Discuss Board Meeting

Raw transcript:

Mark Hershberger: Post, so.

Cindy Cicalese: Yeah, but it would not let me log in anyways. That was a diversion. I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt.

Mark Hershberger: That's fine.

Mark Hershberger: yeah. So the is is we're just talking about basically getting getting back to the proposal that Jeffrey Wong had put on mediwiki.org about scholarships, and really nailing down what that means which I think right now. We're all in agreement. From what I've seen that. That just means basically, we're willing to forego some attendance cost.

Mark Hershberger: but not the we're not going to sub be able to subsidize travel or anything like that, because that would get really expensive, real fast.

Cindy Cicalese: Yeah. And to just give a little bit of history. This came up in some of our discussions before the last conference, because

Cindy Cicalese: James was asking

Cindy Cicalese: for permission to essentially give scholarships to to waive the registration fee

Cindy Cicalese: for a couple of the attendees.

Cindy Cicalese: and Jeffrey was concerned that if we were doing it on an ad hoc basis, which is what we've done in the past.

Cindy Cicalese: That it would not be equitable, that it would be just whoever felt moved to come forward and ask for this, you know, without us having advertised anything which is, gonna be the gutsier people who, you know, think to ask. So you know, his point was, if we're going to wave

Cindy Cicalese: registration fees for anyone, then we should post a policy.

Cindy Cicalese: for.

Cindy Cicalese: you know, applying for scholarships, we should have a deadline. Everybody should have a chance to apply, and then we should have some criteria and make choices on who we're going to waive the registration for so

Cindy Cicalese: there's some process. There's some preparation. There's some, you know.

Cindy Cicalese: And my point at that point was, You know, this is volunteer. Run

Cindy Cicalese: We have enough on our plate. As it is, we were pretty busy just trying to have the conference, and it didn't make sense to to put that in place

Cindy Cicalese: for that conference, because it was after the fact, anyways, and I said somebody would have to volunteer their time in order to

Cindy Cicalese: create the policy, publish the policy, make the decisions, you know, come up with the Criterion

Cindy Cicalese: and

Cindy Cicalese: Jeffrey seemed.

Cindy Cicalese: He went back and forth. You know he seemed to be eager to do that.

Cindy Cicalese: but then he's like, Oh, wow! That is a lot of work, isn't it? So?

Cindy Cicalese: you know, when, while we're a relatively small community and relatively few people are asking for this.

Cindy Cicalese: I'm not sure if it's worth the overhead. On the other hand, he made a point, and James made a point of people they knew who have attended

Cindy Cicalese: because they found scholarship opportunities and were able to afford it, and would not otherwise have been able to.

Cindy Cicalese: And I think it's a good thing. I think it's something we should do if somebody

Cindy Cicalese: commits the time and resources to do it.

Cindy Cicalese: But I know that we are all

Cindy Cicalese: overburdened as it is, and have enough.

Cindy Cicalese: you know, on our plates. So.

Mark Hershberger: So yeah, thanks for adding all that detail. Because, yeah, I wasn't involved in that whole thing. So I'd miss the a lot of the detail. That is good detail.

Mark Hershberger: and I think what with that in mind, what

Mark Hershberger: I can do is I can go back to Jeffrey and say, okay, yeah, we're willing to do this. But now they started discussion of who does what?

Mark Hershberger: in in. Maybe

Mark Hershberger: maybe Jeffrey will be really excited to jump in, and maybe he'll be like, Oh, yeah, that is a lot of work. Let's just forget the whole thing.

Mark Hershberger: no, but I I so I I think I can do that. I can go talk to him if if that's if that sounds good to everyone.

Mark Hershberger: or if there's something else that I'm missing, go ahead.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Just a quick board vote, but that sounds fine. So just saying that we're offering some form of conference scholarships

Bryan Hilderbrand: and waving the attendee fee. Only

Bryan Hilderbrand: So there's some amount that could be offered every year. If everybody's okay with it, we could vote and then decide that

Bryan Hilderbrand: method to do it.

Cindy Cicalese: I would say that with a little bit more specificity, saying that we need to agree upfront before the Conference what the budget is for that conference, for scholarships.

Eric-Jan: Yeah. So look at. So look at it. One MW, cl, plan at a time. Right?

Eric-Jan: So it's it's no, it's so. Yeah.

Bernhard: Can you guys hear me now?

Bernhard: Yes, Hi, I I just wanted to add.

Bernhard: I mean we we we could. And should, I think. Also ask Wikimedia Foundation, because they have something like this in place already. And since this is a mini, big users and developers conference, they might be willing to, you know.

Bernhard: step in here, I for the for the European Upcoming Conference. I actually plan to to ask Wikimedia Deutschland

Bernhard: because they have funds, and you know, if if someone wants to waive the the admission, then maybe the community Dutchland can do that.

Bernhard: and maybe maybe for the us conference. The Wikimedia Foundation could do that.

Cindy Cicalese: Maybe.

Mark Hershberger: When you say wave the fund is Wikimedia Deutschland get the recipient of the funds. I thought we were the recipient of the funds, so we would waive them.

Bernhard: Yeah.

Cindy Cicalese: Media Joyce lived would pay the registration for the person.

Bernhard: Yes.

Mark Hershberger: Right?

Mark Hershberger: right? Okay. So,

Cindy Cicalese: And possibly travel too. I know that they have done that in the past.

Mark Hershberger: yeah, I was I was going to see about. It's still. Time is still an issue. But I was going to see about getting some funding to go to Vienna for myself

Mark Hershberger: for travel.

Mark Hershberger: so that would be an exercise in the whole

Mark Hershberger: thing.

Mark Hershberger: alright.

Cindy Cicalese: So so I'm sorry Brian had proposed a vote.

Cindy Cicalese: and yep.

Mark Hershberger: I was just taking some notes here. So yeah.

Cindy Cicalese: So, Brian, do you want to restate what we're voting on.

Eric-Jan: Yes, please.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Well, I think.

Bryan Hilderbrand: we're voting on

Bryan Hilderbrand: There's a bit of a Tbd in the end. But it's the idea that

Bryan Hilderbrand: we will wave

Bryan Hilderbrand: conference registration on a case-by-case basis depending on the budget. And and most likely the person that's

Bryan Hilderbrand: running the conferences.

Bryan Hilderbrand: you know.

Bryan Hilderbrand: conference budget. But so it's just a general idea that we will

Bryan Hilderbrand: allow for waving of conference registration. In the future.

Cindy Cicalese: That's the right.

Mark Hershberger: And I think.

Cindy Cicalese: That's the current approach. Really?

Cindy Cicalese: Right? Yeah.

Mark Hershberger: I think I think what we are really talking about is setting up a standard for this, isn't it?

Mark Hershberger: Because, yeah, we we need to have some sort of. As, as Jeffrey pointed out, this needs to be, you know, have a standard. So we're equitable like like you said so.

Bryan Hilderbrand: If if that's the case, and I don't think there's a need for a vote right now.

Bryan Hilderbrand: step.

Mark Hershberger: Okay.

Bryan Hilderbrand: We. We need to come up with a standard and then vote on it.

Mark Hershberger: Okay.

Mark Hershberger: alright. So I will. I'm I'm actually making myself a little reminder to talk to Jeffrey about this.

Mark Hershberger: So I

Mark Hershberger: I've written that down I will make a reminder for myself.

Mark Hershberger: There we go.

Cindy Cicalese: So I.

Mark Hershberger: Let's.

Cindy Cicalese: I think that's important. But I do think that it's important to come back to. Did we actually make money on the conference? And if so, how much are we going to set aside potentially for a scholarship fund?

Mark Hershberger: So. So that was the next item here. And

Mark Hershberger: Eric, you were posting some stuff in chat, I believe, about that.

Eric-Jan: Yes, it's a.

Mark Hershberger: It's.

Eric-Jan: Chats, and I can tell you that we may. We have a positive bal balance, a result of $3,817 and 95 cents.

Eric-Jan: So

Eric-Jan: 3, 8, 1, 7.

Cindy Cicalese: And is that actual money in the bank like that's we've actually gotten all of the scholarship or the sponsorship money paid to us, and it's deposited to the bank.

Eric-Jan: Like Kenneth and.

Cindy Cicalese: Event bright, minus all of the fees.

Cindy Cicalese: because that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for

Cindy Cicalese: actual. How much money did we make on tickets.

Cindy Cicalese: How much did we money money did we make on sponsorship? How much do we pay, James for expenses? And what's the difference between those.

Eric-Jan: Yeah, so this is all in in the

Eric-Jan: link I sent you in the Google docs.

Eric-Jan: So it is.

Eric-Jan: it is okay specified by James.

Eric-Jan: so if you could look into that, you, you will find the most answer to your questions.

Eric-Jan: You have 5 tabs there.

Eric-Jan: including a final report, and most of the

Eric-Jan: information is there.

Cindy Cicalese: And I understand that that came from James. My question is.

Eric-Jan: Through James, and he also sent a separate

Eric-Jan: a separate invoice of his own

Eric-Jan: services.

Eric-Jan: I could I could test. I could

Eric-Jan: forward that to you as well.

Eric-Jan: So, for example.

Cindy Cicalese: The the $4,900 Ike's sponsorship email.

Cindy Cicalese: Did we get that $4,900.

Eric-Jan: I cannot confirm that.

Cindy Cicalese: Okay. And then there was also the money from Selfie, from Ike.

Cindy Cicalese: Maybe that's the same $4,900. I'm not sure. But I know that. That

Cindy Cicalese: Mark had talked about getting an email from some weird service that was asking for money that we think was

Cindy Cicalese: Ike trying to, or was a nail trying to pay his selfie to.

Cindy Cicalese: Yeah, did we actually get that money.

Eric-Jan: So what I what I want to propose to you is

Eric-Jan: what what I would

Eric-Jan: could propose to these very good questions

Eric-Jan: is that in the beginning of July, after

Eric-Jan: the receipt of the statement of June.

Eric-Jan: I will dive into what I can reallocate

Eric-Jan: and reconstruct. To give you answers to these beautiful questions.

Cindy Cicalese: Cool.

Eric-Jan: And I will see what I can can come up with, and possibly discuss with Brian if we're on this, if we are on the same page for this.

Cindy Cicalese: Yeah. And maybe we need to come up with another process for the next for future conferences. And I don't know what Baron Hart has in mind for his, but to make sure that it's not difficult to reconstruct this information after the fact, or that we don't have to reconstruct it after the fact, but that we actually have better control on what? The income and X

Cindy Cicalese: output for the conferences are.

Eric-Jan: Yep.

Eric-Jan: Well, this is also related, of course, to the boa.

Eric-Jan: and this Bernard will not be capable of of changing.

Cindy Cicalese: Yeah.

Eric-Jan: So the Povey the poa will will

Eric-Jan: well

Eric-Jan: be with us.

Mark Hershberger: So I am.

Mark Hershberger: yeah, I think

Mark Hershberger: I'm sorry.

Mark Hershberger: Distracted.

Mark Hershberger: the the Bank of America to account that

Mark Hershberger: people can pay us. We can send invoices with a authorized.net thing that we have.

Mark Hershberger: so that that should be.

Mark Hershberger: I won't

Mark Hershberger: if there's a problem with transfers, but they can use credit cards, and the authorized.net should should work otherwise the

Mark Hershberger: the other swift problem, I guess

Mark Hershberger: how much of a problem it is I don't know with Bank of America.

Mark Hershberger: the only other thing is, since we don't have anything

Mark Hershberger: more of substance to discuss until July. I think I'm gonna cancel the next meeting in 2 weeks. If that's okay.

Mark Hershberger: I don't want to talk about.

Cindy Cicalese: Board members.

Eric-Jan: Weeks

Eric-Jan: if if you were scheduled, scheduled into 3 weeks.

Eric-Jan: because brian always sends me the statement

Eric-Jan: of the of the month prior to our

Eric-Jan: meetings. 30, 30, 30 s. Early.

Eric-Jan: So

Eric-Jan: 1st week of July should be possible.

Mark Hershberger: I I would rather leave it in the second week of July, or whatever it is right now, and that way I don't have to move. All I have to do is remove one meeting instead of change a bunch.

Mark Hershberger: Marcus, go ahead.

Markus: I. I have 1 point on the agenda. And that is, we need to. We were requested to ratify the movement charter of Wikimedia

Markus: and

Markus: the the process, as far as I see it, is so there is a movement charter final version, which we can theoretically comment on what we cannot request any changes on that anymore. The process is over. So what what happens now is that several entities in the Wikimedia movement basically say, Yes, that's our charter. And if there is, a majority of entities reached 55%

Markus: in this charter is accepted as the main guiding document for the Wikipedia Wikimedia movement

Markus: I would suggest there are, and one person of

Markus: each entity. So also one person of us is should be chosen to yeah, to

Markus: ratify this on behalf of the Mitwiki stakeholders group and there needs to be a decision on who that is. And if we wanna comment if you wanna add any comments.

Markus: I'm Edward. Yeah.

Mark Hershberger: This. This is that email that I forwarded to Kabul earlier.

Markus: This week, right? Yeah.

Mark Hershberger: And and I would nominate right off. And I'm just gonna jump in, nominate Marcus to to be the person to to do that.

Mark Hershberger: to represent us.

Markus: Yeah, I can do it. I mean, I guess we don't have any comments on that. And I also guess it makes sense to say, we are part of this movement so we will accept it. As a charter.

Markus: I just skimmed it so I don't really see any controversial stuff in there. I don't know, Cindy, if you have an opinion on that. But

Markus: in

Markus: I would, I would recommend. Yeah, I would recommend. We just yeah, we just stratify it. And I, I can do that. So I would need as we have it in the minutes. I guess that's

Markus: officially enough.

Markus: so I can't.

Markus: Do that. Okay, and then there's 1 more thing I'm sorry for that. We still, I still haven't published the annual report for 2023. I should do that because we are due in January. Normally.

Markus: I'm missing. I'm still missing financial information. So I was wondering. Do we do we have a financial report, or something like that which we published, or should I just leave it out. I mean one thing, we.

Eric-Jan: No, we do live.

Markus: So I'm here.

Markus: Sorry we don't.

Eric-Jan: Do have this, Marcus. You can find it in the

Eric-Jan: the elements chat line where you, you receive a monthly financial statement.

Eric-Jan: Which accumulates to the 2,023

Eric-Jan: yearly statement.

Markus: Okay?

Markus: In the Kabul right in.

Eric-Jan: Yes,

Eric-Jan: Few people.

Markus: Yeah, I'll find it.

Eric-Jan: Yeah, there's so there's 1 link showing the 2023.

Eric-Jan: Report.

Markus: Okay.

Markus: perfect.

Markus: But okay, so I'm gonna finish like, come up with the final draft of this report. I'm gonna send it in in elements. Chat

Markus: for you to

Markus: do last minute objections, raise last minute concerns in a report, and then I'm going to publish it.

Mark Hershberger: Alright! Thanks a lot, Marcus.

Eric-Jan: Takes a lot.

Mark Hershberger: Any other business.

Cindy Cicalese: Board, Member.

Mark Hershberger: Board, Member.

Cindy Cicalese: So I reached out to rich Evans, which we had discussed. Both rich and Ike as possibilities.

Cindy Cicalese: and rich is.

Cindy Cicalese: I'm super excited

Cindy Cicalese: and but needs to check with his employer to make sure that they won't consider it a conflict of interest now that he is actually

Cindy Cicalese: has some contracting dollars, so he had asked me

Cindy Cicalese: for

Cindy Cicalese: legal documents on our incorporation, and so I pointed him to mwsk.org to the bylaws in the charter page.

Cindy Cicalese: I haven't heard back whether that was sufficient, Brian, I don't know whether you have anything or mark, and you anything that's more official than

Cindy Cicalese: what's on the Wiki

Cindy Cicalese: but

Cindy Cicalese: rich might need that, but assuming he can get approval, he is

Cindy Cicalese: super excited to at least entertain a discussion about this and what it would involve.

Cindy Cicalese: I have not raised this with Ike at all.

Cindy Cicalese: And because I still want to talk Lex out of quitting, but

Cindy Cicalese: you know

Cindy Cicalese: it potentially

Cindy Cicalese: 2. But

Cindy Cicalese: I think you know, I've at least discussed it because we had discussed it at

Cindy Cicalese: previous board meetings

Cindy Cicalese: and

Cindy Cicalese: I think I had I think there was consensus. It was okay to go ahead and discuss it with Rich. So

Cindy Cicalese: anyways, that's where that is.

Mark Hershberger: No, yeah, i i i appreciate all your work on that. Cindy. The

Mark Hershberger: yeah, I think that's a

Mark Hershberger: I think all the legal documentation that we have is on the wiki. I I think we've scanned in all those

Mark Hershberger: pages and put them up there.

Bryan Hilderbrand: If there's nothing really more legal, there's proof of our incorporation, and then our

Bryan Hilderbrand: bylaws and charter kind of are

Bryan Hilderbrand: on MW. Stake. The.

Cindy Cicalese: Is the proof of incorporation there, like as a Pdf. Like when you said scanned in, are there Pdfs also somewhere.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Others, yeah.

Cindy Cicalese: Okay.

Bryan Hilderbrand: That's I mean.

Bryan Hilderbrand: I don't know if that's

Bryan Hilderbrand: required to. I mean, you can also look it up.

Bryan Hilderbrand: Someone could also look it up. There's ways to find out, but I don't know why anybody would do that. I don't think that's a part of what anybody would be asking about.

Cindy Cicalese: I think they wanted to know more just what the legal structure was, or I think he thought that they would want to know more.

Cindy Cicalese: I don't know that he is.

Mark Hershberger: Well, that's that's a by boss. So yeah.

Cindy Cicalese: Right. So

Cindy Cicalese: I'm just not sure whether Wiki is considered legal enough for them.

Bryan Hilderbrand: No, I mean, it is that like there's just it has to be posted somewhere, and that is.

Mark Hershberger: Alright. Well, thanks a lot. And I guess when we get back in 4 weeks we'll talk about.

Mark Hershberger: I guess more of the finances, and and follow up on this Jeffrey thing.

Mark Hershberger: So

Mark Hershberger: there we go.

Cindy Cicalese: Cool.

Mark Hershberger: Thanks. Y'all.

Lex: Okay, thanks. A lot.

Eric-Jan: So hypothetical.

Eric-Jan: Me, too. Aye.

Markus: You.

Cindy Cicalese: Aye.

Eric-Jan: Bye, bye.

Markus: Back.