Dear all
Many thanks to those of you who 'attended' our AGM on Saturday and to those members who submitted a proxy vote. I'm very pleased to announce that the three trustees who stood for the board were all elected, as follows:
Kelly Foster
Nick Poole
Doug Taylor
Nick and Doug have both been on the board since July 2015 and so were re-elected on Saturday. Kelly is a new trustee who I'm delighted to welcome to the board for the first time.
All ordinary resolutions were passed by a majority vote. A special resolution was also passed, to enable us to hold online or hybrid general meetings in future.
We heard from Gavin Willshaw, Mass Digitisation Service Manager at the National Library of Scotland, who gave a brilliant keynote presentation on Editing Wikisource: how the National Library of Scotland responded to the Coronavirus crisis. There were also three really interesting, insightful and varied lightning talks - from Andy Mabbett ('Wiki Hates Newbies'), Lesley Mitchell and Dr tara Beall ('Protests and Suffragettes:
Highlighting 100 years of women’s activism in Govan/Glasgow, Scotland') and Jason Evans ('An update from Wales'). We will share videos from these talks soon.
I gave a short presentation with some updates from the global Wikimedia movement - highlighting the current status of Wikimedia 2030 (the movement strategy project), the rebranding project, the drafting of the Universal Code of Conduct, and Wikipedia's upcoming 20th birthday.
As usual, the AGM was also an opportunity to present our annual awards, which were as follows:
- UK Wikimedian of the Year - Caroline Ball for education work and advocacy. She led a high-impact module at the University of Derby (124 articles improved, adding 50,000 words) and has been actively sharing her experience and encouraging others to work with Wikipedia.
- Honourable Mention - Ian Watt for outreach work, training, and efforts around Scotland's COVID-19 data
- Partnership of the Year - National Library of Scotland for the renaissance in wiki work, spearheaded by Gavin Willshaw and the WikiSource chapbooks project
- Honourable Mention - University of Edinburgh for their trailblazing work in education and Wikidata
- Up and Coming Wikimedian - A joint win for Emma Carroll (for the phenomenal work on the Scottish Witch data project) and Laura Wood Rose (excellent work supporting the Edinburgh residency and Women in Red events)
We also presented Michael Maggs with an Honorary Membership, in recognition of his very significant contribution to the charity over a number of years.
Many thanks to all staff, trustees and volunteers who contributed to the day; and thanks again to those who attended.
If anyone has any questions about the AGM or related governance issues, do please feel free to contact me (although I'm on annual leave for most of this week so unless it's super urgent, I may not get back to you immediately).
Best wishes
Lucy
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Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0762 Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
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