[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July 2004

Sun Jul 11 16:17:06 UTC 2004

Angela_ wrote:

>5) Board members
>
>Tim and Michael will have less active involvement than the other
>members of the Board but Jimbo stated that their presence on the Board would not mean the votes of Angela and Anthere would be automatically overridden. It was suggested that the Board should be enlarged at some point, possibly later this year, and that prominent people external to Wikipedia could be invited to hold positions on the Board.
>
While it might be nice to recruit prominent Board members from outside 
Wikipedia (this could help with visibility and fundraising), we also 
need to be sure that people on the Board are willing to be actively 
involved. Tim Shell and Michael Davis are okay for now, as associates of 
Jimbo, but without a professional staff to run the Foundation we can't 
afford to have most of our Board members at that level of involvement. 
One possibility is to include additional community representation as 
part of any Board expansion. Another idea is that these prominent 
people, if they can't make the commitment necessary to serve on the 
Board, might be given other advisory roles instead.

It's also possible for the Board to get too big, so that it's no longer 
effective or able to make decisions when needed. At five members, we're 
certainly not in danger of that yet, but it's something that must be 
considered if we expand the Board.

>6) AOB
>
>Jimbo will contact a German lawyer regarding the registration of the
>Wikimedia trademark in Germany, which someone else is currently
>attempting to register.
>
This is the first I've heard about this attempt. If it's not too much 
trouble, I would be interested to get some more information about it 
(off-list is fine). I might also be able to help with the communications 
if necessary, since I speak German, though I have no particular training 
in German law.

--Michael Snow