Board

Constitution Articles of Association — Vision, Mission and Values — Staff — Board of Trustees — Chapter Agreement — Membership Rules — Election Rules

The Board is responsible for the day to day running of the chapter and is elected by the membership at the Annual General Meeting. Members of the Board act as Directors of the company and as trustees. Legal duties and responsibilities of board members are set out below.

Members

The current members were elected at the 2011 AGM:

• Roger Bamkin - Chair
• Michael Peel - Secretary
• Andrew Turvey - Treasurer
• Chris Keating - Director
• Martin Poulter - Director
• Ashley Van Haeften - Director
• Steve Virgin - Director

Biographies

Roger Bamkin

Roger Bamkin

Roger Bamkin is currently Chair of Wikimedia UK (from April 2011) and an admin on the English Wikipedia (although he has also been active on Commons, Simple and Wikisource). Formerly, he was a leading member of WikiProject Schools and WikiProject Derbyshire and he continues to assist in running the "Did You Know" project. He has written hundreds of articles, but more importantly he has nominated over a hundred articles, by other editors, for DYK. In real life he trained as a mechanical engineer, systems analyst and teacher but has also been a partner in a minor software company and chaired I.T. standard committees for the UK. He ran the Backstage Pass event at Derby museums in April 2011 and co-developed QRpedia codes that provide multi-lingual access to Wikipedia via QR codes.

Email: roger.bamkinwikimedia.org.uk

Michael Peel

Mike Peel

Michael Peel is currently Secretary of Wikimedia UK (from April 2010). He served as Membership Secretary from late 2008 to April 2009, and Chair from April 2009 to April 2010. A graduate and a doctorate student of the University of Manchester, Mike first edited the English Wikipedia in March 2005 and the Wikimedia Commons since July 2006. Like a lot of new editors, he started editing because he got irritated by a few grammar errors he saw. Since that time, Mike has made over 14,000 edits on the English Wikipedia, and uploaded over 350 photos onto the Wikimedia Commons. He has been an admin on the English Wikipedia since July 2007. Outside of Wikimedia, Mike is an astrophysicist with knowledge of programming, web design and photography.

Email: michael.peelwikimedia.org.uk

Andrew Turvey

Andrew Turvey

Andrew Turvey is currently Treasurer of Wikimedia UK, a post he has had since April 2011. He served as Secretary or Chair since the creation of Wikimedia UK in late 2008 until April 2010.

Andrew has been an editor on the English Wikipedia since October 2005. He joined the chapter when it relaunched as "Wikimedia UK version 2" and was elected to the initial board.

Outside Wikimedia he is a chartered accountant and has mainly focussed on establishing the company and the negotiations regarding the charity status application.

Email: andrew.turveywikimedia.org.uk

Chris Keating

Chris Keating

Chris Keating is a professional fundraiser, campaigner and long-standing Wikipedia editor. He's an administrator of the English Wikipedia where his contributions range from the article on the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to the one on the dreadnought battleship. Elected to the Board of Wikimedia UK in April 2011, his main priority is making sure Wikimedia UK communicates well with the Wikimedia community and with our other supporters. He is also taking a lead on the 2011 Fundraiser.

Outside of both work and the Wikiworld, Chris is a keen amateur violinist and an even more amateur photographer. You can find him on Wikipedia as The Land and on Twitter as @chriskeating, or email him on chris.keatingwikimedia.org.uk

Martin Poulter

Martin Poulter with Jimmy Wales

Martin Poulter is currently a director of Wikimedia UK (from April 2011). He obtained his PhD from the University of Bristol, where he still works for a national teaching support project, including promoting open educational content. On English Wikipedia (User:MartinPoulter) he has more than five thousand edits, mainly in the area of psychology.

Email: martin.poulterwikimedia.org.uk

Ashley Van Haeften (Fæ)

Fae is currently a director of Wikimedia UK (from April 2011) with a particular interest in GLAM activities and supports the GLAM Steering Committee. His main contributions are as an admin on Wikipedia (User:Fæ) but also supports Commons as an OTRS volunteer and trusted user.

Fae has a professional background in managing change and improvement in a number of sectors including Government agencies, utilities, retail and engineering. He used to be a pure mathematician and moved over to management and organizational strategy to "pay the bills".

Email: faewikimedia.org.uk

Steve Virgin

Steve Virgin

Steve Virgin has served as Director from April 2009 until now and is currently a Director at Large.

Email: steve.virginwikimedia.org.uk

Steve is currently working (on behalf of the Board) on a series of iniatives designed to build up contact networks with the educational, business and governmental communities. His initiatives include: building a volunteer & event-driven content partnership with a major Russell Group university; creating an opportunity for content collaboration & a world leading international biodiversity content collection charity; assisting the team creating the UK version of the Campus Ambassador program & other opportunities.

Events organised on behalf of the Board

• Wikimedia UK Global Fundraising Conference 2010 held between May 14 - 16 in Bristol
• Organisation of WikiMeet group in Bristol based around periodic meetings at The Watershed
• Jimmy Wales Talk at Bristol Cathedral Choir School & talk at Bristol University as part of the Wikipedia 10th birthday celebrations (19 Jan 2011)
• BrisWiki Academy March 19 2011 - training given by local Wikimedians to members and would be members
• Organised & Hosted Wikimedia UK AGM April 16 2011

Previous members

Board members in previous years were:

September 2008 - April 2009:

• Kwan Ting Chan - Chair
• Michael Conn - Communication Officer
• Tom Holden - Treasurer
• Michael Peel - Membership Secretary
• Andrew Turvey - Secretary

2009 - 10

• Michael Peel - Chair
• Andrew Turvey - Secretary
• Tom Holden - Treasurer
• Zeyi He - Initiatives Director
• Joseph Seddon - Events Director
• Steve Virgin - Corporate Relations Director
• Paul Williams - Volunteers Director

Paul Williams resigned as a board member during the year and was replaced by Tom Dalton.

2010 - 11

• Andrew Turvey - Chair
• Michael Peel - Secretary
• Thomas Dalton - Treasurer
• Joseph Seddon - Director (resigned)
• Steve Virgin - Director

Duties

Board members have certain legal duties and responsibilities, which include:

1. To act only within the powers given to them by the Articles of Association
2. To act in good faith and with integrity to promote the success of the chapter in achieving its purposes, with regard, where necessary to long term effects and the interests of employees, the community, the environment, relations with suppliers and customers, standards of business conduct and fair acting between members of the chapter
3. To use the chapter's resources reasonably and only for the promotion of its purposes
4. To exercise independent judgement and reasonable care, skill and diligence and consider getting external professional advice on all matters where there may be material risk to the chapter, or where the board members may be in breach of their duties
5. To avoid conflicts of interest, declare them where necessary in accordance with applicable law and not to accept benefits from third parties where these may give rise to a conflict of interest
6. To avoid undertaking activities that might place the chapter's assets or reputation at undue risk, ensure that the chapter remains solvent.

In addition, the chapter's Board members are personally required to ensure that the chapter complies with its other legal duties such as those arising from being an employer and its reporting obligations to Companies House and the tax authorities.

To be eligible to act as a Board member, a person must be:

1. A member of the chapter, or nominated by a member
2. 16 years old or over
3. prepared to publicly disclose their real name, date of birth, and the names of any other companies they are the director of. Note that residential addresses are no longer disclosable.
4. not an undischarged bankrupt, a person whose estate has been "sequestrated", who has made an undischarged arrangement with creditors or has granted a trust deed in favour of their creditors
5. not disqualified from acting as a company director or removed as a charity trustee by the Charity Commission, the High Court or the Court of Session (Scotland)
6. not convicted of any offence involving deception or dishonesty which is not a "spent" conviction - even if it was not in the UK