Agenda

Wiki Spot Board
Agenda
Wednesday, June 23, 2010

3 PM California time (UTC-7)

CHANGED: Dial +1 415 462 2991 or +1 510 495-1439 or SIP:[email protected] . Use PIN '95616'. Call will be recorded.

You can also join #wikispot on irc.freenode.net, but the conference call will be the primary mode of communication. See the IRC for more information on how to use IRC.

  1. Call to Order

  2. We has monies, so now what?

    1. Fundraising - requirements of grant, and expectations of board

    2. Software issues

    3. Social issues

    4. What's up with the kickstarter thing and what will our community organizer do if we can hire one?

    5. Office space, employee structure

    6. Accounting

  3. Executive Director salary

  4. Any other business

Minutes

Date
2010-06-23
Time
15h00 -> 16h12 UTC-7
Location
conference call
In Attendance
Evan Edwards
William Lewis
Mike Ivanov
Nick Schmalenberger (non-boardmember)
Graham Freeman
Philip Neustrom
Arlen Abraham
Jason Aller
Brent Laabs

See also the Meetings/2010-6-23/Agenda

Audio recording (courtesy of William): https://cernio.com/Members/graham/wiki-spot-meetings/bod-23june2010/

From: Jason Aller <[email protected]>
Date: 23 June, 2010 16:12:20 PDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: [WikiSpot-Board] June 23rd 2010 meeting notes

415 462 2991

In attendance:

Evan Edwards
William Lewis
Mike Ivanov
Nick Schmalenberger
Graham Freeman
Philip Neustrom
Arlen Abraham
Jason Aller
Brent Laabs

Discussion about the beauty of Boston and MIT

People can hear Evan better than other people

Philip went to North Hampton, they have ice cream with smush-ins

Evan asked about what the feedback about Davis Wiki was at the conference

Conference was invite only, and there were mostly journalists, spirit of shared helping. positive about Davis Wiki, many had heard about it in the past before coming to conference. Met with openlayers group. chatted with so many people.

Evan asked if WikiSpot had name recognition. Philip said mostly no.

Meeting called to order at 3:13pm

Brent opened meeting.

Brent asked Philip about meeting.

Philip deferred to Mike. Mike said there is interest in our software. Stanford prof interested for communities in Africa. Sochi will host olympic games in 2014, Knight-funded website Sochi Reporter wants better software. people did say they would want this thing, but they aren't best people for seeding new wikis due to their schedules.

Philip talked about michael wood luis - founder of front porch forum which are mini-mailing lists in vermont. he cuts up city into blocks and made list serves. they are expanding. and have 50% market penetration. they talked back and forth. potential partner. wiki as a means of keeping FAQs from being asked over and over.

Brent: sounds like you had a pretty good time and made good contacts

Evan: agreed

Brent: apologized for being late.

Brent: when is grant coming, what support is Knight is providing us

Philip: it is confusing. in the next few weeks Knight will send legal form of the grant agreement. it will be based on the grant write-up document we've already seen. That agreement will have specific dates and dollar amounts and licenses. we are waiting to see what the language will be. we sign it, vote on it, then one week late they made first deposit. we get front loaded funds $250,000 first year and $100,000 the second year. expect end of august. during the year we have to do two write-ups explaining process and progress. at the one year mark they do a more complete review with accounting review. At this point they have someone check that the software is open source and working.

foundation will not be providing accounting assistance. Require a $10,000 outside audit paid from grant funds. They did provide contact for pro-bono legal from Harvard for at least advice. Citizen Media Law project.

Evan: how detailed are the requirements? How detailed are the technical specs? Open APIs with mobile apps?

Philip: that is in grant write-up. look at timeline section.

Philip: it is very vague, and we can deviate from that without problem to a degree. It is the general barometer.

Mike?: Will work with a company called Blueprint to establish goals

Philip: other requirements of grant. we have to blog. and other minor things.

Philip: outside funding is not strict requirement, but we should be getting outside funds.

Brent: but IRS has requirements

Philip: we got less than we asked for. Talking about raising money for outreach person(s)

Philip talking about he and Mike programming and having buffer people perhaps part time as outreach people.

Philip talking about other grants. Proposing for a Creative Commons grant to do outreach workshops. Hopefully $5000 from that.

Philip talking about other grant routes through Knight Foundation

Brent talking about success of DW as a function of outreach.

Brent: when are Philip and Mike starting work on this full time?

Philip: once we have money and know how to do the accounting. Philip will not leave current job until end of August.

Mike: in same boat, end of August, early September

Evan: how many actual communities are you looking at and timeline?

Mike: we envisioned 7-10 in two years staggered over time.

Evan: but Philip just said scale back to 3 if we can't fund outreach

Philip: it will depend based on fundraising. Most conservative is three communities.

Mike: ideally more like 7

William: Are we going to experiment with different types of communities or are they all going to be in the mold of Davis? How about regional wikis, like say South Orange County?

Philip we want to demonstrate diversity, not just clone Davis Wiki. He and Mike had talked about this. looking for the right inspired creative contacts to work with. place doesn't matter as much as people.

Mike: it is an open question

unable to hear: too much noise from kids in background

Evan: so it sounds like defining criteria for target communities and finding people in those communities who are right.

Philip: for the first three months we won't have a pilot community, we have a window of time.

Mike: and we will be refining those:

Evan: so December first is earliest to identify area and tactic to address it.

?: yeah

Brent: does Davis get moved over to new software?

Philip: we plan to, but will wait because we don't want to write a converter for legacy data. Not really sure, but want all communities under the project umbrella to be successful.

Davis wiki will not be a pilot, but will be moved over to the new software.

Evan: suggest making a wiki local to Davis be one of the early testbeds. to get good feedback prior to switching DW.

Philip: that is a good idea we should think about.

Evan: yes, not as pilot, but as quality control to take advantage of the DW community to review the new software

Brent: we should put off discussion until we know more about the money.

Evan: we are between expectations of the board and ?? on the agenda

Graham: if we are going to raise $25,000 by September we need to get going on that.

Graham: is going to write up job description for board members that will include fund raising as a requirement for board members.

?: our board is not composed of wealthy people, something to think about.

Evan: I used to donate every month, but putting a wife through a PhD is costly. What is your goal of this? Focus on raising money

Graham: there are many layers to it. Model of a working board is not scalable. Money translates to scaling for non-profit boards.

Evan: I disagree that it is true for all boards, the Crocker doesn't.

Graham: but hiring a fundraiser is $100,000

Brent: I think there is a middle ground. right now we can get motivated about it.

Evan: I wanted to clarify the goal.

Philip: I don't think the idea of a give and get policy is to get a lot of money out of the board. more to ask people to donated because we all believe in this.

Too much noise from kids in the background again

Philip: when I was a student the most I could give was about $50, but that we a very personally significant amount.

Too much noise from kids in the background again

Philip: it shows a level of commitment.

Evan: that is why I was asking the rationale behind it.

Graham: and to take it from something of an abstract... we do have the online kickstarter page. but people can see that not all of our board members have pledged, but some people might see that board members are not all listed

Jason: where would someone get a list of board members so that they could see that?

Graham: board members should be listed publicly

?: I agree with Graham were we should all be listed on kickstarter

Evan: is there anyone who can not afford to be listed?

Graham: it is a dollar

Brent: what is next on the agenda?

Brent: Executive Director compensation. Appoint a personnel committee, but we can take that to e-mail.

Philip: there were a lot of budget changes over the last week of the grant.

Brent: we didn't do a real budget this year.

Brent: I walk to talk to Arlen about getting a real accountant, but I'll talk to him offline.

Brent: We got our California non-profit status. We had so little income we don't have to file this year, but next year.

Philip: we didn't have the original 1023 form.

Brent: but they accepted copies

Philip: and I have copies from the IRS.

Brent: can we scan that and put it online

Arlen: I'm going to [WWW]Eyebeam in New York

Meeting closed at 4:12

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