community so far, but some events coming up.

Fae (GLAM committee)

• The Europeana GLAMwiki tool development has officially started, the Agile backlog can be seen at https://www.assembla.com/spaces/glamwiki/simple_planner. A meeting of the Steering Committee (which I sit on) is being planned for later this month.
• In my role as Wikimedia Chapters Association Council chair, I have had to set aside time to chasing around the committees to deliver. WMUK is a fall-back for some issues, such as legal establishment, and will be expected to take part in the Secretary General recruitment process. The Chapters governance checklist is available for review and feedback. WMIT has officially offered to host the 2013 conference, so we should plan to have representation in Milan.
• The Arts and Humanities Research Council have been highly positive about extending the British Library WIR programme for an additional six months with full funding. This includes a proposal to support some projects in Scotland.

GLAM committee

• The committee has had a faltering start, mainly due to holidays in August. See John Byrne's report above with regard to GLAMcamp.
• I made the decision to re-arrange the international GLAMwiki conference for April 2013 rather than September 2012. Hopefully there are lessons to be learned on the work needed to make the event a success, and the role of the Conference Committee if they wish to continue to claim responsibility for coordinating some or all of the logistics of the conference.
• For general reports on GLAM projects see:
  • Reports/2012/July#GLAM_activities
  • Reports/2012/August#GLAM_activities

Governance

• Chris has responsibility for managing all declarations of interest and I have handed off QRpedia negotiation.

Roger Bamkin (Projects)

As we have agreed, not much progress on WMUK town Projects. I continue to ask that the board re-consider its position in a clear way.

Gibraltarpedia

I've created an updated copy of an MOU that Chris abnd I discussed. I'd like to get this approved in principle at the board meeting. If we can get any issues highlighted before the meeting then we should be able to solve these quickly. This should be available with board papers. Decision

John Byrne has mentioned that he would like to know more about Gib. We have few secrets so I'd be happy to talk the board through our plans. I guess this might take 20 mins plus questions. Since we spoke, we now have the support of the Catalans as well as the Moroccan contingent.

We have highlighted that there are three UK/GLAM related conferences next spring. This needs to be managed. John C is delaying starting work in Gib in order to help with this at first day of GLAM camp.

Monmouthpedia

As we said this has pretty much stalled and its a joint effort I think. John and I are meeting one of their senior managers on 31st in Monmouth with Steve Virgin and WestonSuperMarePedia interest group. So I may know more. I have warned MCC that they are due to give reports to us and WMF in line with our agreements but we'll see. It seems likely that the QRpedia agreement won't be ready to be both read, approved by the next meeting. Can the board agree a new position? I do not at present have a financial arrangement with Monmouth. I am trying to talk to Fae about John's remuneration from WMUK. Not sure that board appreciate that Chepstow and Raglan are included in our existing MOU.

Wales

I'm guessing that Robin is reporting through Chris or Jon?

QRpedia

We now have a logo, we are appearing at an exhibition in London, talk of Wolverhampton, Derby and Fremantle - we hear of other QRpedia GLAMs. Legal stuff is awaiting visibility of WMUK progress on this matter.

Other news

• I'm presenting at:

  Oxford University

  Calpe Conference (Gibraltar Museum)

  Leicester De Montfort on Wiki Towns

• Still no news of Estonia trip to Tartupedia
  • What's Tartupedia??? Mike Peel (talk) 20:59, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Tartu is the second biggest town in Estonia. Estonia have an active, if small, Wikimedia chapter. Tartupedia is a spin-off of Monmouthpedia which is roughly outlined in their reports at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Eesti/Wikimedia_Eesti_News
• BBC want to feature Gibraltarpedia

• I have a business relationship with Steve Virgin

Doug Taylor (Education)

Education Committee

Since the last in-person meeting, the first EduWiki conference has taken place at the University of Leicester on 5-6 September. Thanks need to be recorded to Martin and Daria especially, but many other staff and volunteers contributed to its success, and the international panel of speakers was most impressive. It was disappointing that Tom was unwell and we missed his perspective on schools, but I wish him a rapid recovery and fully expect to find another opportunity to examine the issues for the schools sector at a later date.

An informal chat session between a number of Wikimedians interested in education took place before the last London meetup on the morning of 12 August. We took the opportunity to give some feedback to Charles on the development of the moodle/wiki training modules, and to discuss some examples of good practice when delivering training.

In the last month, I've been involved with delivering training sessions at the University of Hertfordshire Wikipedia workshop (14 August), Society of Biology Wikipedia workshop (29 August), Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Editor outreach/UK 2012 (31 August), AHRC workshop (3 September), and following the EduWiki conference (6 September). Trainers involved were: Harry, Charles, Katie, Fabian, and Andrew Gray - plus some 1-to-1 editing help for EduWiki Conference delegates from Roger, Chris and John. Andrew continues to arrange and deliver Wikimedia training as part of his brief for the British Library.

Most, if not all, of the first tranche of Training for Trainers attendees have now received their feedback. I continue to encourage volunteers who deliver training to take advantage of the course as I believe that anyone attending will gain something worthwhile from it. I hope to have some proposals from the Education Committee on further developments to our training programmes by the next in-person Board meeting.

Martin Poulter (non-board Associate)

Met with contact from NIACE (the national body for the adult & community learning sector). She is keen to work with us and give us a platform, including a slot at a forthcoming conference.

Attended the Wikiproject Medicine/Wikimedia Canada/Wikipedia Education Program workshop in Coventry (with Doug) and assisted with the Wikipedia training. It was attended by more than fifty health professionals and academic librarians. I am in touch with the organiser, who is a university librarian, and we are exploring the possibility of similar future events. We also met our Cancer Research UK contact and had a useful conversation about further work.

• Action: write up outline of a day workshop based on this event.

EduWiki Conference: this has spawned several requests for training workshops or other collaboration activities. We have an offer of a room in Leeds if we want to run an education event. I am still going through the mass of online coverage that was generated. Thanks to Doug and others for putting on the training workshop that ran immediately after the event.

• Action: Write a post-event email for attendees, with links and recommendations (including that they join WMUK)
• Action: Write a summary for the WMUK blog.

Education brochure: the Foundation has produced an impressive brochure of case studies of Wikipedia educational assignments. The terminology is a bit US-centric, so with the staff I changed some words and got a large batch printed. These have been sent out to university staff responsible for learning & teaching and to academics with a open or innovative teaching. This both promoted the EduWiki conference and raised awareness of the educational possibilities of Wikipedia. This year, we have done less university outreach than anticipated in the form of meetings and events, so this mailing has been funded from the education outreach budget. A valued external contact tells us that a good way to influence practice in university teaching is to send the brochures to external examiners.

• Action: help staff identify external examiner lists or events to which we should to send brochures.

We have about fifty Higher Education contacts with at least some interest in "doing something" such as a Wikipedia assignment (the number has been increasing since EduWiki).

• Action: Work on design of a programme of training events for Campus Ambassadors, and run it by the education committee. We need to rapidly train people up to meet demand, and so that I am less of a bottleneck.

Jon Davies (Chief Executive; including Staff)

Here's the Chief Executive report for the 8th September board meeting.

Links to other papers:

1. Agree plan for 2012-13 Decision: Board to debate and agree plan. Risk: Without plan we cannot bid for WMF approval or plan ahead. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2013_Activity_Plan http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2013_Activity_Plan/Ideas

2. Key Performance Indicators Decision: Agree most appropriate and add any others. Risk: Performance of WMUK cannot be measured. https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org.uk/document/d/1T8V6uAJHyZ4ft7XOnk1wbCQS4ArmYMbxWITWwFOnlds/edit

Stevie Benton (Comms)

Here's the communications report for the 8th September board meeting.

Daria Cybulska (Events)

Here's the Events Organiser report for the 8th September board meeting.

Katherine Bavage (Fundraiser)

Here's the fundraising report for the 8th September board meeting.