Tom et al.,
Sending to the list as this discussion shouldn’t be private. Unless we start getting significant numbers of “too much traffic” complaints, we should be discussing everything publically. (Sorry guys, I don’t mean to be an arse…)
Fine with me.
Reply to the below, apologies if this sounds a little adversarial, I’m just trying to keep us focussed on what’s important:
OK; I'll use the same approach then. :)
#1 That was not a formal election and we are not at this point a formal board. Lets leave the bureaucracy behind until it’s legally necessary.
It's something that will only take a few minutes, and it would be good to have it recorded in the meeting notes.
#2 Assigning positions beyond those mandated by law (that is to say, secretary) at this point is a bit of a waste of time. We’re a small board and it will generally be more efficient to assign jobs on a case by case basis until after the AGM at which point many of us may no longer be on the board and WMUK can start doing what it was set up to do. Lets not play the “handing out basically meaningless roles” game.
The rationale behind having 5 positions for 5 people is that it evens out the workload, so that everyone has a main-stay useful thing that they are doing. It doesn't preclude people from doing other things. As a minimum, we need the three positions: chair, secretary, treasurer. They may not be legally mandated, but meetings won't go smoothly if we don't have a chair (as an example; the chair of course will do more than that), we need someone who is in charge of the actual paperwork, and we need someone who is in charge of opening the bank account, and keeping track of any expenses that may occur as we go along.
Membership was something that was notably weak in WMUK1, so it would be good to have someone in charge of that. Communications (mainly external) would also be useful, although the chair could conceivably do that.
#3 Weekly meetings are fine, but they must not become an excuse for delaying decision making until the next meeting. This list and general IRC should be fine for most of the required discussions. The only circumstance when we should be forced to retreat to meetings for decisions is when someone on the board objects to the consensus decision and a board vote is necessary.
Weekly meetings would be good for keeping things going. I concur that they must not be an excuse for delaying decisions, but on the flip side we shouldn't rush things - so if things need to be delayed by a week, so be it. There are other times that retreating in camera will probably be required, e.g. discussion of new members where personal info needs to be shared/discussed.
#4 This can wait a while. Once everything is squared with chapters committee we’ll get an internal wiki and at that point someone can ask JamesF nicely to transfer the domain. (This has been much discussed already.)
True, it can wait, but it would be good to make a start on it sooner rather than later (although the same applies for everything else too...)
#5 The MoA and AoA are what we need to discuss. They’ve been talked about a fair bit on this list already, and I got the impression that we’d agreed that we want to basically replicate the changes made by Alison to the original template. If someone (Tango? Alison?) has a list of these changes we can discuss them one by one in the meeting. We also need to discuss the objectives. The objectives list here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Objectives is currently those of WMUK 1.0 with a few that I shoved on the front last month. None of these have really been discussed. We certainly won’t make a final decision at the meeting (not least because everything has to be run past my tame-barrister and any other legal advice we’re getting), but there’s no reason we can’t have a good bash at a draft by the end of it.
Yup; I agree that this is the main thing to discuss. Hearing Tango's and Alison's comments (and anyone else's) on the standard MoA and AoA we have on the meta at the moment would be great. Whether the board meeting is the right place for an in-depth discussion of the MoA/AoA/ objectives is another question; wouldn't that best be done on this list first?
The only other thing to discuss is whether there are any strong objections to the voting tallies becoming public. Perhaps this will have to be our first board vote (though since the mini-“electoral commission” are completely independent of us they are not at all obliged to listen to anything we decide on the matter).
I think it would be good to have a (short?) discussion about this, probably including people in #wikimedia-uk. I don't particularly care either way, but at the same time I'm not entirely convinced by the reasons you gave for wanting the tallies made public - perhaps you can convince me?
From your email: 1. isn't a good reason, 2. if someone did resign, what difference would knowing the tallies actually make? Bear in mind that only the 5 of us made the 50% mark. 3. I would hope that people would recognize that their votes at AGMs matter anyway, regardless of the tallies from this election. 4. Is there anything we could learn from the counts that we wouldn't figure out anyway?
Tom
Mike
From: Andrew Turvey [mailto:raturvey@yahoo.co.uk] Sent: 01 October 2008 22:30 To: Kwan Ting Chan; Michael Peel; Mickey Conn; Tom Holden Subject: WMUK Agenda
Mickey Conn mickey.conn@gmail.com said:
Some suggestions for the agenda:
*Chair, Secretary and Treasurer positions *Timetable *Mem/Arts *Time and date of next meeting
What else do we need to ensure we cover?
Best, Mickey
====
I think that's the main focus captured
#1 I think we should formally note the election results
#2 Positions - we've got five people so we could share the load into five jobs:
Chair - organising meetings, communicating with community Secy - communicating with Companies House, Tax authorities Treasurer - open bank account, fund raising Membership - promoting membership and processing applications Communications - responding to external queries
#3 Timetable / Next meeting
I've suggested some changes here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Talk:Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Timeline#Some_Changes
Suggest we also set up a schedule of future meetings (weekly?)
#3 Board operations
Before we get down to discussing substantive business, I suggest we take some time to agree some guidelines on how we're going to be open with the community. My suggestion was:
- Meetings open to the community (facility to go in camera if
necessary)
- Times published in advance
- Agendas published in advance
- Issues discussed with community on mail list / meta before coming
to Board
- Minutes of Decisions with reasons published on meta (minus
confidential info if appropriate)
#4 WMUK v1
Suggest we mandate someone to discuss transfering things over from them (e.g. website)
#5 Mem&Arts
There hasn't really been much discussion on these, and I personally haven't had a chance to read them in depth. Hence I suggest our discussion on the Mem&Arts at this meeting should be limited to high level principles (e.g. being a CLG) and mandate someone (the secretary?) to lead a discussion on meta / the email list on the main decisions to be made and then bring it back for decision to the next meeting
There's my tu'p'orth
What do you think?
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