Hello all,

 

As many of you already know, we had a meeting on Saturday in Kendall Square (the notes can be found here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/New_England_Wikimedians_April_2014_meetup). For those of you who weren’t able to attend, we planned out two more meetups and the next general meeting, as well as talked about the edit-a-thon on May 3rd at the Peabody Essex Museum. Further information on all of these events can be found on our Meetup.com page, as I have yet to finish developing the respective Wikipedia pages for two of the events: http://www.meetup.com/wikipedia-5/

 

In terms of other major things that came out of the meeting, we agreed to gain fiscal responsibility through the sponsorship of Wikimedia District of Columbia. This will allow for us to spend money and have a place to put any funds that we raise without having to rely on anyone’s personal bank account, and prevent the need for incorporation. We will also be able to raise funds and have a place to store them, without having to do sort out where the money should go. Additionally, we will pursue having a website so that we can consolidate some of our web activities, which would also allow for the discontinuation of the Meta page, as well as allow us to have a website to direct people who are interested in us. Another lesser matter that we will pursue will be generic business cards for members of the user group, so that people will be able to perform outreach better. This will come into affect once the Affiliations Committee decides on a redesign of our logo, due to there being some legal issues that many user groups are skirting by using the WMF’s logo in their designs. Each of the above things were the result of myself and Ben talking to people at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin last week, and have all gotten the green light from the Affiliations Committee.

 

Finally, per the implementation of other chapters, we have developed an Friendly Space Policy that outlines the user group’s views on harassment and other unwelcome behavior at chapter events: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_England_Wikimedians/Friendly_space_policy. This policy will go into effect immediately, as we want to create a welcoming environment for anyone who attends our events. If anyone has any questions or suggestions about this policy, please feel free to e-mail myself or Maia.

 

On behalf of the provisionary board for the New England Wikimedians,

 

Kevin Rutherford- Co-Chair

Maia Weinstock- Co-Chair

John Sanzi- Secretary

Benjamin Lees- Treasurer

Jennifer Baek- Legal Council

 

P.S. These officer roles are for temporary organizational purposes. If anyone wants to run for an office that would take on certain specific responsibilities, we will hold elections at our annual meeting in July when we decide upon some more roles for interested persons.