Wikimedia South Africa/Board Meeting/6 November 2018

WMZA Board meeting

6 November 2018 | 18h30

Attendance

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  • Yonela
  • Ian
  • Michael
  • Bobby
  • Rossouw (Jitsi Meet page kept crashing; followed on this etherpad; will have better connection in future. Apologies)
  • Raymond
  • Douglas (left at 19h00 to join WMF call)

Apologies

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  • Adri
  • Coenraad

Agenda

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Infrastructure (Ian)

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  • All new board members should have access to the basic infrastructure (wiki, email, whatsapp, zulip). Anyone with difficulties to contact Ian
  • 1-grid have hugely increased their hosting fee and have not been responsive to queries
  • Ian still investigating moving or improving this

Hiring Strategic Outreach & project manager and Admin assistant or an Executive Officer to do both

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  • Douglas: The foundation has made it clear that they will not fund the staff we proposed to hire. The main reason is that they have the impression that we are not a fully functional board.
  • The impression is that the board is fully dependent on one or two people.
  • Board and chapter needs to improve its reporting and engagement.

Board member roles

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  • Douglas has been president, no longer an option for the staff hire
  • Douglas had to step out to join WMF call, so the rest of this discussion to be held later

Finances

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  • Discussion on current draft grant budget. Douglas requires feedback today due to his WMF deadline. Michael lodged a last-minute proposal for a hackathon early next year; Douglas proposed a ball-park event budget for it of R10 000
  • Problems with current systems. Bookkeepers pay once a week, this is sometimes too slow (as in arrangements for AGM)
  • Douglas/Bobby has to make personal payments and get reimbursed later. This is not ideal.
    • Q) Why do we require bookkeepers to make payments instead of board members
    • A) Previous financial processes were not good, payments were unaccounted for, not correctly allocated etc. Aim for better reporting and accountability
    • Problem was particularly around ATM withdrawals
  • To enquire about alternatives to the week delay (Bobby/Douglas)
  • Bookkeeper statements are currently sent to Douglas, and Bobby only. Should be sent to the board mailing list (Bobby/Douglas)

Planning

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  • Agreement that a planning session to plan 1st quarter 2019 activities is needed, as getting everyone together at one time over voice is difficult with 9 board members and unreliable internet
  • Move some of the discussion to Zulip where it can be broken down in chunks, open to all, not just board members
  • Discussion on metric used for reporting South African languages in 2019 (articles, total editors, active edits), further discussion on Zulip
  • Ran out of time, meeting closed at 19h30

Next board meeting

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  • To be discussed on Zulip