International Council meeting agenda – Weds 7th August

August 8, 2013 in Meeting Notes

Wednesday 7th August, 16.30 CEST = 14.30 GMT+0 (see Doodle)

Participants: (Doodle)

  1. Oleg Lavrovsky (Switzerland)
  2. Everton Zanella (OKF Brazil)
  3. Tomo Watanabe (Japan)
  4. Laura James (OKF Central)
  5. Rufus Pollock (OKF Central)
  6. Julia Kloiber (OKF Germany)
  7. Ventouris Anastasios (OKF Greece)
  8. Christian Villum (OKF Central)
  9. Zara Rahman (OKF Central)
  10. Neal Bastek (OKF Central)
  11. Primavera (OKF France)
  12. Prakash Neupane(Nepal)

Apologies (unable to attend):

  1. Daniel Dietrich (Germany)
  2. Samuel Goeta (France)
  3. Charalampos Bratsas (Greece)
  4. Alberto Abella (OKF Spain)

Channel:

[1] IRC – freenode – #okfn-int  (http://webchat.freenode.net/ if you don’t use an IRC client)

[2] Skype as backup

 Agenda and meeting minutes

1. #topic State of world update following Summit

a. General

  • Suggestion from previous call to create a simple spreadsheet of Local Coordinators contact details; have compiled addresses from Local-Coords list into a spreadsheet, privacy concerns though – we need to check with members if they would like their email addresses to appear on this [a]list (to be available to other local coords only, not public)
    • Idea to set up email alias’ for each country, forwarding to relevant private emails (avoids privacy issue) – current examples, info@br.okfn.org
    • Useful to include links to each of their websites
  • Getting the International Council more involved in governance decisions; how best to do this?
    • Sharing documents for your comments; is this efficient?
    • No thanks to Trello, yes to well-organized folders in G Docs/Drive – to share a folder of all documents for the International Council
    • +1 to having a public page with links to appropriate Google Docs (need to be careful with permissions for internal documents here)
    • Also some reluctance towards Google products – Everton to put together document outlining pros/cons of using Google Docs, to discuss at next meeting.
  • Set up local-coords-alerts
  • Polls for quick input on decisions?
    • Good idea- doesn’t require much time from Council members – quick and easy polls, which refer back to longer documents if people have time/interest
  • International Council Trello Board
    • -1 : too many Trello Boards already
  • Challenges of growing the network
    • Creating Codes of Conduct/ MoU’s for incoming Ambassadors
    • Comments on this solicited from International Council – thanks!
    • Making review procedure more rigorous [see below]

b. Review Committee

  • Changes proposed to Ambassador review process following summit (see next section)

c. Projects & Outreach Committee

d. Mentoring Committee

  • #suggestion Setting up a Mentorship scheme – interest?
    • Pairing up experienced members of the community to less experienced ones
    • Yes- Local Groups team to look into this further, together with Mentorship Committee
  • See also: “Regular hangouts per region” (just one happened so far between people in America continent)
    • Really good experience reported from Everton on the first Transamerican hangout a couple of weeks back, although only two attended. They will try to do more of those.
    • Hangouts to be recorded and shared online (can then be a standing resource)
    • Prakash from Nepal and Tomo from Japan to organise an Asia hangout

e. Steering Committee

  • Input welcomed on shared documents, but the Steering Committee have not yet been called upon

 

2.. #topic Ambassador scheme changes

a. Country Ambassador scheme

  • Main change: to make the most of our own networks/contacts as a ‘first review’ , thanks all for your comments.
  • Please see Ambassador Applicants sheet and comment if you know people as a first review
  • Ambassador role – gathering community, or spreading the word of open knowledge? Potentially two different roles here, both skillsets needed within a Local Group.
  • Prospects Community also launched- Local Groups team to update the website with details of this.
  • Idea – that all Ambassador applicants should first pass through the Prospects Community?

b. City/State Ambassador scheme

  • Taking advantage of Rufus’ visit there in order to pilot a scheme of having City/State Ambassadors.
  • Allowing approved Local Initiatives to appoint their own City/State Ambassadors, in country
  • How to organise discussion lists?
  • Allowing for specialist discussions and encourage local/regional activity  while remaining centralised – eg. one discussion list for the whole of Brazil, or one per state as well as the national one?

3. #topic Knowledge sharing between Local Groups

  • #idea: Regular skillshare sessions – eg. Social Media, Volunteer Engagement, via Google Hangout, open to all in the community
  • #idea: Mentorship scheme
  • Regional hangouts – happening already

4. #topic Showcasing Local Groups activity better to the world

  • Creating a Local Groups blog – +1
    • Similar to planet.okfn.org but focus only on Local Groups sites – and perhaps layout similar to blog.okfn.org rather than long lists of blogs
    • Good example to check out: Wikimedia Foundation Central blog, who sometimes post the same blogs in two or more languageshttp://blog.wikimedia.org/
  • paper.li to gather tweets from the Local Groups:
    • paper.li is an automated curator of twitter posts. We’ve set this one up to curate all of the local group social media accounts.
  • Other ideas?
    •  An official OKFN forum with a General topic with global issues and a topic for each country, to let countries showcase their projects and let other users comment and discuss easier – – Anastasios to follow up with more detailed suggestions
  • Creating a map to show what topics Local Groups are working on – this would need your input
  • Encouraging LGs to keep website updated with current events/activities

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