2009/9/11 Philippe Beaudette <pbeaude...@wikimedia.org>: > > On Sep 11, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > >> We're not talking about culture, we are talking about lunch. They are >> human beings, the same as we are, they have the same needs when it >> comes to food. > > > This, in fact, is one of the great fallacies of international > organizations. Failure to notice and work within the context of > cultural norms condemns an organization very quickly. In Italy, I was > far more likely to take business partners to long elaborate meals than > I would be in California. Please, can we at least acknowledge that > it's not as simplistic as you present it here?
It is that simple. If we were talking about having lunch with people outside the Wikimedia movement, it would be different because we have to comply with what they expect. We can expect people within the Wikimedia movement to change their expectations to fit what is best for the movement. It is not best for the movement to be spending money of their lunch when they are perfectly capable of getting their own lunch (as evidenced by the fact that they would be eating if they didn't go to the meeting). Either buying Wikimedian's lunch is a good use of money, or it isn't, culture doesn't factor into it. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
