Reports 11Oct11

Below are the Board reports to the Board Meeting on 11 October 2011; see Agenda 11Oct11.

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

If something needs discussing, then please add it to the Matters Arising section on the agenda.

Note that in-camera reports should only contain elements that cannot be reported publicly.

Board members

Roger Bamkin (Chair)

• in-camera report

Done recently

• Organised phone meeting before EGM announcement to make sure board informed
• Met CEO on October 1 to discuss plans
• Spoke at The Herbert Backstage Pass / University of Warwick Freshers fair
• Presentatio at British Library - Sept 27th
• Activity plan on time
• Presentation at Austrian National Library and Panel Oct 3-5th
• Met Leicester Achives and Derby City Council
• Fielded interest in QRpedia

Actions

• Booked room for EGM
• Got quote for badges/T shirts
• Created video of Derby Museum experience3
• Action report on Derby Museums
• Expenses catch-up
• RB to send a holding comment to internal-l and wikimediauk-l about the fundraiser, saying we're working on the issues. Done
• RB to ensure that the job description for the office manager includes goals and assessment.
• RB to invite Terence to the next board meeting, and to work with him to assemble a legal agreement and transition timeline.
• RB to ensure that all board members are able to come to board meetings on the planned dates, and to set out the key elements/theme to be discussed at those meetings.
• RB to liase with MP on the quote and designs prior to ordering (funds to come from the communications budget) Done

Upcoming

• EGN 14th October
• Norwegian Museum conference 16th October
• Special Libraries Assoc panel 17th October
• QRpedia a whole town - new event
• In person board meeting - wikimeet on Friday

Mike Peel (Secretary)

Split into roles:

Board

• Membership approvals - see in-camera report for list of names and locations (all approved by email).
• Need to know attendance numbers, and number of votes, for Annual Conference 2011 AGM Minutes
• Involved in the chief exec appointment, and the process of bringing him up to speed.
• EGM 2011 - page and notice written; blog post put out. Notice sent out by office admin to all members.
• Presented at the Herbert Backstage Pass on 1 October
• MP to post the record of the strategy meeting to the board wiki Done
• MP to send an electronic copy of johnbod's presentation, and Andrew's slides on potential future chapter growth, to Ting. Done
• MP to send the strategy document to AT asap. Done

Administrative

• Reports/2011/August done, Reports/2011/September being assembled. Both with Richard's help.
• Minutes 27Aug11
• Action: Sort through / close off old email addresses Done
• Office admin: have set up access to WMUK systems. Ditto chief exec.
• meta:Meetup/London/49 - 4 sets of travel costs were covered.
• WikiSym Scholarships offered, 3 applications received, 2 funded.
• WikiConference India Scholarships offered, 4 applications received, 4 scholarships offered (one partial).

Sysadmin

• glamwiki: restricted FTP access granted to volunteers for development area on glamwiki.org
• Glitch in formatting of the main donation site, due to ResourceLoader being implemented on the WMUK wiki, has been resolved.
• scotwiki.org set up; redirecting to the Wikimedia in Scotland.
• Bug request to change watchlist email notifications preference availability on this wiki
• Implemented http://directdebit.wikimedia.org.uk/ for the fundraiser
• Action: Update blog to use Vector skin [1]; specify license (the standard CC-BY-SA?) Carried forward (ideally needs tech person; currently low priority)

Volunteer

• Presented at Science Online London 2011, on "Microattribution" and "How are wikis being used to carry out and communicate science?"
• Pushing forward with Geocamp
• Gauging interest in having a UK OTRS workshop
• Closing off Britain Loves Wikipedia Doing... - two prizes now awarded, with the rest in progress

Andrew Turvey (Treasurer)

• in-camera report

Activities to report

Actions

1. AT to send a memento of our gratitude to the teller, outgoing board members, and speakers (excluding new board members), from WikiConference UK 2011 Carried forward
2. AT to investigate how we can move to multiple signatories for large transactions. Doing...
3. AT to investigate debit cards for bank account signatories. Doing...
4. TD to give AT the password for the main paypal account. AT to give all board members read-only access to the paypal account. Discuss
5. AT to investigate term deposits and return to the board with options. Carried forward
6. AT - In camera minutes of 2 February 2011 Carried forward
7. AT - written legal advice onto wiki Carried forward
8. AT to request a quote for insurance for board members against the risk of personal liability and negligence. Carried forward
9. AT to take text from the strategy document, polish it, and circulate it to the board prior to it being sent around to chief exec applicants. Carried forward
10. AT to post the recruitment pack for the chief exec to the wiki, and to write a section in the August report about recruitment.
11. AT and CK to turn the highlights from AT's report on the chief exec appointment into a blog post - in particular covering the recruitment section.
12. AT to send invitations to current and past office admins to comment on the office manager job description during its development.
13. AT to investigate having a travel agent (in particular, one that can book travel for named volunteers and charge it directly to WMUK).
14. AT to open a second bank account, with increased controls over expenditure and higher levels of interest.
15. AT to send around standard text of insurance against risk of personal liability and negligence.
16. AT to assemble an overall strawman 2012 activity plan, to discuss and approve by email.

Chris Keating (Director)

• in-camera report

Fundraiser risks & readiness

1. Participate in the fundraiser. Yellow. Risks - Charity Commission says no, or the EGM isn't quorate, and in consequence the Foundation decide we don't get to participate after all. Likelihood - not great.
2. Technical ability to take donations. Green. Risks - virtually none, Paypal and Smartdebit are tested and working. Both are large systems with a big customer base and lots of technical staff. Richard is in place and getting on with the job.
3. Accurate recording of donations on CiviCRM. Green. Risks; Richard and I both get run over by buses. Likelihood; <5% Contingency; those not run over by bus piece stuff together from documentation.
4. Ability to optimise campaign for best long-term income through testing, improvements, Gift Aid capture etc. Yellow. Risks - I run out of time/energy; lack of technical capacity to build test donation forms or make best use of SmartDebit API. Impact; the fundraiser would still work, just not optimally. Likelihood; we definitely do not currently have the technical capacity we really need. Liklihood of me not being able to spend as much time on this as I'd like also approaches 100% but the risk of me burning out altogether is very slim.
5. Ability to use email effectively for launch email appeal and regular thankyous. Yellow. Risks - CiviMail is unreliable. Contingency - we abandon CiviMail and get an account to send emails via MailChimp. This is more laborious, less integrated but much more reliable. I have signed us up for a MailChimp account and unless we can reliably solve CiviMail within the next week this is what we will need to do.
6. Send thankyou letter with Direct Debit ask. Green. Risks - cf above regarding me but there is also a slim element of risk in the supplier relationships. Impact is probably just that this project gets delayed a few months.

Fundraiser (almost completely focused on this at the moment)

• Held induction for Richard regarding CiviCRM & procedures and managed Richard's work from 1 September to Jon's start date
• Two fundraising tests conducted regarding Direct Debit functionality and optimisation, documented here
• Made contact with a Welsh Wikipedian who wanted information about translating
• Meeting with Jon re fundraiser etc
• Wrote first draft direct mail thank you - this is being put into artwork at the moment, further opportunities for comment after the 16th of October
• Documenting FR procedures
• 2011 Fundraiser

Internal communications

• Took the lead with most of the communication re EGM, Activity Plan

Strategy

• Lots of work on the Activity Plan
• Started conversation re monitoring gender balance

Outreach

• Preliminary contact made with Imperial War Museum and Europeana regarding WWI Centenary

Actions carried forward

Sort out print items to support outreach (carried over)

Martin Poulter (Director)

• in-camera report

Recent activity

Coming soon

Actions

• Strategy, publicity & event preparation for Wikimedia Universities Programme Carried forward
• Look into a team for a training event for Food Standards Agency in Autumn (arranged by SV) Carried forward
• Log into OTRS Carried forward
• MLP to put together a full proposal on a Wikipedia trainers course, assessment and accreditation program, in coordination with Fæ.

Fæ (Director)

• in-camera report

Report

• (Scotland)
• (pipeline)
• (network)

Decisions

1. Proposal to host GLAMcamp in Scotland for Feb/Mar 2012. Liam is willing to help with content but UK staff support must be reserved for organization (hotel bookings, online coordination and ticketing, managing expenses, 'freebies', handouts...).
2. This would be a good moment to decide on whether we are committed to GLAMWIKI 2012 (sometime July-September? Asked for BL feedback) as we should announce it and book the BL as venue now.

Actions

• Fae/Roger - GLAM coordination should be proposed as a paid programme activity (not office role) due to the ramping up of the programme, particularly in expectations of growth throughout 2012, and the significant coordination, backroom planning and communication is putting significant burden on a few key volunteers and is beginning to fail to be delivered as a result.
• (TBA, getting urgent) The Strategy Workshop results should be incorporated into the WM-UK wiki, this may be useful to time with further announcements about an EGM if needed to support transition to charity status.
• Fae - Add general simple guidelines to the WM-UK wiki defining what travel expenses WM-UK are prepared to cover for volunteers supporting events.
• (Note) All - Better solution needed to how we regularly pick up emails to OTRS. We recently missed a request for interview with the BBC WRT NOTW situation. (Changing to a note as the solution may be to opt in for email alerts in OTRS; please do so.)
• Fæ to lead the assembly of a briefing for partners on issues and expectations surrounding in-residency projects.
• Fæ to forward the outstanding invoice from the strategy workshop to AT to be paid.

Steve Virgin (Director)

• in-camera report

Report

Actions

Volunteers

Andy Mabbett

• Andy Mabbett to arrange for part of the next in-person meeting to be webcast.