2014-10-26 Board Meeting

This was our first board meeting. It was not clear to the user community who would be invited to this meeting. The board meeting is restricted to the board members. After the board meeting, meeting of minutes are published. Other workgroups are organized for volunteers wanting to participate to Wikimedia activities.

Logo Wikimedia Belgium

APPROVED

Meeting Planner

Date: 26 October 2014
Time: 14h00 - 18h00
Venue: Brussels, Troonstraat 51
Present: Afernand74, DerekvG, Dimi_z, Geertivp, MADe, Romaine
Excused: M0tty
Photos: category

Agenda

Board meeting versus workgroups

Strategy: SWOT Analysis

Different board members assisted in making a SWOT analysis (full details below).

Our perceived strengths (internal):

experience (other chapters, other projects)
motivated/flexible team members
presence in Brussels (Belgian, European collaborations)
diversity (language, age, ...)

Our perceived threats (external):

the difference between Wikimedia and Wikipedia
governmental budget cuts
no tax free certificates for the first two years
other chapters with Belgian members (eg. NL, FR)
changing WMF approach to national chapters

Our perceived weaknesses (internal):

no clear goal yet
multilingual (need to translate texts, use of English during meetings)
inexperience running an organisation
self elected board, no women, lack of transparancy
future bureaucracy inside the organisation
lack of volunteers leading projects
'yet another chapter'

Our perceived opportunities (external):

our central and strategic position in Europe

Discussion decisions startup teams

Infrastructure

business cards: required in order to facilitate official contacts with institutions
mailing wikimedia.be address; private addresses + generic addresses + mailing lists

Communications

Distribution lists: it was decided to keep the current Wikimedia Belgium distribution list for public announcments, not for internal discussions
The wikimedia.be E-mail domain is currently owned by WMNL
Web site(s): an official http://www.wikimedia.be website will be created an will be well structured and contain all official documents. We want to be as open and transparent as possible.
Public relations: press, radio, TV: currently a number of (french) articles were published in the press. Journalists still have difficulties to make distinction between Wikimedia (the organization) and Wikipedia (the encyclopedia).

Projects

Collaborations

We prefer collaboration which is more generic then "cooperation", which sounds too legal/business term. We want to collaborate with institutions, both governmental, or educational.

Strategy

After official announcement of our chapter creation, focus on local meeting with contributors on main city of Belgium to take contact and create local dynamic group for regular next meeting and collective contributions.
Research technical knowledge to know if it's possible to inform only belgium contributor or user of Wikipedia about ours activities trought the site ?
Invest time and money to share information trough traditional media.

Roles of the board members

See the current distribution of the Board functions‎.

Need some more roles:

Community Liaison: communicate with our Wikipedia. An important role to build a credible relationship with the different language communities. You might need help from other members to assist you with languages you are not familiar with. Maybe also include contacts with the media? Romaine accepted this role; the board approved.
International Wikimedia Liaison: communicate with other chapters and the Foundation. Get involved in activities at chapter/foundation level (eg. Chapter Association, grants committees). Derek accepted this role; the board approved.
National Liaison: communicate with national organisations (eg. museums, government, education) and build a credible relationship with them. Alberto accepted this role; the board approved.

Membership management: Full and associate members

One standard fee for board members, full members and normal members. Eg. 20€. We also opt for a basic social membership fee (persons without a job, handicaps, ...). People are free to select this option.

Discussion whether to offer a free membership to Wikipedians with a sufficient number of contributions. The board currently sees no need for this.

Workgroups

Workgroup needs to be planned for. In the next board meeting we will brainstorm about projects.

Other Chapters and organisations

WMNL Conference 1 November 2014: Geert and Romaine are going. The idea is to have a Quick Session on the announcement of WMBE.
Flanders International Networking Event November 18th 2014: Dimi forwarded the invitation. Derek and Dimi plan to be present.

Other items for discussion

Round table. WM BE is informed about the organisation of WLM BeLux, and supports the organisation of the project. WM BE proposes to use the project as a test case: the secretary will follow the financial processing, the national liaison will follow the contacts with national museums (in casu the KIK). The board approves.

Next Meeting

TBD

SWOT

The SWOT made by team members.

Antoine

OUR STRENGTHS

our motivation
our multilingualism
our central and strategic position in Europe
our flexibility and responsiveness

OUR WEAKNESSES

our multilingualism
our small size and the fact that many tasks based on a small number of people
our inexperience

OPPORTUNITIES

Prompt and professional contact with Belgian and European institutions
Take the leading position in Europe in lobbying
Grow at a controlled, structured and sustainable

THREATS

Loss of motivation is based on a small number of members
Loss of responsibility and involvement by relying on too many members
Unjustified increase in bureaucracy
Exaggerated complexity of decision-making
Dehumanization of the association

Dimi

Strengths

Multilingualism
Brussels/EU institutions
Learnings from other chapters (i.e. third-party funding and reach out to new potential members early)
Experience in running pan-European Wikimedia projects in Belgium (WLM)

Weaknesses

Lack of funding/infrastructure
No organisational best practices yet
Not enough people

Opportunities

Huge interest from public/European authorities to cooperate
May participate in pan-European Wikimedia projects as lead without initial financial investment
Experience gathered from working with other chapters (Tomer, Maarten, Antoine, Dimi)

Threats

Personnel consistency and/or fatigue
Search for generally accepted modus operandi (balance operability-transparency)
Communications channels and languages: risk of moving too close to certain groups and alienating others based on channels/languages we use)

Geert

Strengths

Multi-lingual country, including English
Decent education
Different interests, different education, nationalities, occupations
Board members of all ages are represented
Other national organizations to collaborate with
International institutions
There are some good Wikipedia editors; let’s attract them into the organization (as a member)
WMNL/WMFR members could join the Belgium organization now (also)
Experience in national website + administration from other chapters?

Weaknesses

Multi-lingual: translations (always) required – time consuming, additional costs in printing, other wording/understanding
Difficulty to well understand each other (in the Board)
We will need/use 3 languages in the Board?
How we will organize our member activities? Could/should we organize activities by language/region?
German language not well covered for our members? Translations will be difficult for Germany. Not much German speaking members?
The south of the country does not like to travel to events? (experience from previous organization) -> so we might need local activities
The organization is not well known in Belgium (yet)
Will we attract enough members?
More members = more budget (and vice versa)
Belgium is small + segmented by language -> fragmented actions
Need to develop national website + administration
No women? … in the Board
Edit-a-thon activities seems to have limited success/impact and are countered by admin delete actions

Opportunities

A lot of federal musea are available for collaboration
Collaboration with other WM chapters:
Neighbouring countries: Holland, France, Germany
Extra neighbouring countries: Luxemburg, Switzerland (French/German)
Collaboration with educational institutions (all kinds)
Agree on common ways of judging on content/articles
We have to share languages with other countries -> discussion/agreement/policies needed
Every language (variant) has its own habits!
We must make our budget asap

Threats

Wikipedia <> Wikimedia: we need to clarify
Difficult start? Very fragmented.
Share languages with other countries/chapters
Cultural differences Netherlands/France: different ways of judging on content/articles
How to avoid edit wars?
We need Flemish/Walloon Wikipedia admins
Luxemburg is difficult to contact + large physical distance
No strategy/plan/projects yet
Government budget cuts: Cultural activities are no longer/less sponsored by government?
(too strong) Admin delete activities on Wikipedia content
No budget (yet)
Tax free gifts are only possible after at least 2 years of activity

Lionel

Strengths

Good community of contributors and good perspective see it growing.
Traditional Belgium expertise on inter-cultural compromise and consensus witch help us on an international movement.

Weaknesses

The board is still a self elected Board and all tool to increase our transparency are not fixed.

Opportunities

European parliament people love our kind of non profit association working on an international healthy context to give free access of knowledge for every human.
We are neighbour of European parliament.

Threats

The Board member will fall on a classic top to down organisation and create a lake between on-line ethic and off-line ethic organisation. The association will loose contact and sharing interest with projects contributors.

Strategy: Goals within 2 years

Geert

Secretariat
Permanent staff
Yearly conference
Edit-a-thons
Collaboration with educational institutions

Antoine

Having a wikimedian in residence somewhere,
Having a huge collaboration with a GLAM resulting in a big mass upload on Commons,
Having a workspace with a book scanner and a mini photo studio to allow each to produce contents,
Make some progress on the FOP

Dimi

Wikipedian in Residence at the European Commission within 12 months (already discussing with them)
Third-party (i.e. non-WMF) funding and two employees in 24 months, one of them dedicated to funding
WMBE should be lead partner in the EU policy cooperation project of EU chapters (although CoI for me here)
Large membership base whose fees cover at least the minimum operational costs

Lionel

Create at button to top dynamic on our association with micro credit ans local groups of contributors.