Reports 19Nov11

Roger Bamkin (Chair)

• Attended Europeanna conference in Vienna. Report here. Video here
• Released video on Wright Challenge. 1,500 plays of Digg - thanks to Steve/Claire
• Supported Wiki Loves Monuments photo exhib in St Petersburg with QRpedia
• Supported Miro exhibition in Barcelona with QRpedia
• Spoke at Norwegian National Museums conference in Lillehammer
• On panel at Special Libraries Conference
• Organised (badly) extra room at EGM
• Liaised bith Barry re fundraiser and budget

Michael Peel (Secretary)

Split into roles:

Board

• Membership approvals - see in-camera report for list of names and locations. Members are being approved on a 3-weekly basis, unless there is a high number of applications. Richard is now dealing with applications and renewals on a routine basis.
• Need to know attendance numbers, and number of votes, for Annual Conference 2011 AGM Minutes (AT recorded these)
• commons:Commons:IUCN_red_list has become active again. Am in the loop on the discussions; this is being led by Gonçalo Themudo.

Grants

• Microgrants/Elections in Europe approved; funds spent; work in progress.
• Microgrants/Microphone needed approved, but the funds have not yet been spent.

Administrative

• Reports/2011/October
• Minutes 11Oct11
• WikiSym Scholarships - in the process of closing this off
• WikiConference India Scholarships - 4 scholarships offered (one partial). Ongoing (conference is this weekend).
• Need to reformat Microgrants to incorporate standard grants. Carried forward

Sysadmin

• Providing general tech support (webmail, fundraising, etc.)
• (With Chris) brainstormed the sysadmin and developer tasks needed for WMUK operations, and partially our mission. Discussing with JD.
• 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

• Pushing forward with Geocamp
• Closing off Britain Loves Wikipedia Doing... - two prizes now awarded, with the rest in progress

Andrew Turvey (Treasurer)

For latest bank transactions please see Bank Statements and Latest Transactions Report

The following areas require discussion:

• Proposal to reallocate and delegate some of the 2011 Budget
• International Payments mandates
• First donation to the Wikimedia Foundation
• Staff pensions
• Debit cards

Chris Keating (incl Fundraiser)

Fundraiser

• 5 more fundraising tests since the last meeting, all of which are documented here. The focus has been on;
  • Finding the right balance between Direct Debit and cash/paypal donations. So far the key learning point is that using a landing page which asks explicitly for Direct Debit donations gets them, without noticeably reducing the total income. Putting text in the banner ads about direct debits means a higher proportion of DDs but reduces the total income.
  • Re-testing some of the development the Foundation have done of new banners and appeals. Susan and Brandon are joining Jimmy in our starting lineup, but not everyone who seems to work in the USA is working here.
• Fundraiser goes live on Nov 14th. Updated income figures will be available though there will not be time to prepare very detailed reports before the meeting.

Fae (incl GLAM Taskforce)

(drafting...)

• New partnership with John Rylands University Library, we are part of their strategic plan and events will ramping up to the summer 2012.
• GLAMcamp Amsterdam, the UK is sending 11 people on our GLAM UK network and helped WM-NL to host the event with a contribution of £3,000 to support travel where other chapters have been unable to fund representatives.
• Manchester University Lounge, 12 attendees for around an hour mix of students and staff. Further lounges and days for staff and curators planned. Re-fresher's fair planned for outreach event.