I don't think it ever got mentioned here, so I'll do so - there is a
board meeting a week next Tuesday to discuss the budget for 2010 (I
believe it is just an initial discussion, so I doubt any final
decisions will be made). There is a page on the wiki:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget. I suggest everyone (board
member or not) make suggestions either on that page or its talk page
so there is plenty of material for discussion during the board
meeting. I would estimate the chapter will have £10k-£15k of
unrestricted funds to spend during the year. There may also be grants
and other sources of income we can get for specific initiatives.
We're happy to report that Steve Virgin and I have just given our first Wikimedia Seminar or "Learning Lunch" to Kaizo, a PR firm in London. The reaction was very positive, with a raft of questions that kept us speaking for around 90 minutes.
There were some great opportunities discussed regarding their clients. One was a publisher who owns an archive of of professional journals going back over 100 years; we spoke about how a content release deal could fit into a "freemium" model and the example of the Saxon State Library experience [1]. Wikimedia would benefit from getting great content whilst the client would gain a positive image, a raised profile within their specialist community and traffic back to their own website where premium content is sold. We're now going to work with Kaizo on taking forward these ideas with their clients.
I will upload the presentation we gave to the main Wikimedia presentation site [2] and would appreciate any feedback. Plans are in the pipeline for further seminars at, among others, BBC Bristol and the Brrism social networking group - if you're interested in getting involved in either delivering or writing further presentations please get in touch either by replying to me directly or adding your details to the speakers page on the wiki. If you've already volunteered we haven't forgotten and will be in touch shortly! Travel expenses are will be covered by the host organisation. [3]
These "learning lunches" are one of three main projects that Wikimedia UK are focusing on achieving this year - alongside the "Britain Loves Wikipedia" museums event next February and the schools project. Alongside these three main projects we are also active in responding to various media enquiries, speaking to libraries and museums about content release and attending various conferences to give the Wikimedia perspective. Let us know if you can help us with any of these activities!
[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/03/31/over-250k-new-images-join-the-wikimedi…
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations/en
[3] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Speakers
Regards,
--
Andrew Turvey
Secretary
Wikimedia UK
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited.
Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827.
The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.
There is a lot in the news at the moment about newspapers, etc.
charging people for accessing news on their websites. I wonder if
Wikimedia UK should issue a press release recommending Wikinews as an
alternative. The project could do with some publicity and this might
be a good time to get it some since the subject of news websites is
being discussed. It probably won't be in the news for long, though, so
we would have to move quickly (the release probably needs to go out in
the next 24 hours at the longest).
Oh, sorry for that, thanks for pointing it out, Thomas.
> Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:14:17 +0000
> From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Help us on Britain loves Wikipedia!
> To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID:
> <a4359dff0911291014k6bd61dc1s7001064f4cfd627f(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> 2009/11/29 zeyi <zeyi.he(a)googlemail.com>:
>> 2, designing T-shit: T-shit will be given to volunteers on that day,
>> which need to be remarkable, and represent our logo.
>
> That would be T-*shirt*, Zeyi...
>
>
>
> I would (although not yet a WMF-GB member) be delighted to chase up
> Chamber's Street Museum in Edinburgh to do a day.
>
> I got dragged round there from around age 8 (32 years ago) by my
> grandfather. He was a teacher and ex-mining engineer from WWII. At that
> thime they had a lot of hand-made (but look like Hornby) models of
> engineering work. I would be most interested in knowing if they still
> have them hidden away somewhere. As a kid I loved going round and
> pushing all the buttons to make things like bridges raise and mineheads
> run. Those would make great little video clips for commons if I can
> borrow some sort of decent vid-cam.
>
>
> --
> Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
> Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
> position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
>
Hi all,
The next board meeting will be this evening (Tuesday 1 December 2009)
at 8.30-10.30pm BST. The first hour will be by Skype, the second hour
will be held on IRC in the #wikimedia-uk-board channel on
irc.freenode.net, with discussion in #wikimedia-uk. Everyone is more
than welcome to attend the IRC session. If you don't have an IRC
client, then you can connect using http://webchat.freenode.net/ .
The agenda is at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009-12-01/Agenda
Board members + Tango: please post whether you can attend, and your
reports, to the agenda page. My thanks to those that have already
given their attendance and started their reports.
Thanks,
Mike Peel