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 Central Archives and Derby City Council
• Fielded interest in QRpedia from Liam and De Spiegel

Actions

• Booked room for EGM Done
• Got quote for badges/T shirts Done
• Created video of Derby Museum experience Done
• Action report on Derby Museums nope
• Expenses catch-up - Carried forward
• 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. Carried forward
• RB to invite Terence to the next board meeting, and to work with him to assemble a legal agreement and transition timeline. Done and Discuss
• 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. Done
• RB to liase with MP on the quote and designs prior to ordering (funds to come from the communications budget) Done
• RB to contact James Forrester/Pendrel's Oak to book a room on 16 October. Done
• RB and CK to write blog post announcing the EGM Done
• RB to ask all board members that, if they have an issue with the resolution for the new Objects, they should raise it with one of the exec prior to the resolution being sent out. Done
• RB to request CK to resume fundraising tests Done
• RB to ask Nick (ex-Derby museum) to assemble a best-practices guide to QR code deployment in a museum. Funding from the culture and heritage budget subject to agreement of Fæ as budget holder.{{cf))

Upcoming

• EGM 16th October
• Norwegian Arts/Museum conference 16th October Lillehammer
• Special Libraries Assoc panel 17th October
• QRpedia a whole town - new event Discuss
• Before the in person board meeting - wikimeet on Friday for Sue (asked Marek69 to arrange)

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. Carried forward
• 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
• MP and RS to sort out membership ASAP, and to send around the current number of members to the Board. Done

Administrative

• Reports/2011/August done, Reports/2011/September near completion, Reports/2011/October being assembled. With Richard's help.
• Minutes 27Aug11 and Minutes 18Sep11 written; this page assembled.
• 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. Ongoing.
• WikiConference India Scholarships offered, 4 applications received, 4 scholarships offered (one partial). Ongoing.
• Need to reformat Microgrants to incorporate standard grants. Carried forward

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)

Activities to report

Bank account

• Balance is currently £45,407
• Payments have been made within three weeks for all validly submitted expenses on the office wiki. Large amounts include:
  • Prospectus - full fee £12,000 now paid
  • 1st payroll for Office Manager completed
  • £10,000 has been transferred from paypal to the bank
  • £85,000 has been deposited in a term deposit
• There have been two small overpayments which I'm in the process of reclaiming
• There are some known expenses where I haven't got the full details and I'm following up (e.g. Fraser Brown and OKFN)
• Change of signatories form has been submitted (again) [AT to follow up]

Accounts

• UHY have requested some more information to enable them to sign the accounts - they are expecting to do this this week
• They have then promised their quote for quarterly management accounts

Registered Office Mail

• one cheque donation received & forwarded to RS

Activity Plan

• Drafted with others - many thanks to everyone who helped complete this
• Discussed with WMF with MP and JD. Generally they liked the plan, but mentioned:
  • participation in the fundraiser is based on the assumption that we will be a charity either prior to or shortly after the start of the Fundraiser Discuss
  • They questioned the balance between GLAM and educational activities
  • They said we need to have contingencies in place for if the fundraiser raises more or less than the plan
• The plan includes a significant underspend from 2011 which I would like to Discuss

Chief Executive

• Obtained references, liased with prospectus to offer the position to JD
• Posted a blog post to welcome him
• Set up payroll with Virtual Source
• Agreed a timetable to transfer day to day tasks to paid staff from January.

Control summary

• Fraud risk has been significantly reduced. Most of our funds can now only be accessed by two signatories, with only the transactional account having single access
• Interest income has been signifantly increased due to term investments
• Bank credit risk has been diversified, but still exposed to ca. £100,000 if coop has problems. Plan to diversify further, opening one more bank account.

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 Cancelled
2. AT to investigate debit cards for bank account signatories. Carried forward
3. AT - In camera minutes of 2 February 2011 Carried forward
4. AT - written legal advice onto wiki Carried forward
5. AT to request a quote for insurance for board members against the risk of personal liability and negligence. Carried forward
6. AT to send invitations to current and past office admins to comment on the office manager job description during its development. Carried forward
7. AT to investigate having a travel agent (in particular, one that can book travel for named volunteers and charge it directly to WMUK). Discuss
8. AT to open a second bank account, with increased controls over expenditure and higher levels of interest. Carried forward
9. AT to send around standard text of insurance against risk of personal liability and negligence. Carried forward

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

• Delivered Institute of Physics Workshop: all evaluation feedback is shared on the WMUK page
• Involved in re-drafting WMUK Objects for charitable status application
• Gave presentation on behalf of WMUK in the two Wiki Wildlife events in Bristol
• Met staff of At-Bristol (an innovative hands-on science centre) with SV. I'm taking forward work with 1) At-Bristol staff and, 2) secondary school science teachers, to explore educational possibilities of working together.
• Gave 40 minute presentation-&-questions session at Bathcamp, University of Bath on "Common pitfalls in engaging with Wikipedia"
• Earlier today: wrap-up meetings for ARKive project pilot and University of Bristol Wikimedia Ambassador

Coming soon

• Speaking at ESRC Research Seminar on "Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights", Leicester University
• Invited (by Institute of Physics) to speak at meeting of scientific scholarly bodies
• Meeting with British Psychological Society
• In progress: writing extensive guide to Wikimedia Commons for JISC Digital Media (the national advisory service for Higher and Further Education)
• Guest blog post for the JISC on openness

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

• Governance
  • Successful meeting with UHY to discuss possible requirements for third party assessment and consultancy support. JD's summary available but yet to have summary from UHY. The intention is to open such a requirement up for bids from various parties (including other charities or chapters). PQASSO recommended by JD as an option for improving quality and process.
  • WM-DE are interested in helping with process sharing, factoring out parts of the financial process to follow their recognized procedures may be worth considering as an effective shortcut to efficient controls that the WMF and CC can have immediate confidence in.

• GLAM Scotland
  • Partnership agreed in a meeting with the CEO of Museums Galleries Scotland. However due to pressures of transitioning to become the new National Development Body for the Scottish GLAM over the next few months, the CEO has (today) asked to defer the start date to May 2012 in order to ensure they effectively support the programme.
  • Parallel meetings with National Archives of Scotland and a representative of the Open Street Map community in Scotland have introduced new opportunities for the Scotland GLAM programme. (F/BM) Discussions with Peter Weis (Hamburg) have also created an opportunity for an inter-chapter photography enthusiast event in Scotland in the same time frame. (F)
• GLAM Pipeline
  • British Museum internal workshops have been reasonably successful along with long term potential for Ice Age and Bronze Age events in progress wp:GLAMBM. (JB/F)
  • British Library presentation was a popular event with staff (c. 50 staff attending) laying down the issue of copyright policy hampering progress and putting up objectives for a Wikimedian in Residence programme that is under negotiation with an external funding body. (F)
  • Initial meetings with Historic Royal Places are encouraging for scoping how a WIR programme might work from Spring 2012 onwards. HRP would fund this internally. (JB/F)
  • Wellcome Trust has run an internal "Everything you ever wanted to know about Wikipedia but were afraid to ask" workshop (with Matthew Cock presenting) and are in the process of defining a second round of events. (F & a number of internal Wikimedian advocates)
  • Wiki Africa under discussion, we are not at any proposal stage yet. This is a possible umbrella to gain recognition for our future black history events. Leutha has particular experience with relevant archives. Concerns have been raised about the commitment and budget required though GLAM UK has yet to make any estimates. (F & L)
• GLAM Network
  • GLAMcamp 2-4th December 2011 now to be hosted by WM-NL refer to m:GLAMcamp Amsterdam. WM-UK being offered as a contingency helped crystallize the discussion. Expectation that WM-UK would provide expenses for approved GLAM volunteers travelling from the UK.
  • GLAMwiki conference (the main global conference) has been announced as hosted by WM-UK and the British Library on 14-15th September 2012, see GLAM-WIKI-2012. BL supply the venue for free, expected that WM-UK will have staff in place to organize logistics and may have a preferred travel agent.
  • 20 V&A complementary tickets to the Postmodernism exhibition received for Wikimedians supporting the wikilounge.

Actions

• Fae/Roger/JD - 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 (deferred after time taken engaging with governance, advice for WikiConference India scholarships was to follow the WMF expenses guidelines).
• Fæ to lead the assembly of a briefing for partners on issues and expectations surrounding in-residency projects.

Steve Virgin (Director)

• in-camera report

Report

Actions

Staff

Jon Davies (Chief Exec)

• See report (for now) circulated Victuallers 15:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Richard Symonds (Office Admin)

Actions

• MP and RS to sort out membership ASAP, and to send around the current number of members to the Board. Done
• RS to assist with chasing and clearing the backlog of outstanding submission of expense claims.

Volunteers

Andy Mabbett

• Andy Mabbett to arrange for part of the next in-person meeting to be webcast. (Reminder sent) Victuallers 15:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

John Byrne

• JB to put general questions onto the WMUK wiki and to ask for the community to help in answering them. Done
• JB to investigate how long after charity acceptance it will be before we get the charity number