Wikimedia South Africa/Board Meeting 4 May 2021

Wikimedia South Africa Board meeting 2021-05-04 18.00

Attendance

Present:

• Michael Graaf
• Nobantu Modise
• Douglas Ian Scott
• Bobby Shabangu
• Wynand Van Der Walt
• Deon Steyn

Apologies:

• Coenrad Loubser
• Delight Chipunza

Bobby Shabangu

• Roussouw van Rooyen

Agenda

• Digitisation Project
• Update on Grant Application
• Meeting with Bookkeepers

Previous Minutes

http://wikimedia.org.za/wiki/Board_Meeting_20_April_2021

Digitisation Project

Digitisation has something which the Chapter has been thinking about for some time. It was said that the Indonesians are the ones who inspired to embark on the digitisation programme when they were funded by Ford Foundation to digitise their Indonesian archives. The chapter has been wanting to act on the project, but never found a library or a partner with a collection to digitise the project. The recent Cape Town fires have given a huge need on wanting to drive the digitisation project. Prior to the fire, the Chapter had a justification to increase the range of South African orientated content on Wikipedia. The Nelson Mandela diaries were digitised on Wikimania which were 80 pages of his diary entries into commons. Previously the content was needed to use on Wikipedia to illustrate articles or use as referencing articles, now with fire at the University of Cape Town has given another reason, to assist in the preservation of important collections on a forum that is publicly accessible and provide a public service, which is beyond illustrating Wikipedia articles. The Chapter wants to assist institutions in preserving information in digital format. There was a meeting which was held on Friday 30 April which some board members were part of, there were some talks on the prospects on working on some digitisation. It was decided that the guest members in the meeting will take back the information to their colleagues and get back to us with feedback at the next meeting. Rhodes University is excited about the project and the Chapter has Rhodes university full support. A meeting was suggested should be set up as soon as possible.

Update on Grant Application

The grant application was sent through to funders on Monday 03/05/2021. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia_South_Africa/2021. The link to the grant application was shared, everyone is more than welcome to look at it. All the different projects which the Chapter has got going on amounted to US$31,900.00. Nobantu's request was included in the budget. Nobantu's to send through motivation letter, for all the Outreach Plan, she can send a motivational letter through to board members which will be shared with the Grant Review Board. A lot of projects were placed in the grant and the Chapter is looking at taking on 10 projects for the financial year. Douglas will take a lead on Wiki Loves Science and the Wikipedia Banner Awareness Campaign. Shupai will run the Wikipedia bookshelf. TheLib1Ref is a project which can run by itself. The University and School digital roadshow will be run by Bobby, it might not be able to take place due to Covid-19. Deon and Douglas will run Wiki Loves Fynbos. Deon will run the Afrikaans training workshop. Michael is responsible for running the Cape Town TV Hackathon event. The same budget was asked as the budget from 2019 for the Hackathon event. All board members to run the African Language Outreach and collectively take ownership and find "Champions" to champion African languages, it was noted that it is a long term running project. The only writing competition which is run thus far is Afrikaans Wikipedia which is volunteered by Roussouw. It was suggested that there should be a writing competition in all languages and there is a need for volunteers to drive the writing competition in different respective languages. It was further suggested that it might be incorporated in Nobantu's outreach programme, noting that it must be run differently with a point person. It was said that the Grant Committee will take a look at the grand and they will revert back with questions in regards to the grant of the Chapter. Douglas will be the main contact to the questions, Douglas advised that every board member should familiarise themselves with grant writing skill, as he might not be in a position of writing a grant at some point.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Apply link shared to assist board members on how to write the grant application, which is self-explanatory. The Foundation is able to provide training on grant writing and applying if one ever needs to learn how to write a grant application.

Meeting with Bookkeepers

To set up a meeting with bookkeepers, for Friday on the 7th of May. Bobby to call Douglas before Shupai sets up a meeting with the bookkeepers.