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Wikimedia South Africa/Board Meeting/21 August 2019

< Wikimedia South Africa

Time: 12h30

Attendance:

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  • Ian
  • Adri
  • Douglas
  • Raymond
  • Bobby
  • Michael
  • Rossouw (12,50)
  • Coenraad (following on Etherpad)

Wikimania Update

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  • 16 - 18 August 2019
  • Bobby, Adri, Douglas and Coenraad went from the board.
  • Dumi and Ingrid from SA went as well.
  • Douglas: Went to Advocacy tracked. Spoke on Climate Change Editathon. Also spoke to Winifrid on the Grant Process who gave tips on steps to hiring a person in the long term,
  • Their suggestion was to hire someone part-time in order to manage a project on the short term and then seeing how that goes.
  • Also chatted to Lorenzo from Wiki Italy as they have too much money and need a reason to disperse it. He is looking at giving out micro grants in Africa. This is a great alternative to the Rapid Grant system which can take up to 2 months.
  • We'd only be able to apply for a part-time person in the next funding cycle and a fulltime person in the cycle after that.
  • From Adri: Funding takes years, not months. We as a board need to put a 5 year board strategy together so that we can have smaller yearly goals and work with the foundation (or other foundations/grants) on reaching the smaller goals.
  • Adri and Coenraad met with Wiki NL and DE during Wikimania regarding ways in which we can grow our Chapter using strategies that they learned in their Chapters.
  • Coenraad asks that everyone watch the opening keynote address about UN Live.
  • Funding opportunities:
  • Ford Foundation
  • Shuttleworth Foundation (for a fellowship)
  • Open Society ZA and International
  • Knight Foundation (American)


We may have to look at someone that can apply for funding on our behalf and they get a % commission. They apply for the grant, manage the admin and reporting.

General note:

  • We need to get better at publishing our activities and sharing it with the community.

First step: Get 5 year strategy together In parallel: Find someone that is willing to do the fundraising pro bono and find funding organisations.

UN Africa Wikipedian in Residence

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  • Douglas and Bobby will be having a meeting re UN Development Program. They want to do a Wikimedian in Residence program through South African Chapter for Africa.
  • They had a meeting at Wikimania and will have another meeting again later today. Douglas needs to talk to Daria from the UK still as he did not get a chance during WIkimania.
  • A Wikipedian in Residence's main job it so foster a culture of editing on Wikipedia. The chosen person would also need to set up and manage an Internal UN Wiki.
  • As a Chapter we would be paid a management commission for finding the person and managing the process (no amounts discussed yet).

To do: Strategy day potential topics

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-Communication
-Funding
-Events
-5 year plan/Vision
  • Strat session to be held the same time as our AGM so everyone can attend in person.
  • Douglas to send a Doodle so we agree on a date

Khoi-San Presentation

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  • Michael has suggested that we do a presentation at a Khoi-San course and we should help them get their Wikipedia out of incubation by having 6 active editors for 6 months.

Next Meetup

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  • 1 September.
  • Douglas to do a write-up
  • Ian to add to meet-up

Communication and social media channels, infrastructure

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From 18 June to 21 August:

  • Twitter: 1414 followers -> 1487
  • Facebook (English): 962 follows (908 likes) -> 965 (903)
  • Facebook (Afrikaans): 308 members -> 319
  • Mailing list (Afrikaans): 312 members. Suspect most are fake, aol addresses, no valid activity for years -> 313
  • Mailing list (English): 284 members -> 280
  • Instagram 110 Followers -> 122
  • Meetup: 92 members -> 103
  • Youtube: 47 subscribers -> 47
  • Zulip: 13 users -> 13
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