Dear Wikimedians, TL;DR: share your thougths on the future direction, plans and goals
In the past weeks dozens of people have shared their analysis and unsolicited advice on many aspects. I really appreciate all of your thorough thinking and careful wording in many long posts. While the HR committee of the BoT and the BoT as a whole are busy contemplating who to appoint as (interim) and would like to ask you to use your thoughtpower on some specific forward looking items. The strategy consultation for the Wikimedia Foundation 2016/2017 Annual Plan attracted over 500 comments, most of them in rather short posts.[1] A report with findings from the community consultation has been published.[2] There is a new call for a movement wide strategy. Please add your name and share your thoughts and analysis.[3] After 'narrowing focus' the two main 'programs' of the Wikimedia Foundation are "tech" and "grant making". After the last reorganization "grant making" program has been renamed to "community". The breakdown in the latest financial reports[4] preceded by the terms in the CtA and current AP[5] is: (1) Improve Technology & Execution: building the technological and operating platform that enables the Foundation to function sustainably as a top global Internet organization, (2) Focus on Knowledge & Community: strengthening, growing, and increasing diversity of the editing community, and (3) Support Innovation & New Knowledge: accelerating impact by investing in key geographic areas, mobile application development, and bottom-up innovation, all of which, to support Wikipedia and eight other wiki-based projects. (Correct me when I made a mismatch between report and plan. Jaime Villagomez, the new CFO can probably reflect on that, reaching out to Amy to contact him. Amy can you ask Jaime to briefly introduce himself to this list. His predecessor had a pivotal role in financial oversight of affiliates.) The current strategy consultation makes a breakdown into three areas: (1) Reach (2) Communities (3) Knowlegde Please share your thoughts and analysis and join the conversation. Who can see a shift in strategy from the first to the second breakdown, and why? What are the implications for staff, affiliates, the movement and communities? Do affiliates, especially funded chapters, have a breakdown in these three categories reach, communities and knowledge? How relevant is this breakdown for affiliates? Do you use these names for these programs, or other names? What kind of programs have affiliates that fall not in one of these three areas reach, communities or knowledge? APG funded affiliates are evaluated based on the strategic priorities:[6] * Stabilize infrastructure * Increase participation * Improve quality * Increase reach * Encourage innovation Reaching out to Liam Wyat and Anne/Risker from the FDC. Can you reflect on shift in strategic priorities? How will APG funded affliliates be evaluated regarding their programs? Will that continue to be on the list of strategic priorities or might that be on the list of topic areas mentioned in the strategy consultation, or something else? Reaching out to Brion Vibber explicitly. Brion shared some long and interesting posts last week and started a thread about what it means to be a high tech organization. My question for Brion is to share his case why the WMF should be a high tech organization. In the first breakdown above tech(nology) is explicitly mentioned. Is the second breakdown as 'developer inclusive' as the first breakdown? Or would technology assume a supportive role to the leading programs reach, communities and knowledge? When I read the current statements of mission, vision, values and guiding principles I hardly get the impression the Wikimedia Foundation is a high tech organization, or an organization which employs a lot of engineers and developers. How should the mission, vision, values or guiding principles of the Wikimedia Foundation be amended to give due weight to engineers and developers? Could you elaborate on that Brion. Wes you are one of the C-level staff. On this list people have suggested to appoint one of the current C-level staff to (interim) ED. I have directed question about tech to Brion and not you. Could you please introduce yourself? Another C-level is more well known on this list and is currently CCO. We know her qualities in communication. Dear Katherine, can you share with the list your experience with, prior to Wikimedia, with not-for profit management, building relationships with communities, and your experience with innovation, ICT and fundraising? Anything missing on the wishlist for an ED? Katherine, please share your thoughts on the strategic direction of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia movement in general. Anyone who would rather see me, or him or herself, than Katherine as (interim) ED? I don't belief so. Correct me if I'm wrong. Someone called for open hr recruiting on wikimedia-l. For some specific roles at the WMF one of the requirements is to be able to join the conversation on wikimedia-l. I'm with Jimmy that the Wikimedia Foundation is a great place to work. And I'm with current staff who feel the place felt more like hell hole. I'm considering myself to apply for a job. I have been at a 200 plus employee institution that had the courage to battle a full board out, including experience with a follow up healing process and reorganization. Regards, Ad Huikeshoven [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Strategy/Community_consultation [2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Strategic_Approaches_Report.pdf [3]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Future#Interested_people [4]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/0/0b/Audit_Report_-_FY_14-15_-_Final.PDF [5]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Annual_Plan [6]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary_information _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
