Thursday July 4 2013 – 14.30 UTC/GMT, 15.30 BST (British Summer Time)

Participants (Doodle):

1. Oleg Lavrovsky (Switzerland)
2. Alberto Albella (Spain)
3. Everton Zanella (Brazil)
4. Tomo Watanabe (Japan)
5. Prakash Neupane (Nepal)
6. Gisele Craveiro (Brazil)
7. Pierre Chrzanowski (France)
8. Charalampos Bratsas (Greece)
9. Christian Villum (OKF Central)
10. Zara Rahman (OKF Central)
11. Neal Bastek (OKF Central)

Apologies (unable to attend):

1. Daniel Dietrich (Germany)
2. Joris Pekel (Netherlands)
3. Sridhar Gutam (India)
4. Laura James (OKF Central)
5. Rufus Pollock (OKF Central)
6. Anastasios Ventouris (Greece)

Meeting minutes from earlier meetings

April 29 2013

July 4th 2013 Agenda and meeting minutes

#topic State of the Council, how are we getting off the ground 

(Reminder of the new committee structure and List of committee members)

General: Welcome Committee has not yet done a welcome party for the last round (Round 4) of Ambassadors. Other Committees would like to see how Ambassadors are being reviewed- Process document to be shared (ZR)

Suggestions – how to make the Review process more transparent?

• A trello board – or a simple spreadsheet.
• International Council to be kept up to date with Review Process.
• Creating a list of all Local Coordinators, Ambassadors – for the community. Especially useful as the network grows bigger and bigger!
• This perhaps interlinks with ongoing idea of having a ‘phone book’ or directory of all OKF members around the world. (see Ideas board in Trello)
• Ideas on Mentoring and Reviewing to be followed up by Mentoring and Reviewing Committee together with Local Groups team (Christian, Neal, Zara)

Review Committee

List of inducted Ambassadors/Initiatives

How are things going?

• Been having a break over last couple of weeks- but have reviewed now 5 Rounds of Ambassadors.
• Acceptance rate varies greatly; process has been based on objective criteria rather than quotas.

Selection Process document

Suggestion – reviewing at set time periods, eg. 4 times a year. Reduces ongoing work for Review Committee

Process point – increasing efficiency and considering Reviewing strategy (ie, aiming to get through lots of applications at once? Or, staggering them so as to give incoming Ambassadors time to get settled in the community?) – discussion to be continued with Review Committee and Local Groups team

Outreach Committee

How can we get started?

No members present, tabled.

Mentoring Committee

Welcome calls – how are they going?

• First one (With Round 2 and 3)  went well- ready for second (Round 4) (and third- Round 5, inducted this week)
• More of a social event than a formal process – first time for many seeing actual faces, hearing people from inside the community
• Difficulties of organising calls with varying time zones – http://worldtimebuddy.com suggested as tool here.

Suggestion – representation on this committee from varying time zones, so at least one person is available

To do: Welcome Party guidelines, including: How long after induction calls should take place

Mentoring Committee to discuss further via discussion list: Mentorship Program for incoming Ambassadors and Initiatives

Steering Committee

First task coming up: Advising on challenges in expanding the Local Groups Network

#topic More members in the committees

#action Review Committee – 3 members now, need 1-2 more. Would anyone like to join?

• To invite incoming Ambassadors to join the council – Council needs to grow as number of Ambassadors and network grows
• Bonus of having more members of Review Committee- enables them to split the applications.

Prakash to join Review Committee!

#topic Local Group contact registry

#action How can we ensure that the growing network is capable of contacting each other better?

• Should we use okfn.org/members more? How best to allow people to contact each other within the network?
• With a LG registry – how much maintenance/updating work would this require? See Trello card re: “phone book”

Issue – people using different platforms, where is best to connect everyone? Facebook, Google groups/Google +, Skype, Email. Comments here invited!

#topic The Prospect Community (proposal, feedback invited)

#action Thoughts on “Prospects Community” = holding platform/incubator scheme for unsuccessful Ambassador applicants (see background thoughts, proposal and drafted track keeping sheet)

• Council members to review after the call, and enter comments/thoughts, and a summary to be sent round to Local Groups, for input before launching.

#topic Reporting Group Activity

(#action) How are individual groups tracking their engagement (informally or formally)?

(#action) How can we best show the breadth and depth of local group work to the wider community?

(#action) Encouraging knowledge/experience sharing between Local Groups, and more practically, sharing of materials produced.
Demonstrating engagement and impact will help us provide more resources to local groups in the future.

#topic New “funding pot” for Local Groups

Small grants are available for Local Groups to support events, travel etc.

• 100-150 euros available for printing, travel, bringing in speakers, events.
• Good response from Council – clearly needed and wanted by community!
• Will help with regional binding within community, and for securing other funds

#topic Council Member’s issues

• Fundraising – important to focus on goals and projects, less so on bringing together most amount of people
• Sharing experiences/mistakes from OKF Central, and increasing engagement from OKF Central to Local Groups. Should goals be set by Central, and implemented by Local Groups? Or could Central engage by looking over project proposals and commenting? If LGs want to share proposals with Central, please send to local@, Local Groups team happy to look over them!

#topic Misc

• OKCon (suggested by Everton)
• Attendees- Tomo,
• Travel costs for people wishing to come – see Travel Bursary Programme
• setting up local School of Data sites – talk to Lucy Chambers, lucy.chambers@okfn.org 

Session summary:

http://meetinglogs.okfn.org/okfn-int/2013/okfn-int.2013-07-04-14.38.txt 

Full IRC transcript:

http://meetinglogs.okfn.org/okfn-int/2013/okfn-int.2013-07-04-14.38.log.txt