Hi Cascadians, I have updated our agenda posted at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle#Monthly_meeting_January_13.2C_2015.2C_6pm_to_10pm .
* The draft bylaws are posted. Please comment and sign your comments! * Draft goals, budget tables, and a calendar are posted as a Google spreadsheet with three tabs. Please comment and sign your comments! * A draft awards policy is posted. Please comment and sign your comments! * WMF has yet to respond to a request to let us post the draft Trademark Agreement. I will show it to attendees at the meeting if we do not hear anything from WMF. Notes: * There are some one-time startup expenses in the budget that should happen this year only, such as the 501(c)(3) registration and preparation costs. Other costs may be annual, such as insurance. * I have included several items that a variety of members had on our personal wish lists or that people mentioned seemed like good ideas. The full set of projects and goals is fairly expansive, and the budget is proportionate to that. I would encourage you to read the budget spreadsheet by starting with the goals tab, then the calendar tab, and finally the budget tab. Items in the budget that I feel should get particular attention for discussion are typed in purple text. * I have included funding in the draft budget for two "Wikimedian-in-residence" positions at 100 hours each for the year, largely anticipated for the summer months although with some flexibility from April through October. In addition to tasking them for outreach to potential GLAM, education, and research partners, these individuals may be asked to lead edit-a-thons, workshops, and perhaps assist with aspects of WikiConference USA planning that are beneficial to Cascadia (if there is an agreement between Cascadia and the conference organizers that some staff assistance from us would be mutually beneficial). * I included funding for the Cameras for Commons photographers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Cameras_for_Commons_photographers> pilot program in our grant request. Although the scope of this program is global, no organization has agreed to take it on, and I believe we can do so with minimal additional labor. I believe that his pilot is a worthwhile experiment. * I hope that everyone will understand that many hours have been volunteered in preparing this budget. The time is after 4 AM, and this is not the first long night that I have spent trying to help with Cascadia's launch. I have sacrificed many paid hours and some sleep to work on Cascadia over the past several months. I love this project and I love the people who are involved with Cascadia, but I need my sleep and I need to be paid if I'm going to spend so many hours on Cascadia. I have proposed that starting in February, the person who becomes responsible for the day-to-day management and startup of Cascadia as described in this plan, be compensated for their time. That person might be me or it might not; that is the Board's decision to make. I am estimating that there will be about 40 hours of paid work in February and about 15 hours per month thereafter for the manager. If additional hours are necessary, a supplemental budget request can be made. (Also, as mentioned above, I budgeted paid time for the Wikimedians-in-Residence.) There may be variations in hours from month to month for the manager; this is something that we will need to discuss since the variability has been found to be a challenge by at least one other Wikimedia organization employee who ended up quitting because he/she found it to be so problematic. I have tried to calendar projects in such a way as to smooth the month-to-month hours variation for the manager, and I personally would be willing to accept the risk of a variable-hours position like this after my internship is done at the end of January, but the Board would need to agree to this. I would appreciate it if Board members would think about how they would like the organization to be managed starting in February, because I've passed any reasonable boundary for volunteer time by a large margin. I've heard from another Cascadian that he also feels worn out. I really think that we need a paid manager; this person may be the president, the treasurer, or someone that we decide to hire as an employee under the president. Please think about this issue before Tuesday. I hope that WMF would agree to a modest labor funding request for a (very) part-time manager, and I hope that the Cascadia Board will too. * Thank you in advance for your questions and comments about the proposal. Please participate using Google's comment feature. It's nice to collaborate with all of you, and I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 6 PM at the University of Washington's Communications Building in room 321. Thanks to Mako and Monika for getting us a meeting room. (: Have a nice weekend, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/> *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.**—Catherine Munro*
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