Minutes/June 18, 2010


 * Wikimedia Foundation Board meeting minutes
 * Friday, June 18 15:00 UTC. IRC + teleconference.
 * Prepared by: Samuel Klein

Attendance

 * Present:
 * Michael Snow (Chair), Jan-Bart de Vreede (Vice-Chair), Kat Walsh (Secretary), Arne Klempert,
 * Jimmy Wales, Matt Halprin, Samuel Klein, Stu West, Ting Chen, Bishakha Datta, Sue Gardner (Executive Director)

A quorum was reached, and Michael opened the meeting.

Housekeeping
The Board minutes from April were approved.

Wikimedia India's request to become a chapter having been approved by the Chapters Committee, the Board voted unanimously to recognize it as the next Wikimedia Chapter.

Annual Plan
Sue presented the coming year's Annual Plan, and walked the Board through it. She noted the fundraising and hiring plan for the year, and future projections for fundraising growth based on small donations. Trustees discussed the proposed staff growth rate, the degree of confidence we had in fundraising, and community hires and their role in communication to and from the Foundation.

The trustees broadly approved the Plan, though one or two had remaining concerns and wanted to finish the discussion online. The Board agreed to finalize voting on the plan by the following week, and discussed how it would be published.

Budget
Stu presented the coming year's budget, and summarized the Audit Committee's favorable review.

Controversial Content study
Sue reported on the work Robert Harris was doing as the consultant tasked with compiling the recommendation on controversial content for the Board by October. She reported he was focusing on information-gathering and scope-setting. The outline of his mandate and timeline were discussed, all were encouraged to communicate with him via his public discussion pages on Meta, and some Trustees noted they had already heard from him. It was suggested that he might benefit from meeting Wikimedians in Gdańsk.

Governance
Matt shared a few recommendations from the governance committee on developing better practices for the Board. An officer elections process was proposed, to use in advance of the next board meeting. Officer candidates were asked to nominate themselves a week in advance of the summer board meeting with a brief description of their interest. Ideally any newly inducted Trustees would have been named by then, so that we would know who was eligible for an officer position, and so that incoming Trustees would be able to nominate themselves. While new Trustees might not feel comfortable standing for an officership, it was noted that there would be plenty of leadership roles to fill on the Board Committees as well.

The governance committee was finalizing further recommendations covering meeting frequency and agendas, active committees and their structure, and a clearer voting process for resolutions. These will be shared online before the Gdańsk meeting. Michael noted that an improved committee structure should help the board as a whole deal more effectively with topics such as controversial content.

Executive session
The Board held a brief executive session.


 * The meeting was adjourned.