2014-12-07 Board Meeting

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Agenda: in 3 hours time we will not be able to discuss all topics...

Sint-Niklaas, de Heilige man, bracht een verrassing mee...

Opening

Mission - Projects - Budgets

After a good discussion, we agreed on the following Mission statement for WMBE (pending a check by a native English speaker):

EN: Engaging people in free knowledge
FR: Impliquer tout un chacun dans la connaissance libre
NL: Iedereen betrekken bij vrije kennis

The agreement is that all categories of projects (small/medium/large/key) need to be documented/listed on Meta. Small and medium projects can be decided by one or more board member(s) depending on the size of the project. Large and key projects are handled through a GAC request. The advantage of using the Meta website is that all entries are visible for the community, and that renaming, referring, or moving project (requests) would be more easily done.
M0tty made a proposal on m:Wikimedia Belgium/Micro-grant (still draft).

We agreed that persons can become an member (initially an associate member):

  • By actually contributing to Wikipedia or other projects
  • Or pay a yearly membership fee of at least 20 €

Note:

  1. Institutions, companies, or organisations cannot become a member (as per the statutes) but they can sponsor the organisation either in money, or materially.
  2. Associate members can become Full members (with voting rights) after approval by the Board, as per our statutes.

General Assembly

24 January 2015: Venue, agenda:

Infrastructure

  • e-mail domain: seems to work? - Derek and Romaine yet to confirm. Feedback from others. IMAP does not work with Gmail. Use Thunderbird, Android mail, or Outlook instead. For SMTP you can use Gmail, or your own provider.
  • Business cards: proposal. Does there exist a "standard" format? Waiting for budget...
  • Office: no additional requirements for the time being.
  • Paid secretary: timing, responsibilities; not yet: once we have enough projects (and work)
  • Bank account: status update - new bank account to be configured

Communication

Translation

  • Translation of documents: it is difficult to organise translation amongst Dutch, French, English, German. We succeeded fairly well/quickly with the Flyers, but the process can be improved. Especially the timely availability of translators is critical.
It would be handy to have a matrix of NL/FR/DE/EN translators readily available.

Social media

All topics moved to next Board Meeting:

  • Background photo Twitter (Board?)
  • Twitter icon has been removed from home page by Lionel? Still usefull though as a communication means...
  • LinkedIn: Wikimedia BE & MediaWiki users (646 members!)
  • Do we need/use Facebook?
  • File sharing/updating: Google docs/Google Drive? Dropbox?
  • Proximus conferencing tool for Board usage (sponsoring allowed?)
  • What about Google Apps for Eduction? / Microsoft 365 for nonprofits (this type of sponsoring allowed?)

Use of websites

  • Usage of our web site: Implement similar systems as used in other chapters:
    • Frontend website, accessible to non-wikipedians, easy to lay-out
    • Backend website, for internal affairs: access control; how?
    • use of Meta.wikipedia.org instead of be.wikipedia.org?
    • Can we have Wikimedia technical "discussions" in be.wikipedia.org? E.g. review of Visual editor

Can we build a roadmap (and possibly publish it on be.wikipedia.org?) of what is the most appropriate website for each type of subject?

Geert to make a proposal; to be discussed on next board meeting.

Flyers

Flyers: we currently printed 50 (?) flyers by language on the budget of WLM. Questions: how to pay, how to distribute future reprints. Have them available in PDF? Where to store? Meta? Extra reprinting? Which quantities? Any corrections? In the short future we need more quantities. First we need the errors corrected.

We would like to thank Romaine for his initiative
It is considered that Flyers are an ideal way of communicating our existence, and our mission.
We first need a budget. The current documents will be corrected, and we need a reprint for FOSDEM 31 January 2015/1 February 2015.

Press

Press releases: Belga has a new platform on http://www.belgasource.be/

How was the press informed about our Founding event? Was this effective? I did not yet see NL articles? Only FR articles?

We need a strategy on Press relations/communications.

Press accreditation: cycling (Alberto)

The accreditation for press is a legally regulated, and is a protected profession. You need to be named/approved by another press member/office it seems.

Collaboration

This will be tackled on the Projects Days of 4 February 2015. All institutions and organisations will be invited.

National institutions

National organizations

Regional organizations

(Romaine)

Europe

  • Europeana
  • EU-policy group Dimi & Romaine: request from Sandra of WMNL and the other European EDs if WMBE could be the host of the EU Policy project? What does this involve? How is this financed?
Hosting the EU policy project: we believe we cannot accept this as we need to develop our own organisation first. Once WMBE is up-and-running we can reconsider our position. The board believes the most suited solution, also legally, would be to create an International vzw/asbl according to Belgian law.
  • EU Hackathon

Pending motions:

  1. Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
  2. m:EU policy/Statement of Intent - voted
  3. Adelphi Charter

Other Chapters & Interaction

To be discussed in next Board Meeting:

  • Wikipedia nl.wikipedia.org -> should the WMNL flyer refer to Belgium as well?
  • Also BE should be heard & have moderators (do we have Flemish/Walloon moderators?). Edit conflicts/discussions.
  • FR negative reactions on BE? How to cure?
  • Difference in culture FR/NL/BE. How to manage?
  • Wiktionary FR does not mention NL reference?

Foundation

  • WM Foundation
  • BE Chapter Agreement to be approved
In progress...

Projects

We plan to invite all related parties to the Projects Days of 4 February 2015

Planning

Geert intends to go… FR/DE language cooperation
  • 16 January 2015 Maastricht University (UM) awarded an honorary doctorate to Frans Timmermans and the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. They will be honored for the exceptional contributions they, directly or indirectly, have made to academic education and research.

Review of past activities

Diverse

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