[Wikimediaau-l] Melbourne meetup report

[Nathan Carter]

Hi,
I will comment inline :)
On 10/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Last night we had a small meetup in Melbourne's City Library. Present
> were myself (user:pfctdayelise), Stephen (user:thebainer),
> user:Aliasd, user:Canley and user:Jayvdb.


Good to see you guys getting together. I wish I could of been there to
thrash things out in person.

We went over the draft constitution from meta and just talked about
> the same stuff that we've been talking about here too. The most
> interesting discussion, and certainly the discussion that needs the
> most input from everyone, is about the aims. Stephen is going to try
> to merge our meta draft constitution into the Victorian model rules.
> When he does he will write back here. Then I think it would be
> fruitful to spend a couple of weeks discussing the exact wording of
> the aims.


If Stephen needs help, just let me know. The Victorian model rules are much
the same as the NSW ones which I am very familiar with. At the same time we
do need to make an official decision on where we are going to incorporate
before delving into this too far.

Note that according to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide ,
> we need to get the bylaws (which I presume is our constitution)
> approved by the Chapters committee before we submit it to Victorian
> officialdom. Perhaps Nathan could comment about how long that is
> likely to take given that he is on Chapcom. (Is that a COI? :))


You have it right, we need to get the chapter approved by the foundation (
i.e. via ChapCom) before we proceed. We don't want another Wikimedia UK
occuring where the chapter was formed before it was approved. As for the
time, it varies depending on how long it takes Chapcom to decide and how
long it takes the board to reply once approved.

We can have another Melbourne meetup between Nov 10-19. We will try to
> arrange it so OIC and Sarah can attend and Brian and as many
> Melburnians as possible, of course. Angela, if there's any potential
> that you could be down here during that time period, I think that
> would be awesome too.


We should also arrange another IRC meeting in the meantime so those not in
Victoria can thrash things out and also decide where to incorporate (I'm
leaning towards Vic now).

There was some complaint about the timing, venue and short notice of
> this meetup. :) Computerbank was suggested as a venue for the next
> meeting, which seems like a good idea. Another possibility is the City
> of Melbourne library that's near Jolimont station (because I found out
> that library has a wireless network :) and their meeting room has an
> AV setup too). But if Computerbank are happy to have us then we should
> go for that, I think.
>
> WRT the constitution, some of the proposed changes seem quite nitpicky
> (and some were quite irrational :)). I think except for the
> physical/virtual-attendance-of-meetings thing, we should as much as
> possible adopt the simple model rules, with the understanding that we
> are starting as a small organisation, and we should change the
> constitution appropriately as we grow rather than try to anticipate
> that too much when at the moment we are nothing.


I think that if the state we incorporate in doesn't allow virtual AGMs we
just have a normal AGM with postal or proxy voting. New business is never
just added to an AGM so everyone will know what's on the table beforehand.

Cheers,
Nathan.
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