[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Leaving the Wikimedia Foundation
Dear Wikimedia friends and colleagues, It is bittersweet for me to share with all of you that I will be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation at the end of August to relocate to Australia for personal reasons. It is difficult for me to leave Wikimedia and particularly leave the Global Development team, which I’ve had the pleasure of building and leading over the past two years. I am proud of what we have accomplished in raising the priority of much of the globe within the Wikimedia movement, strengthening our mobile strategy and education program, globalizing communications, and tackling the difficult movement roles issues that I hope can be put in the past. It hasn’t been easy or uncontroversial, but I truly believe that we are heading in the right direction. One of the great joys of my work has been the opportunity to travel and meet many amazing Wikipedians and to share the Wikimedia story with the world. It is so inspiring to hear first hand how much people love our projects and the amazing things that so many people do in support of the movement. This is what helped me survive the many long flights and jetlag-filled nights. It was an honour representing the Wikimedia Foundation and often the Wikimedia movement in so many places. I am confident that the Global Development work will thrive with the team in place and with all of the dedicated community members who see us as partners. I look forward to becoming a volunteer member of the movement and supporting the work in new ways. Sue will share plans for the transition shortly. Many thanks to all who have supported me and our work. Kind regards, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! Donate to Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/> ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Changes to India Program
Dear global Wikimedia community, As a follow up to Hisham's message, I would like to thank Hisham for his efforts in support of Wikimedia in India. He has been a great partner to the Wikimedia Foundation team and has worked tirelessly to build the India Program. He has worked in a challenging environment trying to do work in the Wikimedia movement that hasn’t been done before. While there have been ups and downs, our work in India has broken new ground for the movement and taught us all valuable lessons that we are applying in India and around the world. There is an unprecedented level of activity happening in India with promising programs that position the movement for continued growth. Hisham also leaves behind an India Program that is working effectively with community members on a number of positive initiatives including community growth partnerships in several Indic languages, support for a new Malayalam education program, a GLAM partnership at the Crafts Museum, new wikiclubs at the British Council, ongoing efforts to leverage social media, and a dramatic increase in blog coverage of the India community’s work. There are also exciting developments on mobile that will be announced soon. This work will continue. Hisham’s departure coincides with another change in the India Program. We are pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge programme to support the achievement of the Wikimedia mission in India. CIS is a leading organization in India working on Internet policy. They are part of the broad free and open community. CIS is a long time friend of Wikimedia, our community in Bangalore, and the Wikimedia India chapter. CIS has committed to sustaining and building upon the work of the India Program. They plan to hire the existing program consultants as staff and will conduct a search for a new programme director. The program team will be based in Delhi. CIS will be sharing their program plans shortly and will want to incorporate community feedback. The grant will be for two years in duration to complete the original first stage of the catalyst strategy. The first year’s grant will be for a total of INR 11,000,000 subject to final budget approvals. The second year will be for a similar amount plus inflation subject to a budget review in May 2013. The grant will be renewable via the Wikimedia Grants program (or the FDC, if CIS were to become an affiliated organization and meet eligibility). This is a shift in how the Wikimedia Foundation seeks to support work in India. Rather than hire consultants or open an office of our own, we think it is preferable to work with an established institution that can bring valuable relationships and capabilities to support our movement. CIS will be a partner to the Wikimedia Foundation, but will operate autonomously in accordance with the terms of the grant agreement. CIS will hire a programme director for the work. The recruitment process will draw on the best practices Wikimedia used in Brazil and incorporate active community participation in the process. They will share more info on this soon. We have prepared an FAQ on Meta[1] and ask that questions or comments be posted there. I will endeavour to respond in a timely fashion, though I will be on a flight until 20:00 UTC tonight and will be in meetings in Dubai on Tuesday morning. Finally, I'd like to wish Hisham all the best in his future endeavours. He has taken us through a critical first stage of our work in India and set us up for significant progress during the next stage. He will be missed and I hope he will stay a part of the Wikimedia community in India. Best regards, Barry [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/India_Program_Announcement_and_FAQ_-_30_July_2012 -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Introducing Anasuya Sengupta, Director Global Learning and Grantmaking at the Wikimedia Foundation
Hi -
I want to introduce Anasuya Sengupta as the new Director, Global Learning
and Grantmaking at the Wikimedia Foundation. She will be starting on
Monday, July 2. In this role, Anasuya will lead our work in support of the
Funds Dissemination Committee, work with Asaf Bartov on grant-making and
with Jessie Wild in helping us to plan, monitor, evaluate and learn from
our programmatic work in a new team area, Global Learning and Evaluation
that Jessie will be leading (more soon on this). She will also serve as a
close thought-partner for me and the rest of the GD team in the leadership
of our work.
I am thrilled that Anasuya is joining us. She brings a deep passion for
social justice and an understanding of the power of free knowledge as an
enabler of opportunity for everyone. She will help us hold to our
commitments to increase the diversity of our community and has great
experience working collaboratively to change communities for the better.
She is also a really interesting person who I think we will all enjoy being
around and learning from.
Below is an introduction that Anasuya prepared.
For those of you who will be at Wikimania, I know Anasuya is excited to
meet with all of you there.
Please join me in welcoming Anasuya to our team.
Best,
Barry
*Life will be measured *
*by notability test?*
*My secrets are mine!* ;-)
...but until we meet in person:
I am an activist turned grant-maker, who has worked nationally, regionally,
and internationally, to build and strengthen multi-generational feminist
leadership and networks, and to amplify voices from the margins – whether
across gender, sexuality, class, caste, race, age, geography or language. I
grew up in north Karnataka (southern India), and returned to work in this
part of the world after my undergraduate degree in Economics, as a
Programme Officer at Samuha, a rural development organisation. I took its
lessons with me into an M.Phil. in Development Studies at Oxford, where I
studied as a Rhodes Scholar. I led a UNICEF initiative with the Karnataka
police from 2001-2007, designing and implementing a state wide system of
response to issues of violence against women and children. Over the same
period, I served as Associate and researcher with Gender at Work, an
international knowledge network for gender equality. I co-edited and wrote
for the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
publication, *Defending
Our Dreams: global feminist voices for a new generation* (AWID and Zed
Books, 2006), arguably the first international anthology of young feminist
analyses and experience. I have founded campaigns, and been involved with
national and international networks against religious and cultural
fundamentalisms, and for sexual and reproductive rights and women's health.
In 2007, I moved from Bangalore to Berkeley, as a Visiting Scholar at UC
Berkeley and the Managing Trustee of a small Stanford-based family
foundation funding in South India. Over the past three years, I have been
Regional Program Director for Asia and Oceania at the Global Fund for
Women, one of the world's largest grant-making organisations exclusively
for women's human rights. In this capacity, I have overseen over 300 grants
to women-led organisations in the region – from Afghanistan to Kiribati -
and helped develop a framework for evaluating and learning our impact on
organisational growth and movement sustainability. My interest in the
politics of technology has been from the point of view of a women’s rights
activist, academic, and grant-maker. With Bangalore as home, surrounded by
friends and family who are progressive technologists, I started questioning
the politics of the software and hardware that is ubiquitous in our lives –
and ended up using Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. However, the Free/Libre and
Open Source Movement is not simply about technologies; at its heart is the
feminist principle that governs my politics: if knowledge is power, then
the empowerment of the marginalised is through a democratisation of
knowledge, and the equality of the future is through a deconstruction of
the privileging powers of access, voice, representation and participation.
I am passionate about poetry (a haiku a day keeps my blues away), theatre,
and music, and challenge myself with yoga. I tend to stick with my
post-colonial British form of spelling and punctuation ('s' over 'z' and a
nuanced use of the Oxford comma) unless explicitly asked not to do so.
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Donate to Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
___
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Tilman Bayer officially joins the Wikimedia Foundation staff
Hi everyone, I am pleased to announce that Tilman Bayer has officially joined the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Development team as Senior Operations Analyst focused on movement communications starting this week. He has just relocated to SF after receiving his work visa. As most of you will be aware, Tilman has been working in the communications team focusing on movement communications since last July, as a remote contractor based in Germany. He has been instrumental in the enhancement to our monthly reporting, continued improvement to our blogging and the development of our last annual report among other things. Tilman and Dario Taraborelli co-founded and continues to edit the monthly Wikimedia research newsletter. In particular, I'd like to highlight his work to get our reports translated, so that they are more accessible for the whole community. In his new role as a staff member, Tilman will continue to work closely with the communications team in support of the whole foundation team, e.g. working on the WMF blog, editing the WMF monthly reports and annual report, and developing multi-lingual communications solutions . His role will now include the analysis of quantitative data and other research to understand and address movement communication challenges. He will work on projects to improve our communications systems in partnership with other groups in the Foundation. He will report to me for the short term, but will transition to reporting to our soon to be announced Director, Global Learning and Grantmaking. As User:HaeB, Tilman has been active in both the German and English Wikipedia since 2003. He was a checkuser on the German Wikipedia for half a decade, and until joining WMF last year was the editor-in-chief of the Wikipedia Signpost, the English Wikipedia's community newsletter. He holds degrees in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and the University of Bonn. Please join me in welcoming Tilman to the Wikimedia Foundation team in San Francisco. Best, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] FDC Advisory Group selection complete
Hi - Per earlier communications, we have selected the Advisory Group to support the design process for the Funds Dissemination Committee in accordance with the formation process we laid out on Meta.[1] The FDC Advisory Group role and the names of the members can be found on Meta.[2] Thanks to all who were nominated for the Group and we hope that everyone will contribute to the process. Please do "watch" the Funds Dissemination Committee pages and contribute to the design process.[3] [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_Advisory_Group/Formation [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_Advisory_Group [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee Thanks, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Reminder: Volunteers wanted for FDC Advisory Due April 16
Hi - Just a reminder that we are still looking for volunteers to be nominated for the Funds Dissemination Committee Advisory Group. This group will help shape the initial setup of an important new committee to support funds flows within the movement and will provide valuable advice and counsel to the Funds Dissemination Committee over the first couple of years of its existence. The time commitment is about 4 hours per week to contribute to the on-wiki discussions and meetings every 5-6 weeks with a couple of in-person meetings per year (likely, but dependent on how the Group prefers to function). Please complete the nominations here [1] by Monday, April 16 and feel free to email me offlist with questions or post them on the talk page. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_Advisory_Group/Formation Best, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Foundation-l] Volunteers Wanted: Funds Dissemination Process Advisory Group
Hi - I have created a list of issues to resolve in the FDC process on meta.[1] There are probably additional issues to resolve and it would be great if people would edit the list and start suggesting solutions. IMHO the list of issues is substantial and decisions on the approach to the design will have major implications for entities in the movement. Further, there are time constraints on the FDC process to start functioning quite quickly as entities will want to secure their funding for future fiscal years and I'd personally prefer not to rely on the ad hoc approach that we had last year (since we/I didn't have the capacity to figure out a more structured approach before we were in the middle of the review process). If we simply select an FDC (btw - how would this happen?) and ask them to figure out the issues for themselves, this would be a recipe for serious challenges that could doom the FDC from the start. A relatively brief, but structured process that is open, has an effective advisory group of trusted people, and is supported by consultants who can give us structure and help us with the heavy-lifting on process design seems like a solid way to get us to a good outcome and help the FDC get off to an effective start. On the narrow issue of travel to SF for occasional meetings...this is really a practical consideration. There needs to be a time when the Advisory Group can really dig in and help us push to decisions. It would be ineffective to try to do such a meeting by phone or IRC. Per Christophe's point, it might make sense to have this over two days rather than one. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_process_issues_list Best, Barry On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Samuel Klein wrote: > On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Thomas Dalton > wrote: > > > > But how many of those things are actually going to be difficult or > > controversial? Shouldn't we at least try and answer them using our > > standard approach of having an open discussion on a wiki? If it turns > > out we can't answer them that way, then we can try a more elaborate > > approach then. > > Naturally the process should be public and inclusive. > I expect most of this group's work would involve open discussion on wikis. > Wiki discussions can be enhanced by calls and in-person meetings, > suitably transcribed and shared - especially when getting input from > people who are not active wiki users. > > A structure and timeline for work, and a group of committed good-faith > participants to provide a steady core for ongoing discussion, is a > good idea for any time-sensitive project. We don't want to appoint > FDC members themselves without more discussion and perhaps a > distributed selection process, but the background work should begin as > soon as possible. > > As to 'which things would be controversial': as you demonstrated here, > even simple discussions can be dominated by a determined critic. > > SJ > > ___ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l > -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
