2014-12-07 Board Meeting

APPROVED

Meeting Planner

• Date: 7 December 2014
• Time: 14h00 - 17h00
• Venue: Troonstraat
• Present: Afernand74, Dimi_z, Geertivp, MADe, Romaine, M0tty
• Excused: DerekvG
• Photos: category

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

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

• Approval of previous Board meeting minutes

• Mission statement; proposal by Geert & Maarten

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

• Projects and Yearly budget, see supporting document on Dropbox

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).

• Membership fee

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.

24 January 2015: Venue, agenda:

• Approve/elect the Board
• Financial report over 2014
• Budget 2015
• Approve membership fee

• 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

• 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.

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?)

• 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: 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 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.

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

• KIK-IRPA (Alberto)
• Universities: Universiteit Gent (library, Maarten?)

• Packed
• Open Knowledge Belgium

(Romaine)

• Armen Tekort vzw (Antwerpen)
• MoMu (Antwerpen)
• Plantin-Moretus (Antwerpen)
• Vorming+ Limburg (Jos)

• 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

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?

• WM Foundation
• BE Chapter Agreement to be approved

In progress...

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

• Projects Days (Maarten)
• Wiki Loves Art (WLA) (Romaine): Suggestion to demand a Grant TPS transport request as bridge funding
• EU policy (Romaine, Dimi)
• MoMu: donations & edit-a-thon(s) (Romaine)
• Freedom of Panorama (Dimi?)

• Alberto would like to add the following point to the agenda of the next meeting, I would like discuss our participation to the Digitale week/la semaine numérique next 2015, in collaboration with Linc VZW (http://www.linc-vzw.be/) and Media Animation (www.media-animation.be).
  • http://www.digitaleweek.be/
  • http://www.lasemainenumerique.be/

• Het Belgisch trekpaard (Ann Muys)
• Wereldoorlog II (Jos)

• For FOSDEM we would need to request a stand submission
• m:Wikimedia Conference 2015 (CH)? When? Who goes?

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.

• Kamer 19/11 Founding meeting
• WLMBE prize session 26/11 KIK-IRPA
• Edit-a-thon 28/11 Gent
• Press release document

• Paul Otlet will become C0 on 1 January 2015.