Minutes 2012-09-08

These minutes are currently being drafted.

Strategy day

Not minuted like a board meeting!

Everyone introduced themselves, and a few ground rules were laid down. Fae wanted more of the notes about the meeting to be captured - this will be Richard's role.

Steven, the facilitator, went over the idea of a 'feedback sandwich' - having a positive, then a negative, then a positive.

Flipchart Post its are very expensive - dont give them back at the end, give them to Daria It would be a pity if he had to carry all this stuff home.

The Board noted the high quality stationery.

The outcome from today should be an activity plan!

"Review shared vision" http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision (also review the Strategy Day minutes from last year at http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Workshop_Report_-_Candy_Piercy.pdf Everyone wrote down what they wanted from today, both personally, and for the group.

Mike

Overall: Set out a realistic, comprehensive activity plan for 2013, and understanding of how 2012 activity plan will lead into that.

Personal: Reduce stress levels by having consensus and common understanding between staff and trustees.

Richard

Overall: Formulate an activity plan that gives me and the rest of the staff a good plan to work around for the next year

Personal: Understand where each of the board members are coming from with their opinions

Jon

• Gain consensus for a plan
• Find clarity
• Creates something ambitious but achievable
• Create something that the community will endorse and love

We then discussed the various problems we're coming across: particularly civility! An incivil environment makes it difficult for us to function. It's be a good idea to have 'civility' as a value, perhaps? Or civil discourse? Doug says that the important thing is to create an environment in which people feel that they can contribute. Meeting people in real life is a good idea and helps solve the issue, a little.H

Problems this generates;

• how can we develop new volunteers if they take their first step into Wikimedia UK and see people shouting at each other?
• Also communications on the Board and between board and staff?

'Nice' as a value

Promoting a welcoming or convivial or congenial or supportive environment.

"To be congenial, supportive and welcoming."

Things slowing down the mission

Opaque and inconsistent reporting of finances and activities Lack of strategic scalability Forgetting targets from last year (or last quarter) and not reporting against them Lack of volunteers Lack of recruitment process for volunteers or standard support Lack of conversion process between online and offline volunteers Hassle on standardization of how to execute partnerships Community of Wikimedians who might be paid professionals is apparently small (is it really, or is this a lack of identification? Or do they all work for the WMF now?) Board turnover and changing roles causes destablization It seems incredibly hard to employee people who have expertize (what sort of expertise?) Lack of developer resources in the office Lack of admin capacity in the office -- not enough volunteers not getting enough new volunteers lack of consensus about aims and strategy not enough capacity to exploit all opportunities (e.g. staff) not getting scalability unclear about boundaries between staff/volunteers/partner orgs no stability and consistency of the board not developing the community no usability of Wikipedia and other projects (when we train newcomers)

Things pushing forward the mission

Staff supporting logistics Good staff History of successes (EduWiki, BL WIR...) Better board meetings Financial situation People queuing up to give us money Wikipedia is massively popular and respected 85 active volunteers (no passive volunteers?) ample funds and the ability to spend them extending our network of contacts like-minded organizations support from the staff (including new staff to be hired) -- Financial abundance Staff and office providing logistical support successful recruitment of talented people that share our values stong brand stong relationship with partners stable relationships internationally policy environment broadly favourable (to open content etc)

85 volunteers, not enough volunteers

Survey/talk to them them - ask what their expectations are, what they would like to do for us. Train the trainers, cascade recruitment What do they want to do with £1k/£10k? Assistance writing proposals Recruit new volunteers from partner organisations, "one step removed" Advertise / good media coverage Outreach events Meetups Engage online volunteers more (talk pages, geonotices) Shop (discounts for members?) Membership reward / joining pack

There was a fair amount of discussion about how we can manage a budget like this. We don't have enough 'thought leaders' to do this - it's not just an issue of money. We will probably need to hire volunteer "thought leaders"!

Lots of discussion about changing government policy - is this worth a £5k budget line, perhaps? This was agreed (minutes are in Jon's book!). Roger thinks we need to talk about the top two or three ideas that came out of today, and see if they're in the plan! These ideas were:

• Increasing volunteer grants. Travel grants thus went up from 15k to 25k. Fae suggested up to £40k in 'program and project grants'. Possibly hiring someone to manage the projects and come up with objectives, outcomes, 'kill points' etc - a project manager for 6 months to a year, including helping people write proposals. Fae suggests, based on his professional experience, a six month post to set up a proper project and grant management process. Possibly, in future, we would hire a full time permanent project manager.
• Helping volunteers more. We'll therefore be hiring a volunteer developmernt and support person. Already decided. Job description to be written in next few months.
• "short term projects", eg hiring John Cummings. Has to be done openly if the idea is ours: but can also be done if someone approaches us with a project.
• WMUK landing page. Fae very against this idea. Chris thinks this is a result of needing to improve the usability of our website. We'll start a discussion about this on wiki.
• 87 volunteers: Stevie will set up a blank page to discuss what questions we should ask in a volunteer survey.

Joining pack: We are now moving towards getting as many members as we can, even if they are not as active. Part of this is getting a joining pack, with leaflets - how to run an editathon, how to start a wikipedia town - how to edit, even.

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Board meeting

Sunday 9 September

Logistics

• Attendees:

• Board: Chris Keating [CK] (Chair), Doug Taylor [DT] (Vice chair), Mike Peel [MP/MWP] (Minutes - backup), John Byrne [JB], Roger Bamkin [RB], Ashley van Haeften [Fæ],
• Staff: Jon Davies [JD], Richard Symonds [RS] (Minutes - lead)
• Also attending: Rock drum [RD], Harry Mitchell [HM/HJM], Robin Owain [RO]

• Breakfast:

Breakfast should be provided at the hotel (if you're staying over). Food will not be provided at The Herbert although you can go and buy food from the Cafe if you so wish. Coffee, tea and water will be available all day.

• Dinner?
• When do people leave?

Board meeting

10.05 Housekeeping

• MP - Review of past meetings and approval of Minutes (5 minutes)
  • Minutes 12May12

Not approved due to missing info.

• • Annual Conference 2012 AGM Minutes

Not approved as not yet complete.

• • Minutes 30Jun12

Approved.

• MP - Review of email and on-wiki decisions (5 minutes)
  • 30 July, Decision to support the Digital Past 2013 conference [Fæ, RB, MP, CK] Decision on office wiki

All approved.

• • 1 August, Decision to approve new members [RB, JB, CK, DT, MP] (see in-camera minutes)
  • 1 August, Decision to appoint Martin Poulter as an Associate for the board Decision on office wiki
  • 14 August, new membership approvals (3 new members)
• RS/MP - Approval of new members (3 minutes)

All new members, 6 of them, were approved. RB suggested that a membership report would be a good thing to have at future meetings.

10.20am Policy proposals

• Fæ / JD - Staff recruitment, including discussion and adoption of new process (20 minutes)

http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Draft_Recruitment_Policy_August_2012#Appointment_procedures

Fae raised concerns about a communications problem between the board and the staff, in that Interns were hired without the board being kept fully informed. MP was concerned that we had several unanswered questions on the talk page for the draft recruitment policy. The minutes for 26 July were approved and 30 June approved, but not the May minutes.

JD explained the reasons why trustees were involved, and there was discussion between JD and DT about the problems about keeping trustees involved. There was an in-depth discussion about how involved the board should be in the process. Fae objected strongly to the first three sections in the Draft Recruitment Policy, which he felt were in there to discourage trustees from being involved in the process at all. JD said that he had put the three sections in because the charity's governance advisor suggested placing them in. He removed them, as per Fae's request. MP felt that trustees should /normally/ be on each panel. At the moment, in the formative phase of the organisation, he feels that trustees should /always/ be on the panels. He suggested that DT and JD work on this over the next few weeks. DT disagreed, he felt that this was an issue that could be setttled today. DT suggested that the words 'or volunteer' in the first bullet point of the 'Shortlisting and recruitment process' be removed. Fae said that the key issue behind his complaint is that the board were not kept informed. MP said that although the board were informed through the weekly reports, there was not enough board involvement. Template:ACTION DT and JD to work on a revised version of the recruitment policy, for discussion at the next board meeting. Decision to make the draft public - JD to move it to the public wiki.

• MP - Donation and grant acceptance policy (10 mins)

CK explained why we need this policy. RS explained that KB was particularly interested in this policy, it should be in place for the fundraiser. RB had a small concern about the £50,000 limit being too high. JB had a few concerns about how to refund donations, but the rest of the board thought that this was a technical issue for discussion if and when the need arose.

• DECISION: This policy was approved. JD to inform KB.
• MP - Representing Wikimedia UK policy (10 mins)

CK and JD had questions as to what the current problem with this policy was. The 'Trademark usage' policy was slightly changed for clarity after RB explained his experiences with the WMF and Monmouth/Gibraltar. The Chief Executive, or delegated staff, was chosen to be the person with authority to approve Chapter stationery. ACTION: JD to propose a section to be added to the policy about volunteer liability insurance. The rest of tthe policy was approved.

11.10am Risks and risk management

• • JD / CK: Risk review (in particular, fundraiser readiness) (15 mins)
    • Risk Register (in camera)
  • Reserved by CK (20 mins)
  • MP - Declarations of Interest (5 minutes)
  • JD/MP - Conflicts of interest policy/2012 redraft (5 minutes)
  • JB - Resolutions arising from Jon's in-camera report - 10 mins

12.00pm Discussion - openness / financial controls

• Openness - MP: 30 mins total

Confidentiality, communication and information sharing - when should things be kept private on the office wiki/list, or even just in the office (excluding trustees), and when should they be public (for info/discussion/criticism)? (MP kick-off, open discussion - at least an hour required)

• Finance policies and recommendation regarding depreciation- MP/JB/JD - 25 mins

DECISION: Capitalisation policy of 3 years and over £200 was approved.

DECISION: Accounts were approved, subject to a change of roughly £4000 regarding PayPal fees.

DECISION: To amend the Finance Policy 2012 to create section 6.4, which reads "The value of any such asset will be deprecated on a three-year basis for the purporse of monthly depreciation values. The specific value of the asset will be assessed each year prior to our financial audit taking place."

Trustee authorisation limits

MP explained his concern that decisions of the board

Decision to amend the policy to include:

• Funds are specifically delegated to the initiatives that are explicitly described in the respective activity plan. Should an initiative not be specifically included in the activity plan, then the Board needs to be notified about the change of purpose of the budget line should the amount affected be equal to or greater than £500.
• The Board must be informed of any expenditure that exceeds £1,000, and the Board must be given a 24 hour period in order to raise objections to this expenditure. Should any trustee object to the expenditure, then a formal decision must be made about said expenditure.
• The Board must formally approve of any expense that exceeds £5,000, excluding recurring expenses (such as salary, pensions and rent).

1.00pm Lunch

• 1pm at St Mary's Guildhall, then we can go and take some photographs of the building (it will be closed the day of Wikipedia Takes Coventry).

Booked on 14 August by Rock drum

1.45pm Discussions

• Key Performance Indicators - JD / Fae : 30 mins total
  • John's draft KPI document; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T8V6uAJHyZ4ft7XOnk1wbCQS4ArmYMbxWITWwFOnlds/edit?pli=1
    1. Performance against the service level agreement for chapter inquiries
    2. Performance against volunteer and membership plans

2.15pm Project proposals

• Gibraltarpedia update / MOU - Roger (25 mins)
• Proposals for Wales - Robin Owain (15 minutes)
• Media training / Comms review recommendations - Jon (10 mins)

See http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2012_communications_strategy_key_recommendations

3.20pm Reports & other business

• Any other points from Reports 8Sep12 (40 minutes) - includes reports from sub-committees
  • Decisions requested: Conference Committee scope (see Mike's report); Technology Committee; membership of committees (MP proposal to require committee members to be Wikimedia UK members)
• JD Digital Past 2013 Conference, our level of support.