Wikimedia South Africa/Board Meeting/21 August 2019
Time: 12h30
Attendance:
[edit]- Ian
- Adri
- Douglas
- Raymond
- Bobby
- Michael
- Rossouw (12,50)
- Coenraad (following on Etherpad)
Wikimania Update
[edit]- 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
[edit]- 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
[edit]- -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
[edit]- 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
[edit]- 1 September.
- Douglas to do a write-up
- Ian to add to meet-up
Communication and social media channels, infrastructure
[edit]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