[Foundation-l] Re: Funding for the newly elected Board Members

Mon Jun 21 17:49:27 UTC 2004

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>....
> I think that though most issues may be solved in irc and emails 
> discussion, it is very highly suitable that the board meets in real life 
> at least once in the year, and this meeting in Paris is the lowest cost 
> opportunity to do so. I deeply believe that on-line discussions can be 
> improved when people have met around a beer once. Hence, I hope Angel 
> will come to Paris. It will strengthen the community to do so. And I do 
> not think a project like our own project, does rely ONLY of hardware 
> considerations; it relies a lot on PEOPLE. And using a bit of money from 
> the Foundation to strenghten the bonds between people does not seen to 
> me to be a waste. Many issues can be fixed on face to face meeting, so 
> that is not inefficiency either. And finally, talking of corruption is 
> perhaps a bit premature Mark.
> ...

I very much agree with this. The trustees do need to meet face-to-face at least
once per year. The budget committee needs to work out a way to make at least
that happen and also look into the possibility of having quarterly face-to-face
meetings of the trustees. Those meetings could be conducted in different parts
of the world and coincide with Wikimedia meet-ups. Video streaming and phone
conferencing could also be set-up so that non-board member officers could
virtually attend the meetings (such as the financial officer ;). But it is very
important for at least Jimbo and the representative board members to actually
*be* there. Thus we need to reimburse at least those board members for travel
expenses. 

For now we could depend just on the Ars-Electronica award for this, but in
future fund drives we would just say up front something like "no more than 10%
of the money generated from this fund drive will be used for non-server-related
expenses (such as office or meeting/travel expenses of the board)." 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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