After the Board meeting yesterday we had an interesting conversation in the IRC about whether different people would stand for election. As someone said, we have agreed on seven places on the Board, but will we get seven candidates??
This got me thinking - how can we encourage people to put themselves forward for the Board? Personally I particularly want to encourage people who may have skills in particular areas - media relations, event organisation, charity administration etc. They might not have a huge amount of time to dedicate to the organisation but would be very useful in getting the chapter making the right decisions! It's also great to get people involved who might have lots of energy, lots of time and lots of new ideas to bring to the table.
Any thoughts?
Andrew
2009/1/14 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
After the Board meeting yesterday we had an interesting conversation in the IRC about whether different people would stand for election. As someone said, we have agreed on seven places on the Board, but will we get seven candidates??
This got me thinking - how can we encourage people to put themselves forward for the Board? Personally I particularly want to encourage people who may have skills in particular areas - media relations, event organisation, charity administration etc. They might not have a huge amount of time to dedicate to the organisation but would be very useful in getting the chapter making the right decisions! It's also great to get people involved who might have lots of energy, lots of time and lots of new ideas to bring to the table.
Any thoughts?
I think the first thing we need to do is make sure people know what the job entails. Few people will apply for a job if they don't know what will be expected of them. Unfortunately, we don't really know what the job will entail until some of us have actually done it for a bit (the current board have a rather different job to that which future boards will have). Perhaps we should ask some board members from other chapters what they get up to? How much time they spend on chapter stuff, in particular.
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we should ask some board members
from other chapters what they get up to? How much time they spend on chapter stuff, in particular.
Well. It can differ widely. (In a perfect world, every board member would "work" the same amount of time for the chapter, but that's not even what I'm talking about here) :
I remember weeks where I might have only worked 1-2 hours for the chapter. In other weeks, especially in the weeks before an event or when you do a coordinated "urgent action" (for "urgent", read: "We forgot that this law was coming up for committee debate and had to start our lobbying at a very late point"), it felt more like a 50% part time job.
But anyway, I think it's very difficult to just give a number of hours. In a newspaper interview, I once said "7-10 hours", which wasn't a bad estimate then. It has decreased a bit as of late (as I've been doing more ChapCom etc. stuff...and as I have started to work-to-earn-money)
Michael
On Jan 15, 8:19 am, "Michael Bimmler" mbimm...@gmail.com wrote:
Many thanks for your reply here Michael - very interesting to hear your perspective on that!
(In a perfect world, every board member would "work" the same amount of time for the chapter...
I'm not sure that's even desirable. Different candidates have different personal circumstances and can be valuable contributors even if they give different amounts of time. One board member who is an expert, say, in legal matters and just turns up to meetings can be extremely useful alongside perhaps a keen student who has lots of spare time and spends 20 hours a week organising projects.
In a newspaper interview, I once said "7-10 hours" [per week], which wasn't a bad estimate then. It has decreased a bit as of late (as I've been doing more ChapCom etc. stuff...and as I have started to work-to-earn-money)
By way of background I would add that Michael is the President of the Swiss Wikimedia chapter, which has 62 members and had an income of ~ £23,000 in 2007. I personally wouldn't expect Wikimedia UK to have as much income in 2009, although we would hopefully get to that number of members and given we are setting things up I guess our activity would be about the same.
Andrew
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:12 PM, AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
On Jan 15, 8:19 am, "Michael Bimmler" mbimm...@gmail.com wrote:
Many thanks for your reply here Michael - very interesting to hear your perspective on that!
(In a perfect world, every board member would "work" the same amount of time for the chapter...
I'm not sure that's even desirable. Different candidates have different personal circumstances and can be valuable contributors even if they give different amounts of time. One board member who is an expert, say, in legal matters and just turns up to meetings can be extremely useful alongside perhaps a keen student who has lots of spare time and spends 20 hours a week organising projects.
Oh absolutely. This was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek note to indicate that...well, let me put this nicely... there have been times when certain board members did basically nothing. Which should, obviously, be avoided (...through elections) ;-)
In a newspaper interview, I once said "7-10 hours" [per week], which wasn't a bad estimate then. It has decreased a bit as of late (as I've been doing more ChapCom etc. stuff...and as I have started to work-to-earn-money)
By way of background I would add that Michael is the President of the Swiss Wikimedia chapter, which has 62 members and had an income of ~ £23,000 in 2007.
Right. For the record (and because I do enjoy boasting...), we have just yesterday published our stats for 2008, we have earned almost £38,000 in 2008, whereof £23,250 during the official fundraiser.
Our membership number (which is somewhere >70 by now) is the thing that I personally consider to be one of our strongest weaknesses...I believe that a higher number of members would increase our visibility (people tend to talk about associations they're member of their friends), ensure a steady (albeit comparatively small) stream of revenue (fees...) and allow for a larger pool of volunteers for various events and projects. In Wikimedia CH, most if not all events and long-term projects were handled by the board plus a set of about five to ten volunteers. I think this was a too small number of people and I greatly regret that we did not manage to diversify there...we did run into problems at times when we were asked to cooperate in eg. an event and would have greatly liked to and also had the financial resources to do so but just lacked the "human resources"...
I wonder whether at times there should be "membership raisers" rather than fundraisers, but this might just be me putting so much emphasis on that.
Cheers, Michael
On Jan 16, 1:32 pm, "Michael Bimmler" mbimm...@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder whether at times there should be "membership raisers" rather than fundraisers...
Thanks for your comments here - that sparked a very good point which I wanted to mention as well.
At the moment we have 12 members/applicants but before the AGM happens we need to encourage as many people as possible to join up. We've been holding off a bit with this until the bank account is opened, but that should now be ready in a matter of days.
Some ideas have already been put up here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_UK#inviting_people_to_join but it's worth asking again - any more ideas for how we can spread the word and sign people up?
Andrew
On Jan 16, 3:17 pm, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
any more ideas for how we can spread the word and sign people up?
Throw bricks at forgetful people...
Well, we've another board meeting on Monday, so I presume Mike will be reporting another membership form received??
:)
2009/1/16 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
On Jan 16, 3:17 pm, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
any more ideas for how we can spread the word and sign people up?
Throw bricks at forgetful people...
Well, we've another board meeting on Monday, so I presume Mike will be reporting another membership form received??
:)
And deny him a chance to throw a brick at me? That would be cruel!
At 16:10 +0000 16/1/09, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/1/16 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.uk:
On Jan 16, 3:17 pm, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
any more ideas for how we can spread the word and sign people up?
Throw bricks at forgetful people...
Well, we've another board meeting on Monday, so I presume Mike will be reporting another membership form received??
:)
And deny him a chance to throw a brick at me? That would be cruel!
So nice that this is all on public (online) record...
Gordo
I personally wouldn't expect Wikimedia UK to have as much income in 2009
If you include the first half of the next WMF fundraiser as 2009 income (which it technically is, although it's right at the end of the year so can't be spent in 2009), then we might get pretty close.
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org