Wikimedia South Africa/2018-AGM

Wikimedia ZA meeting minutes.

Wikimedia South Africa 2018 Annual General Meeting

Held after the Wikidata 6th Birthday event in Cape Town and the Education editathon in Johannesburg.

Time: Saturday, October 27, 2018, 17h00.
Location: Code4Africa offices (top floor), 84 Shortmarket St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town, 8000 (Map)

Agenda

Welcome
History of WMZA

Check WMZA 2018 Report for more details.

Introduction to new members -where to find things
WMZA Plans for the year

Wikipedians in Residence: Rhodes University, University of Cape Town, South South North
Weekly or bi-monthly Wikipedia workshop
Puku Wikipedia Primary School workshop
Kwa-ZuluNatal outreach
WikiDesign project
South African languages Indaba
Partnership and outreach development
Wikipedia library service
Content drives
Scholarships for Wikimania 2019
Hiring Strategic Outreach & project manager and Admin assistant or an Executive Officer to do both.
Others?

Medical Kiwix outreac
Rural Editathon
Re-start WikiLovesMonuments for rural areas
Annual De-stubathon and Af. Writing Competitions
National Year for Indigenous Languages: develop and deploy language strategy

Wikimedia Calendar
Selection of New Board of Directors

Attendees

In person:

Douglas Scott- President
Adri Baard
Coenraad Loubser (absent, proxied by Adri)
Kekeletso (Colin) Xathi
Eric
Howard (non-member)
Ian Gilfillan
Guy Rudolph
Jean-Pierre (Stepped out)
Kerline
Michael Graaf
Ramon Thomas
Rossouw van Rooyen
Vincent
Yonela Msongelwa
Anirood (non-member)
Zanele

Virtual:

Bobby Shabangu
Dumisani Ndubane
Gwinyai
Jess
Mucha
Peter
Raymond Ellis
Wynand (proxied by Douglas by the end of the meeting 19:00 SAST)

Minutes of the AGM

History of WMZA

Check http://wikimedia.org.za/wiki/Template:/Report_2018 for more details.

Introduction to new members - where to find things

WMZA Plans for the year

Wikipedians in Residence: Rhodes University, University of Cape Town, South South North

Weekly or bi-monthly Wikipedia workshop

Bi-weekly will be quite an uptake to the previous monthly effort and require more resources. Possibly through hiring.

Puku Wikipedia Primary School workshop

Hope to run a project together with Puku, an organisation based in Johannesburg, working on creating a database of South African children's books. We plan to run an editing workshop in collaboration. We will be concentrating on creating a cohort of small language Wikipedias. We are also aiming to go to schools to improve awareness of Wikipedia.

Kwa-ZuluNatal outreach

The first version was earlier this year, with Bobby who went through to try and build-up a chapter/Wikipedia presence in Durban. The workshop was held at the University of Kwazulu Natal. The audience was varied from students to lecturers. Bobby felt that there is need for more support to continue with the work. Some of the Scholarship grantees (2 off) were from this area and we are planning to find ways to support them. The second version is planned for next year. Pietermaritzburg will be targeted for the second installment.

We should formalise and document our efforts as we share similar challanges in the country in terms of things such as transport, internet connections etc. Such as a checklist for before and after in arranging these events.

Bobby has already written a report on this http://bobbyshabangu.blogspot.com/2018/08/expanding-wikipedia-to-kwazulu-natal.html but we could also create a best practice for handling such events.

WikiDesign project

The wikipedia design project is an outreach project to connect with the design world and artistic communitites. Design Indaba were sponsors of Wikimania 2018 - Cape Town. We created an outreach page https://designindaba.outreach.org.za/ with intructions on how to create articles and such, as part of Phase 1 of this project.

The second phase is figuring out other means of connecting with the design community such as the Commons lab, Encouraging designers to edit Wikipedia, Creating a desgn User Group... etc. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphic_Lab

South African languages Indaba

It was strongly suggested at Wikimania that we should organise a South African Languages Indaba (Mini Wikimania/Wiki Indaba), on a yearly basis, for people actively involved in South African Language Wikipedia to meet in person to discuss. Members of the Afrikaans Wikipedia strongly feel there is a need for this. Feedback:

Rossouw - Strongly against this, rather we need to tie it into Wiki Indaba, such as providing more scholarships for South Africans to attend Wiki Indaba.

Michael - We must also include non-recognized languages and Minority/Marginalised languages for this as well.

Kerline - Because our database is on all the languages, we ran into similar problems, so what we did was to de-prioritize Afrikaans and English and focus on Other South African languages. So there is a potential for a very strong relationship between our organization. So we are interested in what is the strategy in increasing content in other languages other than English and Afrikaans?

Reuben - more communication via email list, so that things don't go unseen. Maybe start a monthly report on the metrics regarding language diversity. Make it more clear who has stewardship in the local wikis.

Douglas - We as a chapter are good at training but very bad at attracting numbers. So we have adopted a partnership approach in order to reach other language editors.

Wynand: Next year is the international year of Indigenous languages, and we will be holding a number of events to celebrate this, We must consider to reach-out to government to partner with them in this regard. We could also reachout on individual Universities departments to also look at International and national streams to take advantage of this. We will need a structured strategy to achieve this.

Douglas

Dumi - The need of having a SA language Indaba was lobbied from the Afrikaans community, so we will neet to aproach our response to this with care. Problem with Language Indaba: Competition in terms of funding against Wiki Indaba. Combine efforts, rather than split community efforts. Rather have the chapter "umbrella" the efforts. In its formulation see ourselves in connection to the continental movement.

Partnership and outreach development

One of our goals in the next coming year is to build partnership capacity for the chapter.

Q) Do we have a template or format for partnerships?

A) We look at each partnership individually.

Q) Does the chapter have an outline of types of partnerships that they want? As there is a difference between a partner and a friend of the organisation.

A) We look for mission alignment, action and delivery in a partnership.

Wikipedia library service

If we get an empoyee we can the offer a service as a chapter to provide library services by buying reference source materials (Books) and loaning these out to members and Wikipedians.

Scholarships for Wikimania 2019

We are planning to allocate two slots in next year's chapter grant, to provide a scholarship to attend Wikimania in Sweden for the Southern African region.

Q) Will WMF support this budget item?

A) Dumi - WMF will most likely support this to support regional chapters and efforts.

Hiring ED and Admin assistant

We have a need for an Executive director and an Administrative person.

Bobby - Fully support hiring an Administrator for the day-to-day aspects of our work. I am not sure about the role of the ED.

Douglas - The ED would have the role to facilitate the partneships as this would be beyond an Administrator.

Wynand - Supports both positions, but would rename ED into Outreach and Project management.

Jess - Why not make it one position?

Douglas - We need to build institutional capacity and decentralise knowledge.

Dumi - Good to have both positions. In the past the board had hired an Administrator and this was very useful, but we did not have a secured funding stream. Maintaining partnerships and taking care of projects is work and needs to be taken care of.

Ramon - In support of the idea. He sees that the administrator could be a full time role. Is the ED necessary as a full time role?

Douglas No, ED does not have to be a full time position.

Dumi - Locality is a question. Both roles in one location might not be helpful.

Douglas: This should be discussed with the board.

Kerline - The hiring decision should include profiency in indigenous languages.

Freedom of Panorama and Copyright Advocacy

In the current draft, we will get:

Freedom of Panorama written into law.
Fair Use to be adopted into law.
Support Recreate into our proposal.

It looks like it will be voted into Law. Douglas will be presenting at a conference in December.

Insert link to R2K and Google to work with Recreate support. https://www.re-createza.org/

Outreach Ideas

Raymond - Introduce travel subsidies for people to come out of time for ??
Wikimed collaboration, to facilitate for the Internet-in-the-box as well as involving South African doctors?
Ramon - take Wiki outreach events to where people are living, rather than in the city centres.
Colin - Wikiloves monuments.
Rossouw - Annual Af writing competition.
Wynand - Wiki Loves Languages competition in support of 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages https://en.iyil2019.org/.

Wikimedia Calendar

Douglas will be running an edit-a-thon 28 October 2018 at the ICC.
Wiki Indaba will happen in Abuja, Nigeria - January 2019
Wiki Media Conference will happen in Germany, Berlin - April 2019
Wikimania will be in Sweden, Stockholm - July 2019

Selection of New Board of Directors

Proposals/Nominations for the 2018 Board:

Bobby (Nominated by Ramon, Yonela) ACCEPTED
Ian (Nominated by Douglas, Ramon ) ACCEPTED
Coenraad (Nominated by Adri ) ACCEPTED
Michael (Nominated by Reuben, Ramon ) ACCEPTED
Rossouw (Nominated by himself ) ACCEPTED
Adri (Nominated by Douglas, Howard, Ramon ) ACCEPTED
Douglas (Nominated by Adri ) ACCEPTED
Raymond (Nominated by Douglas ) ACCEPTED
Yonela ( Nominated by Dumi ) ACCEPTED
Gwinyai ( Nominated by Bobby ) DECLINED
Reuben ( Nominated by Michael ) DECLINED
Deon not eligible to be nominated again as not present at AGM in person or via proxy

Q) Michael - is there a conflict of interest with directorship and holding a paid position.

A) Kerline- Generally legal, but the person should recuse him/herself from decisions involving a potential conflict of interest.

Proposal: All nominations carry. Proposed by Douglas - Seconded by Rossouw; Rueben, Adri. No counter motion.

Proposal: Decide on Board member roles at the next board meeting - Proposed by Douglas; Seconded by Adri; Yonela; Rossouw; Collen & Bobby. Motion Carried.

Proposal: Amend Quorum Rule for board meetings, from the current 5 (which is almost never met) down to 3 or 20% of Board members (whichever is greater) - Proposed by Douglas, Seconded by Yonela; Third by Rossouw. - Motion carries.

Adoption of minutes

Minutes are passed

Meeting ended ~ 8pm