* A draft awards policy is posted. Please comment and sign your comments!
*
WMF has yet to respond to a request to let us post the draft Trademark
Agreement. I will show it to attendees at the meeting if we do not hear
anything from WMF.
Notes:
* There
are some one-time startup expenses in the budget that should happen
this year only, such as the 501(c)(3) registration and preparation
costs. Other costs may be annual, such as insurance.
*
I have included several items that a variety of members had on our
personal wish lists or that people mentioned seemed like good ideas. The
full set of projects and goals is fairly expansive, and the budget is
proportionate to that. I would encourage you to read the budget
spreadsheet by starting with the goals tab, then the calendar tab, and
finally the budget tab. Items in the budget that I feel should get particular attention for discussion are typed in purple text.
*
I have included funding in the draft budget for two
"Wikimedian-in-residence" positions at 100 hours each for the year,
largely anticipated for the summer months although with some flexibility from
April through October. In addition to tasking them for outreach to
potential GLAM, education, and research partners, these individuals may
be asked to lead edit-a-thons, workshops, and perhaps assist with
aspects of WikiConference USA planning that are beneficial to Cascadia (if there is an agreement between Cascadia and the conference organizers
that some staff assistance from us would be mutually beneficial).
*
I included funding for the Cameras for Commons photographers pilot
program in our grant request. Although the scope of this program is
global, no organization has agreed to take it on, and I believe we can do so
with minimal additional labor. I believe that his pilot is a worthwhile experiment.
*
I
hope that everyone will understand that many hours have been
volunteered in preparing this budget. The time is after 4 AM, and this
is not the first long night that I have spent trying to help with
Cascadia's launch. I have sacrificed many paid hours and some sleep to
work on Cascadia over the past several months. I love this project and I
love the people who are involved with Cascadia, but I need my sleep and
I need to be paid if I'm going to spend so many hours on Cascadia. I
have proposed that
starting in February, the person who becomes responsible for the
day-to-day management and startup of Cascadia as described in this plan,
be compensated for their time. That person might be me or it might not;
that is the Board's decision to make. I am estimating that there will
be about 40 hours of paid work in February and about 15
hours per month thereafter for the manager. If additional hours are
necessary, a supplemental budget request can be made. (Also, as
mentioned above, I budgeted paid time for the Wikimedians-in-Residence.)
There may be variations in hours from month to month for the manager;
this is something that we will need to discuss since the variability has
been found to be a challenge by at least one other Wikimedia
organization employee who ended up quitting because he/she found it to
be so problematic. I have tried to calendar projects in such a way as to smooth the
month-to-month hours variation for the manager, and I personally would
be willing to accept the risk of a variable-hours position like this
after my internship is done at the end of January, but the Board would
need to agree to this. I would appreciate it if Board members would
think about how they would like the organization to be managed starting
in February, because I've passed any reasonable boundary for volunteer
time by a large margin. I've heard from another Cascadian that he also
feels worn out. I really think that we need a paid manager; this person
may be the president, the treasurer, or someone that we decide to hire
as an employee under the president. Please think about this issue before Tuesday. I hope that WMF would agree to a modest labor
funding request for a (very) part-time manager, and I hope that the Cascadia Board will
too.
* Thank you in advance for your questions and comments
about the proposal. Please participate using Google's comment feature.
It's
nice to collaborate with all of you, and I look forward to seeing you
on Tuesday at 6 PM at the University of Washington's Communications
Building in room 321. Thanks to Mako and Monika for getting us a meeting
room. (:
Have a nice weekend,
Have a nice weekend,