Discuss Board Meeting

Raw transcript:

Bryan: M. W.

Bryan: They. They don't use semitically, Ricky, and they're confused. And then I also know that there's people Some people that think enterprise is a bad, not a bad name, but

Bryan: misrepresenting. Who is there? So

Bryan: I don't know. I also thought that we couldn't just do Media Wiki, you know conference

Bryan: for legal reasons or something. But I don't really care. I I don't want this to be a stake in the community. So

Mark: yeah, I I I. You're right. That originally the

Mark: I I think it was because the organizers of this did not have.

Mark: they, they had gotten off on the wrong foot, as it were, with the foundation. And so they

Mark: they wanted to make sure that they weren't gonna get any trouble. And we inherited that

Mark: I think, I think, though, that Media Wiki stakeholders does have. I I think we have a relationship with the foundation. And

Mark: we, you know, I I don't. I they they've given us the rights to the the name. So at least some of it.

Mark: And we we we can talk to them.

Markus: Yeah, I would. I would think. we

Markus: we do have a good position to use the name, but Before we use it we should double check with the foundation.

Eric-Jan: Do some extra

Eric-Jan: to so explore and do some extra discussion after after

Eric-Jan: before coming to a decision.

Mark: but it sounds like, from what I'm hearing here. Bernard Cindy. You missed this, I think, but Bernard said he, he thought maybe

Mark: maybe, as some W. Con would be.

Mark: we could present, you know, hey, we're changing the name, but they want to keep the same this year. just because it's worked so well for them. But again, you know it's not. We're not tying Smw. As cons hands to change their name. We're just saying, you know, maybe this is something just to see how it works.

Cindy: But just to just to make sure that I got the conversation clear. We're not talking about renaming smw, con to em w con.

Cindy: Yeah, but we're but maybe changing the one or both.

Cindy: just changing one or both of them to just the Media Wiki conference, which I think would be awesome. Yeah.

Cindy: yeah, no, I think that would be good. And I think, Mark, I think just as joining, I heard you say, but

Cindy: yeah, the the

Cindy: I know your own.

Cindy: feel strongly about the enterprise Media Wiki name, but I do think that that is limiting the audience. I know that folks in Europe feel strongly or have about Smw. Con in favor over Em. W. Kon, because there is a history of having that semantic committee community.

Cindy: But yeah, that that that itself is also somewhat limiting. and just being media with you, I think, would allow us to broaden the audience, and I do think

Cindy: I will note that I do think that the attendance of

Cindy: the attendance at Smw. Con was better then the most recent Em. W. Con. and I don't think it's strictly because of the name, but I think that we shouldn't

Cindy: discount the fact that

Cindy: you know that's one difference between the 2, and we should sort of consider about what can we do to increase the numbers? Because I think that we would want to do that

Mark: all right. yeah. So I think I think the item there is for someone to talk to the foundation.

Mark: is that is that something I should do. Do you want to take that. Send me to someone else. Want to do it.

Cindy: I'm gonna start having some conversations internally. I think it should come from

Cindy: from the board of the Media Wiki stakeholders group as a as a suggestion. I think it makes sense for it to come from you, Mark.

Cindy: but I can sort of lay some groundwork and figure out, because I'm not even sure at this point who the appropriate person to speak to is.

Cindy: and I wouldn't want to go just to the legal team, cold calling them, and you know, out of the blue without, you know, like, if I were going to go, I would want to have somebody from

Cindy: the technology department recommend to them that this is something that makes sense, that will be for the betterment of Media Wiki as opposed to just going cold. So I would want to have some initial discussions before we go in with the proposal.

Markus: So yeah, that that's fine with me. I'll wait for you to

Mark: lay some groundwork, as it were.

Eric-Jan: just as a final remark to add, if I may, I mark if you if you would use, let's say, the sixth month, the 6 months MW. Come. This the Media Wiki Conference would surely would surely boost the the the the aspect of of

Eric-Jan: of uniting right and and reduce a possible division between an American conference and a European conference. So in that sense, He conference is is a strong suggestion. I would say.

Mark: yeah.

Eric-Jan: totally agree.

Mark: Brian, was there anything you had talked before? And it looks like we're not gonna have time to look at the fabricator stuff.

Mark: But it you had talked before, Brian, about the a report. I believe a final report on Em. W. Con. Do you have anything there?

Mark: All right

Mark: now?

Mark: That's fine.

Mark: I guess.

Mark: But so is there real quick then, because we only have

Bryan: obviously the wrong thing I did share with with everybody in the

Bryan: boardroom here, I think.

Bryan: Cindy may have already had access to it. But

Bryan: This might not be the final complete report. But

Bryan: There's a there's I need to get back some taxes from 2 of the receipts.

Bryan: because we're a nonprofit, and I can do that through the State Comptroller. and I got something very curious from Simon Steer.

Bryan: I I thought I convinced him that he could just pay the ticket. and and that would be, you know, another $500 that we got. That brings us up to this total here about 2,000.

Bryan: But he also. This is what you sent me recently, and it makes me think that it

Bryan: he he actually went ford and got a reversal on the let's see.

Bryan: this is what he wrote.

Bryan: The last part I could have just deleted, but it makes it sound like he successfully submitted for a refund

Bryan: but I don't know like I looked at

Bryan: Event Bright and I looked at Paypal, and for all I can tell.

Bryan: we collected the money, and we I transferred it to the bank, so I don't know how that can be possible.

Bryan: unless so, because I you know, he said

Bryan: he accidentally bought the ticket. And I said, Okay, yeah, yeah. You didn't need to buy one, you know. But I said, but you know, if it's your

Bryan: university that's paying for it. And you guys don't mind.

Bryan: We are a nonprofit, every bit helps. And he said, Oh, yeah, no problem. And so he said, send an invoice. So I sent an invoice, and then he sent me that. So I'm hoping it meant successfully submit for

Bryan: payment of the invoice. But I don't know.

Bryan: So at the end we're we're somewhere between 1,500 2,000 ish depending on how this plays out.

Cindy: That's great.

Mark: all right.

Bryan: And the 3 factors, one.

Bryan: the Wikipedia Foundation, sending 3 people.

Bryan: okay, yeah. No. So Eric and a lot of the people. And it seems like everybody in Europe has.

Bryan: you know, showing me receipts of payment, but it just hasn't hit the bank account as of last week when I checked.

Bryan: so I don't know what's going on there, but you can look into it.

Eric-Jan: Yeah.

Cindy: something that would be good to do, I guess.

Cindy: just to know like what the bank balances, you know, like, have a treasurer's report periodically.

Bryan: I think right now we're hovering around $10,000. but I could. Here, I can look at that up right now.

Cindy: Nice.

Bernhard: Can we talk a little bit about the sponsoring that I want to set up? Because I mean you? I've I've shared this this document with my thoughts. I'm I'm just going to go ahead and and start with that

Bernhard: 1. One part of it is really just, you know@snw.org, and on on Github companies who already do something.

Bernhard: should should have the opportunity to make it themselves to physical. So this is the easy part. Yeah.

Bernhard: So for example, if cisine, it has a a programmer that will do half a day of of of working on one of the repos on on Smw. They will. Can put the logo on, and if and if they say from September on, they are too busy, we cannot do anything, they can put it back

Bernhard: they can put it down again. So so things like that just to make visible who is actively doing something from those companies. This is the first part. It's the easy part.

Bernhard: The harder part is the question. how can organizations donate?

Bernhard: And So the question really for MW. Stake is, I believe, MW. Stake should be the organization that would collect money and would find some means on distribute this money again.

Bernhard: but I totally understand, and the greed that you would say it was just for one for one

Bernhard: ecosystem of extensions, and we want. We? We don't don't want to do that exclusively for this

Bernhard: because then, of course, you know what you could ask us if if we want to collect funds for for for cargo, or or if you want to collect funds for for canasta, which would also be an idea actually.

Bernhard: So I would also understand if if you don't like the idea but then I would have to do something like this open, collective Europe thing. So where you can donate.

Bernhard: So I would be really interested. What what you think about this?

Eric-Jan: So can we? Just yeah. So are you suggesting? donate donations

Bernhard: parallel to memberships or instead of memberships parallel to membership. Right? That's that's that's that should be. Anyway. I mean, we. We we should up our game on the membership front, and yes, and I'm happy to contribute to that. But my, my point is, if there is a say, large organization that says I'm using really semantic media. We cannot. I want to donate something.

Bernhard: I want to donate €1,000, and I don't want to pay to end on the stakeholders group and reaches to have to know from the receipt or from whatever this should be, for, as in publicly to things, it could be for for for you know, paying for the server, for, like the website is hosted, it could be that some programming task, or for we we could. We could buy ads. For you know, Google ads, whatever we did, we just have to know

Bernhard: these amounts. We collect it for for Sm, and we will spend it

Bernhard: in agreement of in a from our board, and that should not be a problem. I think

Eric-Jan: so, you know, aiming probably you're aiming for let's say, what I would call end users right? Not. You're not aiming for the the community companies like like you, and like we like us. You're not aiming for consults you're aiming for end users right?

Eric-Jan: Which is so, which is a a a, a, a kind of a new, in a kind of a new group. So it's very interesting. Any effort

Eric-Jan: that would be interesting.

Mark: I I would say. 1 one thing about that is the open, collective people already have a lot of an infrastructure set up for doing all of this.

Mark: and that is one part that I don't.

Mark: I don't think we have that infrastructure right now, and I'm not sure I have. We have the time to set it up.

Bernhard: Hmm!

Mark: But that, said I, like the idea overall.

Mark: you know, coming up with a way to do this sort of thing.

Bernhard: Hmm.

Bernhard: because the the thing is, I mean, I just experienced this now with the bill for the for the no, just didn't work because I could not put in my address my European address because of this. I don't. This payment system just didn't work. And now my my debit card was was, is is

Bernhard: it's blocked, because, you know, I attempt to 2 or 3 times. And now I have to talk to the. So it's really annoying. And it just it just has to work a a also for the, for the, for the for the

Bernhard: membership options, you know.

Bernhard: and so I think we have to be better there, and maybe we should just strike, or I don't know some some big

Bernhard: big player there. that that provides all this spilling or automatic billing. You know we we cannot have prime, you know, issue manually bills for that, because someone will maybe donate €50

Bernhard: so. And I don't want Brian then to have to issue a feel because he says he needs it for his, for his taxes or something. Right? So this should be automatically. And and once we have that, it's it's going to be easy to set up products that you would sell. You know the membership fee, the sponsorship for this and that conference and sponsorship. So that's just no 3 products that you that we are selling online, you know.

Bernhard: so my my my proposal is that we

Bernhard: I have a stripe account. I think I I'm I'm not so sophisticated with it. But I think stripe is is is the platform that can do all that. And maybe we ss, meteoric to stakeholders. We should have a stripe accounts, and then we have. We can all do this payments, and I think it just works fine. But but Mark, didn't we already install. did you and Marin already install, or or or so they will.

Eric-Jan: So so we already did this right. Yes, we we already have right there. I'm not saying we have an it. We can issue invoices, but the the payments the the the payroll is already there.

Mark: Yes, that. But that

Mark: there is another interesting thing, that that is

Mark: another bit of maintenance that we have to do. I did talk it. It. That was another person I talked to at the conference was from the fundraising team

Mark: and she said that they have a lot of infrastructure, and they're looking at making it available open, fortunate, or it is open source, but making it more available to other wikis to install. And that that's another possibility is, you know, does that that? That's the main part that I'm thinking about that we don't really have the resources to maintain the software?

Mark: so yeah.

Mark: But if if if the foundation comes up, you know, if they do, and maybe it's just a matter of me going and bugging them and saying, Hey, could you release this and make it available.

Mark: So the other people like us can use it.

Mark: you know. Maybe maybe that's what I need to do. So I guess I I will go. Do that. I will go talk to her again and say, Hey, you know.

Mark: have you made any progress on this? Because she said they wanted to. So yeah.

Bernhard: okay, that that will be great. And I mean, they don't have to completely open sources. They they. They can also provide it for us because we are associated, and you know we could be the first. the first ones to use it

Mark: right? Well, they I I'm real fairly sure that they have no problem open source in it. It's just, you know, it's just there's some work that has to be done as far as

Mark: making it available.

Mark: I will. Okay, I that's my task. I get. I guess we have a task for Cindy, and then we have

Mark: next meeting in a couple of weeks. I really do want to go over the fabricator stuff, And and as you said, we need to get, we need to up our game with the membership, and I think

Mark: I think Eric. you can take the lead on that next week now or 2 weeks from now.

Eric-Jan: Yes, no problem.

Mark: all right, and that's going to be all the fabricator stuff, I believe so

Eric-Jan: alright, so thumbs up again for Brian and for the for the for the great report

Eric-Jan: on the eve. W. Count Brian, the great result as well.

Eric-Jan: Thank you with your yeah. Great.

Bryan: I know we got to leave. But just a quick question. I think, Bernard, you're saying that.

Bryan: your ability to pay via authorized net. didn't work well.

Bernhard: it didn't work at all. So I I issued this regular bank transfer, and I don't know why it is just just not going through. I don't know, so I I I will talk to to my bank. What? What is what is going on with this? Because it's it it it has not been deducted from my account yet.

Bernhard: So this has been weeks now. So

Bryan: yeah, and we're seeing that, I think, on the bank side. But What the point I was going to make. Is it sounded like, you know, we were talking about the integration for the MW steak. org site and authorized net as being something that we kind of already worked out. But if it's worked out on the backbone, it's something that's not really working

Bryan: that is authorized on that side. Then we do need to

Bryan: look at a different way to do it. So we can claim payments. Okay, I just want to make sure.

Eric-Jan: Thanks for that your alright thanks, love! Have a day bye, bye.