The main matters of interest decided at the meeting were:
- A draft application to the Charity Commission was discussed and most of it was approved. The sections on our objects and working with children were deferred until 5 August as they required more work. We will be sending an email to this list shortly asking your views on certain details of how we should carry out our objects.
- The chapter has decided to set up a blog as a way of communicating with potential supporters and advertising our activities
- We agreed in principle to hold a joint conference with the Open Knowledge Foundation next year, which will include our AGM.
- The prizes for the Wikipedia Loves Art competition held in February this year will be announced this week
Wikimedia UK Board meeting Tuesday 21st July 2009, 8:30pm BST at #wikimedia-uk-board
Present: Michael Peel (MP) (Chair); Andrew Turvey (AT) (minutes); Zeyi He (ZH); Steve Virgin (SV); Tom Holden (TH); Joseph Seddon (JS) (part)
Apologies: Paul Williams (PW); JS for late arrival
Note: At 8:30 only three Board members were present - MP, AT and TH so the meeting could not start as it was inquorate.
SV and ZH joined the meeting at 8:42.
Minutes of the previous meetings
The minutes of the meeting dated 7 July were approved.
The following actions were carried forward:
1. PW will finalise the design and organise the printing of business cards for Wikimedia UK officials and interested members.
ACTION: PW
2. TD agreed to contact the gazette on behalf of WMUK to solicit a pro-bono lawyer
ACTION: TD
3. The cost to attend the Online Information 2009 (1-3 Dec, London) conference is £400/day/person (£400 for the 3 days for registered charities). JS will confirm whether speakers have to pay this fee. In the event that speakers do have to pay the fee, SV will look into getting a slot in a fringe event instead.
ACTION: JS; SV
4. AT to submit expenses AGM claim .
ACTION: AT
5. PW agreed to draft an email to the WMF formalising the agreement to use Wikimedia Foundation trademarks in members-only merchandising and to look into where we could produce merchandise.
ACTION: PW
6. MP agreed to draft templates for the six press scenarios identified at Media relations#Media response.
ACTION: MP
7. MP agreed to contact Wikimedia Deutschland to ask them how much revenue they get from their redirect from wikipedia.de.
ACTION: MP
Matters arising
The Board discussed the number of actions that have been left outstanding and the time it takes to complete them. AT has been reminding people of outstanding actions which the Board felt had been helpful. It was agreed that the secretary will issue a reminder a week after the board meeting of all the outstanding actions.
ACTION: AT
Reports
Secretary
The Secretary's Report was noted. AT expects to send out the details of the February 2009 Wikipedia Loves Art prizes this week.
ACTION: AT
Treasurer
JS joined the meeting
The Treasurer's Report was noted. JS agreed to check with the Open Knowledge Foundation if we can advertise for members on their mailing list.
ACTION: JS
Chair
The Chair's Report was noted. It was agreed that MP and TH would attend the Oxford Symposium from the chapter (AT as a reserve if they are unable to go)
The Board agreed in principle to have a blog - MP agreed to install a wordpress blog at http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/blog. It was agreed that any Board member would be able to write an entry, and it can be published 24 hours after it is sent round the board by email if no objections are received back.
ACTION: MP
Conferences
The Conferences report was noted. The Board agreed in principle to holding a joint conference with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) in 2010. JS will probably be on the main conference organising committee and JS was looking for volunteers to be on the research track programme committee. We expect they will look to use to contribute to the costs, but these details haven't yet been discussed. JS agreed to talk to OKFN re attendence fees so that our members can still attend our AGM free of charge. ZH expressed an interest in being involved. JS will continue to progress this with the OKFN.
Corporate relations
The Corporate relations report was noted. It was agreed that any future requests received by steve through the corporate
address regarding requests to reuse Wikimedia content would be forwarded to info so that the OTRS managers could deal with it.
It was agreed that the Board would support and offer to help the PRCA contact regarding his case study on Wikipedia.
MP agreed to work with SV to do mini press releases, no more than one per month, advertising spikes in traffic per WP:POPULAR related to particular news events.
ACTION: MP, SV
JS agreed to get a copy of the WMF's press release contact list in the UK.
ACTION: JS
Charity Commission application
Section A of the Charity Commission application, drafted by AT was approved. It was agreed to mention the winter fundraiser as a deadline. It was agreed we would set our first year end to 31 Jan 2010. This would be after the completion of the winter fundraiser and would give us two months before the AGM to prepare the statutory accounts. The accounts would need to be filed at Companies House by 5 August. AT will file the relevant form with Companies House and revise the application.
ACTION: AT
Section B, drafted by AT was approved unchanged.
Section E, drafted by AT was approved unchanged. AT agree to draft a conflict of interest policy.
ACTION: AT
Section F, drafted by AT was approved. The directors' personal details will be added as per the Register of Directors.
Section C, drafted by MP was discussed. It was agreed to add the HMRC letter appendices as attachments to this section.
ACTION: MP
Board discussed whether the chapter should restrict its activities to supporting projects from the Wikimedia Foundation or whether it should also support non-WMF projects to do with free content on wikis. The majority view of the Board was that Wiki UK could in principle support both Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia projects and this should be made clear to prospective members and supporters. However, it was agreed that this would be posted to the WMUK email list for discussion first. Section C will be revisited once this discussion has taken place.
ACTION: AT
Section D, Vulnerable people was discussed. AT thought it may be incorrect as we may have to check all trustees if running the Initiatives/Schools project makes us into a "children's charity". JS agreed to look into this.
ACTION: JS
Next meetings
The next meetings were arranged for Tuesday 28th July, to discuss the initiatives, and Wednesday 5th August, as a regular meeting.
The Board also discussed in principle holding a face-to-face meeting, possibly to coincide with the September conference in Oxford or a wikimeet. It was agreed to discuss further closer to the time.
The meeting closed at 23:00.