Wikimedia meetings

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Wikimedia Foundation (Wikimedia meetings)

This page provides information about meetings about the Wikimedia projects, including Wikimedia Foundation's Board meetings and other Open Meetings. Meetings involving Board members are not necessarily official Board meetings (which must be announced in advance). Notes are provided to increase transparency of the work of the Foundation. Please use the talk page to give feedback on these reports. A timezone conversion chart is available for meeting planning.

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Please post additional information on recent and upcoming meetings and agendas below. Feel free to suggest new agenda items or topics, or new open meetings, on the discussion page.

Contents 1 Board meetings 1.1 2009 1.1.1 January (in person) 1.1.2 April Board and Chapters meeting 1.1.3 August (in person) 1.1.4 August Board panel 1.2 2008 1.2.1 March 1 (IRC) 1.2.2 April 5-7 (in person) 1.2.3 June (IRC) 1.2.4 July (Wikimania) 1.2.5 August/September (IRC) 1.2.6 October (in person) 1.2.7 November/December (IRC) 1.3 2007 and previous meetings 1.3.1 2004 2 Open meetings 2.1 2009 2.1.1 September 11 open meeting 2.2 2006 2.2.1 February 5 and 11, 2006 2.3 2005 2.4 2004

[edit] Board meetings

[edit] 2009

on the foundationwiki

[edit] January (in person)

early agenda ideas:

• Assess Board performance
• Set individual measurable commitment for each trustee

message from the Chair on January 7:

I wanted to summarize the items on our agenda for the board meeting this weekend, Jan. 9-11, in San Francisco. These include:

• a recap of the fundraiser (this will obviously be very preliminary, since the "thank you" portion is still running)
• more generally, a review of the overall financial situation
• review of the various existing committee structures
• the proposed process for discussing and voting on migration from GFDL to CC-BY-SA
• preliminary discussions on developing a long-term plan for the organization
• steps toward filling the remaining appointed board seats, including meeting with candidates

As usual, there will also be miscellaneous housekeeping matters like new chapters, but those are the main topics. The committee system ties into the question of the ombudsman commission as I mentioned before, but that's just one example. In general, you could say we're looking to make changes that will rationalize the system with how the foundation actually works. Things that currently work well we would likely leave mostly alone, but there will probably be changes where things aren't working.

Some of you may be wondering about the long-term plan and what that will entail. I don't have a lot of specifics right now because we're just at the beginning stage, but I thought it was important to have this initiative start out with the board. But I also intend for this to develop by involving the broader community - editors, staff, supporters, interested observers - so a plan will itself take some time, and there will be many opportunities for input. And for some of the considerations we will no doubt look at in planning, I'm sure you could find ideas in some of the thoughts Florence occasionally sent out while she was chair.

The license migration will be up for discussion in the very near future. You might consider that process a trial run for what we hope to do in working with the community during the planning process. I definitely encourage people to think carefully about these issues and get involved in the discussion.

[edit] April Board and Chapters meeting

There was a Chapters and Board meeting in Berlin in April. No minutes have yet been published. A brief summary is provided in the ED's April report to the Board.

April 20 message from the Chair:

This is my report on the April board meeting, which was held in Berlin
on April 3-5, in conjunction with a meeting/conference of the Wikimedia
chapters. But first, let me say that it was wonderful to be able to
coordinate so these could happen in the same place. I really appreciated
the opportunity to get to know the chapter representatives, exchange
ideas, and get a sense of their plans, priorities, and concerns. Thanks
to Wikimedia Deutschland as the host, those that contributed so we could
make sure every chapter was represented (itself an impressive
accomplishment), and all who participated. My biggest regret is that we
still had to have the board meeting and thus couldn't spend all of our
time with the chapters, who had plenty to work on and discuss themselves.

This will only be a brief summary, but I want to at least touch on some
of the more important points from the board meeting. As usual, more
detailed minutes will be published later. And yes, we are trying to
release the minutes more quickly - in fact, James has a draft for us to
review already.

For housekeeping items, we approved the minutes from the January meeting
(previously published, so you may have seen them already - in fact, they
were published before we actually approved them), along with the Form
990 to be filed with the IRS. Once our auditors report back that it has
indeed been filed, it will be posted along with an FAQ. With that
complete, the Audit Committee has been reconstituted for the coming
fiscal year's cycle, and all of its members are staying on. Sue also
briefly reported on the status of the CPO hiring process, the result of
which was recently announced so you already know about that.

Moving on to larger items of discussion, we spent some time on the issue
of biographies of living people (or BLP, for the acronym-happy), which
is an ongoing challenge in a number of Wikipedia languages. Since the
Wikimedia Foundation doesn't control the content of the projects, and
editing is entirely the domain of the volunteer community, there are
limits to what the board should appropriately do here. Ultimately we
worked on and passed a formal statement on the issue, which we'll be
publishing shortly. We also passed a brief statement on the foundation's
approach to trademarks. Both of these are in general terms, and the
ideas in them are probably not new to most of you, but we think they
contain some important shared principles.

Sue presented an overview of the annual plan for 2009-2010, which the
staff is currently developing and will be finalized before the end of
the fiscal year in June. The annual plan is a regular part of our
operations, but beyond that, we discussed development of a long-term
strategic plan for the organization. This is something that would frame
the overall goals and direction of Wikimedia, not just the foundation
but the overall movement, and supply the goals that an annual plan would
seek to implement at an operational level. We touched on the strategic
plan during a combined session of the board with the chapters and got a
lot of interesting thoughts and positive feedback. Since our meeting,
the board has recently passed a resolution directing Sue to develop a
working process for this strategic plan. We anticipate it will really
kick off around July, and be ongoing for roughly a year or so. It's been
emphasized throughout that the planning process will need to involve the
Wikimedia projects, chapters, and volunteers participants at all levels,
so this will be fairly unusual and challenging compared to strategic
planning as it is done in typical organizations.

[edit] August (in person)

An in-person meeting will be held August 24-25 in Buenos Aires.

On the agenda (agenda suggestions)

• mid-year welcome and updates
• strategic planning discussion
  • early factbase research and analysis from bridgespan - see the strategy wiki for details
  • facilitating related discussions at Wikimania

[edit] August Board panel

There was a panel of all Board members on the third day of Wikimania, which is viewable online. Questions were drawn from both the audience and IRC.

[edit] 2008

On the WMF wiki

[edit] March 1 (IRC)

February 24 message from the Chair:

In the next few days, an irc meeting will be held, in particular to 
decide who our next secretary will be.

On our short-term plate,
* discussing and defining board and ED relationships (information flows, 
decision making process, representation etc...)
* treasurer search (still ongoing)
* 2008 goals (preliminary to establishing the budget)
* board membership strategy (for next june elections)
* various policies discussion and approval (eg, file format policy)

Other issues will probably be added on the agenda. If you have some 
specific questions to ask, please do so on this list, or on the meta page.

Minutes: from the foundationwiki.

[edit] April 5-7 (in person)

March 28 message from the Chair:

Next week (5-7 of april 2008), the board of Wikimedia Foundation will 
hold its first board meeting in San Francisco.

This meeting will be first an opportunity for board members to meet with 
all the new staff members (Véronique, Erica, Cheryl, Mary-Lou, Kul, 
Jay), and to discover our new office.

We have planned formal meetings with the entire board, time for smaller 
group discussions, informal lunches in the office, and dinners at 
restaurant, to provide many opportunities for good conversation and 
bonding between board and staff. The excellent news regarding the two 
recent big donations should cheer us all :-)

The board meeting itself will take place during three days.

We plan to dedicate saturday to board development and governance. This 
will include relationships and contractual agreement between board and 
executive director, possible future council, next elections, 
professionalization of board, etc...
The day will be facilitated by Pat Hughes.

Sunday will be dedicated to our treasurer search. We have planned to 
meet at least three of our best candidates in the morning. The rest of 
the day will be for us discussing and deciding further action.

Monday is likely to be more eclectic.
We will start by reviewing our personal conflict of interest 
questionnaires, approve the previous board meeting minutes. There are 
documents to review and possibly approve (eg, board member pledges, D&O 
proof of purchase, 990 form etc...).
Morning will feature a report from the Executive Director to the board, 
which will include a general update, future goals, and revenue plan.
The rest of the day will include several other topics, such as a data 
retention policy, approval of an (old) resolution related to "board 
membership and employement", Wikimania security assessment, and review 
of the recent media mishaps.

All board members will leave SF on tuesday, which means most of us are 
likely to be poorly available from friday 4th till wenesday 9th. I will 
be travelling from the 2nd till the 9th, so please forgive delays in 
answering requests :-)

If you have any questions on the program (or what is not on the program) 
please do not hesitate to ask here :-)

No minutes yet. One outcome: a Board restructuring announcement (as of April 26).

Upcoming agendas (all suggested as of April 2008):

[edit] June (IRC)

Agenda:

• approval of Resolution:Minutes approval April 2008
• review of the D&O (not received at last board meeting)
• approval of the Role of the treasurer (already drafted)
• approval of the Role of the chair (drafted)
• approval of the Role of the secretary (drafted)
• approval of new privacy policy
• approval of budget (to be approved in june, whether at meeting or email)
• http://board.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:FY_2008_09_Business_Plan_RELEASED_TO_BOARD.pdf
• http://board.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:FY_2008_09_Business_Plan_FAQ_RELEASED_TO_BOARD.pdf
• approval of Resolution: Pluralism, Internationalism, and Diversity Policy
• approval of Resolution: Duty Entertainment Guidelines Policy
• approval of Resolution: Purchasing and Disbursement Process Policy
• first feedback from new treasurer
• official (re)-creation of the ED evaluation committee and timeline

[edit] July (Wikimania)

1 day, probably on the 15th of July

Proposed agenda:

• approval of Resolution:Minutes approval April 2008
• official acceptance of new trustee
• elections of new chair
• official creation of the board nominating committee
• financial report (included email audit report from Stu)
• ED report
• comment on draft from the chapters re:governance issues
• advisory board meeting feedback

• possibility of future sub-national entities as a different tier organization to be discussed
  • suggested in minutes from March 01 2008
  • might benefit from May chapter meeting feedback and community presence at Wikimania
  • may be outside of board meeting time

[edit] August/September (IRC)

Proposed agenda:

• fundraising strategy approval ?
• business strategy approval ?

[edit] October (in person)

Report: /2008-10-03

Proposed agenda:

• Full financial review (à voir avec Stu)
• Review of personnel policies
• Assess ED
• Meeting with board candidates
• Election of secretary

[edit] November/December (IRC)

Proposed agenda:

• Approval of new (appointed) board candidates
• Technical strategy review

[edit] 2007 and previous meetings

For agendas in flux between 2004 and 2007, see the history of the Wikimedia meeting agendas page (which now redirects here).

From the WMF wiki: 2007 · 2006 · 2005 · 2004.

[edit] 2004

A few open meetings were held in 2004:

• July 4, 2004
• September 5, 2004

  Whilst this was a meeting attended by several members of the board, it was not an official "board meeting".

  An unplanned board meeting was held on IRC on September 5 to discuss the proposal for Wikispecies becoming part of Wikimedia. It was also agreed during this meeting that a database ought to be set up for the Wikimedia Commons so that work on this may begin immediately.

  Related pages- Wikispecies, Wikispecies FAQ

[edit] Open meetings

[edit] 2009

[edit] September 11 open meeting

There was an open meeting with new Board members (Arne, Samuel, and Matt) on Friday, September 11 at 18:00 UTC (11:00 PST | 14:00 EST | 20:00 CEST) in #wikimedia . It will run for roughly an hour.

A proposed agenda was developed from questions asked in advance on on the talk page. For those who could not join the chat, and for questions raised at the meeting, all participants are encouraged to work on questions on the talk page (initial answers have been posted for all questions).

A log of the meeting are available; minutes remain to be produced from them.

[edit] 2006

[edit] February 5 and 11, 2006

• Sunday February 5 : Meeting overview, unfinished minutes, transcript (on scireview).

  The open Wikimedia meeting of Sunday February 5, 2006 dealt with the newly proposed committee structure. See this January post to foundation-l for an explanation of the meeting.

• Sat February 11, 2006 - this meeting followed up on some of the points raised on February 5. It was the last open meeting for some time.

[edit] 2005

• September fundraising meeting: What have we learned?
• August open meeting
• February open meeting

[edit] 2004

• November open meeting
• September fundraising meeting (log)
• July: WMF website meeting