Meetings/2010-01-19
Wikimedia UK Board meeting Tuesday 19th January 2010, 8:30pm BST on Skype
Present: Mike Peel (MP) (Chair); Andrew Turvey (AT) (minutes); Tom Holden (TH); Joseph Seddon (JS); Tom Dalton (TD); Zeyi He (ZH); Steve Virgin (SV)
Email decisions
The following decisions had been made by email since the last meeting:
- Instructing Fraser Brown as our solicitors to help us with our charity status application on a capped fee of £350 VAT. AT has informed Fraser Brown; MP will forward proof of ID and address to AT who will then send these on with his own.
ACTION: MP, AT
- Co-opting Tom Dalton as a board member to replace Paul Williams who had previously resigned. AT has emailed the WMUK-L email list to inform. MP has arranged access to chapters-l, set up tom.dalton
wikimedia.org.uk and added Tango to boardwikimedia.org,uk. MP will arrange access to internal-l and to board.wikimedia.org.uk. AT will register appointment with Companies House.
ACTION: MP, AT
MP agreed to give all board members would be given admin rights on blog.wikimedia.org.uk if they request but they have to register an account first.
Minutes
Minutes of the meeting held on 29 December were approved. In answer to the board's response to his report, SV clarified that his meeting with Bristol 24/7 did not involve Wikimedia UK in any political activity.
Britain Loves Wikipedia
MP and JS met with MLA on 8th Jan. There is a list on the internal wiki of interested museums. Museums will be finalised in the next 24 hours. MP asked the board to discuss and approve a number of items regarding this project:
Logo and leaflet
MP brought a proposal to get a graphical designer to design a leaflet for the event and a logo. The logo expected to cost around £500 and the intention is that it would also be used in future years.
TH suggested this is something that could be better, and more cheaply, done by the Wikimedia community. We could email Foundation-l, commons-l and wikimediauk-l to request volunteers. However, given the short timelines before the project launch on 31 January, the deadlines for designs would have to be very short.
After debate it was agreed we would ask the community for designs but also tender for a professional design in parralel. The timetable agreed was:
Tuesday 19th: JS to email community along with Village Pump notice and if possible a watchlist notice
Wednesday 20th: Brief issued to professional designers as per MP's email
Thursday 21st: Deadline for expressions of interest from the community and tenders from professional designers. Designer appointed.
Sunday 24th 23:59: Deadline for designs received by the community
Monday 25th: Designs received from professional designers
Tuesday 26th: Amendments suggested and designs signed off
Wednesday 27th: Leaflets printed and dispatched
ACTION: JS, MP
Press release
MP asked for board approval for a press release. The facts were agreed but it was agreed the approach needs to change as it's not very attractive to media. SV agreed to work on the press release with MP. TH and SV to approve prior to release.
ACTION: MP, TH, SV
It was agreed there woudl be one press release covering all locations and museums and individual museums could be encouraged to tailor to local contacts.
Rules
The proposed competition rules were discussed. It was agreed they needed more details on how the prizes would be allocated and whether people would get points for the number of photographs or for the best individual photographs. MP said discussions with the V&A said we should focus quality rather than quantity.
AT agreed to draft a "straw man" rules to distribute to the email list. Board agreed that these would be approved by MP, AT, JS following discussion by email and Skype. Deadline would be Friday 22nd so details could be incorporated into the leaflets.
ACTION: AT, MP, JS
Wiki pages
MP asked for help writing up the web pages at http://dev.britainloveswikipedia.org. It was noted this site was password protected. All board members had been given the password.
Prizes
AT agreed to contact Moo.com and Robbies Photographics, who had sponsored last year's event.
ACTION: AT
It was noted that the RAF museum have donated a £100 prize for each of their two locations and a £50 voucher has been donated from an editor.
Budget 2010
AT introduced the discussion on the 2010 Budget emphasising that this meeting was not intended to make the final decision but to decide in principle on several key areas:
Process
It was agreed that the decisions from this meeting would only be decisions "in principle" and would be shared with the community on the email list for feedback and decision in the next two meetings.
ACTION: AT
It was agreed that we should delegate more spending powers to individuals. Given the discussion earlier on the logo, the delegation needed clearer guidance on how monies should be spent. A better idea of how much things cost is also needed before spending is delegated.
Reserves
AT proposed we set a target reserve figure of £16,000 to be built up over two years so putting aside £8,000 from the 2009/10 fundraiser towards this. This target is based on 100% of our admin expenses over the next year (£2,100) plus 50% of our project expenses (£28,000 x 50% = £14,000). This essentially means if we got zero income we could fund our admin costs and continue most of our project work for a year.
It was agreed that a target of £8,000 - putting aside £4,000 this year and next would be sufficient. Based on latest figures this would cover 100% of expected admin costs of £3,000 plus 15% of project costs of £30,000.
TD agreed to bring a draft Reserves Policy to the next meeting based on his proposal in April.
ACTION: TD
General admin expenses
Until Jan 2011, AT has proposed £3,000 for legal costs, £500 for AGM costs and £200 for telephone, postage etc.
JS commented that icommons incurs significant legal costs so although these are high they are not unreasonable.
It was agreed to add a budget of £500 for an in-person board meeting.
SV suggested a small float to pre-fund board members' travel expenses. It was agreed that the chapter need to have the ability to pre-fund expenses for directors who don't have the means to fund it themselves and wait for reimbursement.
It was agreed to add £1,000 for general admin costs and to include trustee indemnity and public liability insurance. AT will obtain some quotes for these.
ACTION: AT
Office and staff
TD suggested that we open an office and hire a bookkeeper and webdeveloper from June.
JS mentioned discussions he had had with WM Deutschland who said that they found hiring staff was a big boost to their efficiency.
After discussion the feeling was that a physical office would not be of enough value to us at the moment given that most of our activities are online. However, hiring administrative assistance - possible an "Office Administrator" as well as a bookkeeper - was agreed in principle.
Toolserver donation
JS explained that the Wikimedia toolserver is a server that runs a large number of applications which are vital for the functioning of Wikipedia and other sites, including counter-vandalism and spell checking bots.
The Toolserver is currently owned and operated by Wikimedia Deutschland. The Foundation support what WMDE are doing and have donated money to support it in the past.
WMDE have recently asked for other chapters to consider supporting both the financing and running of the toolserver. The annual budget is around €100,000 and they would like other chapters to contribute €50,000. Discussions have taken place on setting up some kind of "Toolserver Association" which may be owned by those chapters that contribute.
AT recommended that we donate £20,000 given that there are only around four other chapters who are likely to give significant sums and most of these are smaller chapters than us. It was agreed in principle to donate - amounts discussed was between £5,000 to £20,000.
AT agreed to contact WMDE to get more details of what the money would be spent on.
ACTION: AT
It was suggested that depending on how the legal advice goes regarding the WMF half of the Fundraising income, we may be able to use some or all of that for the Toolserver.
Usability Project
AT summarised the previous discussions he had had with the project: they are working on a range of initiatives and are able to come up with a project that we could fund exclusively and would not otherwise be done. We may be able to choose a particular idea that has links to WMUK.
Given the lack of time, discussion was deferred to the next meeting.
Reports
The reports were noted and actions carried forward as detailed in them. Matters arising were:
Membership applications were deferred to the next meeting.
It was agreed to open the savings account, which TH will arrange.
ACTION: TH
AT asked for volunteers to attend the Wildscreen ARKive launch and SV and JS volunteered - to discuss offline.
ACTION: AT, JS, SV
Next Meeting
The next meeting was agreed for Tuesday 2nd February, 8:30pm on Skype