Hi all,
The Wikimedia UK board has been putting together a budget for the
next year [1] and we have some money left over. We are looking for
proposals for projects/iniatives with budget requirements in the
range of £100-£3000 (GBP). These projects can be either online or
offline, but they should be primarily focused on the UK and they must
further the objects of Wikimedia UK (broadly, to collate/develop/
spread freely licensed material).
The deadline for proposals is the end of …
[View More]this month (i.e. 0:00 UTC on
1 March 2010).
You can submit proposals on our wiki at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Proposals
The information we need to know is:
- What the project would be, in a paragraph of two
- What the benefits would be, again in a paragraph or two
- What requirements it has, in terms of a financial budget and any
other resources. The budget should give a rough breakdown of what the
money would be spent on.
- What volunteer time it requires, and how much time you can spend on
the project. You would be expected to take an active role in
implementing the project.
- Your contact details - you should have a registered account on our
wiki that we can send emails to (note that single-user login is
enabled, so your wikipedia account will work).
You do not have to be a member of Wikimedia UK to submit a proposal,
although that would be preferable (membership is open to all, so you
can always join - particularly if your proposal goes forward. ;-) ).
Preference will also be given to active Wikimedians, although that is
not a requirement.
We plan to set aside a budget for smaller grants (<£100), which we
will be calling for proposals for later this year.
Please get in touch if you have any questions, and please share this
with anyone else that you think might be interested.
[1] You can see this, and help with its development, at http://
uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget - although this is not fully up to
date yet.
Thanks,
Mike Peel
Chair, Wikimedia UK
http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/
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Hi all,
Unfortunately the board meeting this evening has had to be cancelled due to lack of quorum. The meeting will be deferred until next Tuesday, 19th January 8:30 - 10:30.
As before, The meeting will primarily be via Skype, but we'll also be in #wikimedia-uk on IRC and everyone is more than welcome to attend the IRC session, and participate in the discussion there.
The agenda will be up at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings
Board members + Tango: please post whether you can …
[View More]attend, and your reports if applicable, to the agenda page.
Regards,
Andrew
----- "Michael Peel" <email(a)mikepeel.net> wrote:
> From: "Michael Peel" <email(a)mikepeel.net>
> To: "board(a)wikimedia.org.uk WMUK Board" <board(a)wikimedia.org.uk>, wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 January, 2010 15:52:29 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: [WMUK Board] Next board meeting: This evening
>
> Hi all,
>
> The next board meeting, and the first of 2010, will be this evening
> (Tuesday 12 January 2010) at 8.30-10.30pm GMT. The meeting will
> primarily be via Skype, but we'll also be in #wikimedia-uk on IRC.
> Everyone is more than welcome to attend the IRC session, and
> participate in the discussion there. 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/2010-01-12/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.
>
> (Note that I'm currently out of the country, and will likely be
> unable to attend by voice and/or a bit late. Either way, please could
> someone else chair the meeting?)
>
> Thanks,
> Mike Peel
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Now that the annual fundraiser is complete, we have started to decide on the main things that the chapter should its money on in the forthcoming year. In line with our philosophy of open decision making, the board would like to share these proposals with you for feedback and consultation before making any final decisions. Please let us know what you think to these ideas, by replying to this message, by personal email or by commenting on the wiki page [1]
We raised around £85,000 in the …
[View More]fundraiser. [2] Of this, half will be remitted to the Foundation, subject to legal clearance, which leave us with £42,500 to spend on projects, administration and to keep in reserves. We also have the remainder of our existing £5,000 start up grant from the Foundation, but that money is already earmarked for particular areas. [3]
Part time Administrator
We are considering employing a part time administrator to assist in the running of the chapter. Wikimedia Deutschland have said that they found employing an administrator was a significant boost to their chapter's efficiency and we hope that we can achieve the same.
The proposal is to employ someone at £10/hour for 8 hours per week, rising to 12 hours per week during next year's fundraiser. They would work from home and most of their work would be online. Assuming they start work in June that would cost a total of £3,122.
Please let us know whether you think in principle we should do this, and if so, whether these numbers look sensible.
Admin costs [4]
We have budgeted £6,700 to cover other administrative costs. This includes £3,000 for legal fees - including help with our charity status application and the Fundraising Agreement - and £1,000 for accounting and audit fees. We have also budgeted £500 to pay for travel to a face to face board meeting, which we hope will help boost the productivity of the next board.
Full details are:
Annual Accounts: 1,000
Legal advice: 3,000
AGM: 500
In person board meeting: 500
Telephone, postage etc : 200
Insurance: 500(?)
Administrator: 3,122
Other: 1,000
Total: 9,822
Are there any other things we should add, or are there things on this list you disagree with?
Reserves
Now that we have a more secure financial footing, we think it's appropriate to start thinking about putting some money aside in reserves, to cover us for years when we have lower that expected income. We think £8,000 is a reasonable figure, which covers a full year's admin expenses. We would like to build this up over two years, putting £4,000 aside from this year's fundraiser and £4,000 from next year.
Projects
This leaves £28,500 to spend on projects this year. Ideas that have been proposed included:
Toolserver support
The Wikimedia Toolserver is a platform that hosts various tools that are used on the Wikimedia projects, including vital counter-vandalism bots. The toolserver is operated by Wikimedia Deutschland eV with assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation. [5]
WMDE has recently asked other chapters if they could assist in financing and operating the toolserver. The annual budget is around €100,000 and they would like other chapters to cover around half of the budget - €50,000. In addition, there has been some discussion around setting up some kind of Toolserver Association, to operate the toolserver, with the contributing chapters as shareholders. The timetable for this is likely to be around August 2010 before it is established.
Figures that have been discussed by the board range from £5,000 to £10,000. Exact details of how we would contribute - a donation to WMDE earmarked for the toolserver, a donation earmarked to a particular expense or waiting and then contributing to the Toolserver Association has not been decided.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile contribution to make and, if so, how much do you think would be appropriate?
Wikimedia Usability Initiative
Individual board members have discussed various ideas with the Usability Initiative, the team that is working on improving the Wikimedia interfaces. [6] As part of their work they have generated a list of discrete projects that would all have a significant positive impact on Wikimedia and do not currently have sufficient funding. If we give them a budget they would be able to provide a selection of potential projects, and we could then choose to fund one of these, potentially one that linked in with a particular interest of the chapter. This proposal was discussed by the board back in October, when it was positively received, with further action deferred until after the Fundraiser. [7]
It's been proposed that we budget £10,000 to fund a project drawn up by the Usability Initiative.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile project and, if so, how much do you think would be appropriate?
GLAM-WIKI
We have discussed organising a GLAM-WIKI (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia) conference in the UK, along the lines of the conference in Australia in August 2009. [8] We have had tentative discussions with museums who would be interested and may be able to arrange it for August 2010. The purpose of the conference is to bring key decision makers in the "GLAM" sector into contact with Wikimedia people to persuade them to partner with us on content donation, partnerships like Britain Loves Wikipedia and other ways we can help each other achieve our aims.
Costs are expected to be in the region of £5,000, of which some or all may be funded by the GLAM partners or through sponsorship.
Do you think this is a worthwhile use of our resources?
Other projects
Other projects that have been proposed, but not yet discussed by the board, in connection with the 2010 Budget include:
£1,000 for a microgrant project, along the lines of Wikimedia Poland's scheme [9]
£1,000 to sponsor Wikimedians to attend Wikimania Gdansk 2010 [10]
£500 to fund travel to museums etc for discussions on content access
£500 to assist in the development of Wikimeets
£300 to pay for members to attend free content conference [11]
£340 to fund preliminary work on Wikimania Manchester 2013 [12]
Do you think these are worthwhile things to spend our money on? Is there anything else you think should be added to the list?
If you've managed to read this far then I'm impressed and thank you! All comments are gratefully received whether on our general approach or on specifics.
We look forward to hearing your ideas!
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.
[1] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Budget
[2] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2010-01-19/Agenda/Fundraiser_Report
[3] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[4] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Administrative_costs
[5] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Main_Page
[6] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[7] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009-10-20#AOB
[8] http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM-WIKI
[9] http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpl.wikimedia.org%2Fwik…
[10] http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[11] See list at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[12] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Wikimania_Bid/Bid_budget
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Hi all,
(apologies for the cross-posting and UK-specificness)
The Hunterian have just released a mini-podcast about Britain Loves
Wikipedia - you can see it at:
http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/whatson/wiki/wikipedia-at-the-
hunterian.shtml
We also have lots of events coming up in the next week and a bit
across the UK:
- Saturday 13 February - Manchester Museum
- Sunday 14 February - East Lothian museums
- Tuesday 16 February - Mill Green Museum
- Wednesday 17 February - The Hunterian …
[View More]Museum
- Thursday 18 February - Bedford Museum
- Saturday 20 February - British Postal Museum's store
All of these events are offering something more than the usual access
to the museum - you can get behind the scenes and see (and
photograph) thing that you normally wouldn't be able to. This is a
great opportunity to get photographs of objects for Wikipedia that
you wouldn't normally be able to. Oh, and you can also win prizes!
Full details are on the Britain Loves Wikipedia website - http://
britainloveswikipedia.org/
BTW, I'm hoping that we can organize more things like this in the
future, at different museums throughout the UK - but that can only
happen if these events are well attended. ;-)
Thanks,
Mike Peel
Wikimedia UK
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This month, the London Wikimeet will be on the third Sunday, January
17th (1pm at the Penderel's Oak).
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/29
Also, it looks like there will be two London Wiki Wednesdays
forthcoming, on Wednesdays 3rd (February and March). Details to follow.
The London Wiki Wednesday meetings are more likely to cover other
collaborative software such as SharePoint etc but I am sure that will
put you off attending, and free pizza and free beer is often (not
…
[View More]always) an incentive.
http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london
Wednesday 3rd February looks like a pub meeting, with 3rd March being at
a business address (to be confirmed).
Gordon
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See below. Is it worth us signing this as an organization? Note that
both Asociación Civil Wikimedia Argentina and Wikimedia Nederland
have already.
Mike
Begin forwarded message:
> From: shi zhao <shizhao(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 26 January 2010 12:29:44 GMT
> To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wmfcc-l] The Public Domain Manifesto
> Reply-To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> see http://…
[View More]www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/node/8
>
> Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
> My blog: http://shizhao.org
> twitter: https://twitter.com/shizhao
>
> [[zh:User:Shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wmfcc-l mailing list
> Wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfcc-l
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