Congrats to Vishal Pattel! I know the staff will make him feel welcome. :) Casey Brown Cbrown1023 -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Florence Devouard Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 8:16 PM To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment First, an announcement, then some thoughts We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer. The positions responsabilities are: 1) Identify and develop market strategies 2) Generate ideas and initiatives that capitalize on existing and prospective partner strengths 3) Consistently build a pipeline of new, revenue generating opportunities 4) Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets 5) Assist in contract negotiations 6) Assist with other tasks as needed(*) (*) to be added to any staff member job description by default :-) Vishal is already in the office, since he has been a part time intern since january 2007. We had expected to fill in this position in the future - not considered as urgent as the ED or legal coordinator positions - but it became more urgent after Danny's departure. I expect Vishal will both relieve other staff members from certain tasks, and focus all his attention on an area which was not always treated as a major area. Immediate and very specific tasks he will be in charge, amongst other tasks related to the position, are : * report on all business deals we currently are in (who, what, when, how much). * analyze the price asked for certain services and implement an increase if suitable * coordinate sponsorship for Wikimania * follow up on brand marketing proposal * be the general contact person for all the various (and sometimes really amazing) business deals proposed to the Foundation -------- Business... is not a simple matter. I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations. But...first of all, are we sure it is true ? Do you know how much of our revenue comes from donations, how much comes from grants, how much comes from services, how much come from cafepress, how much come from pure brand business ? I know the figures from last year, though financial statements did not make the difference between services and brand marketing for example. The values were very low anyway. I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month. And I know the data is changing very rapidly. I do not think it is something like 99% donations, 1% the rest of the revenue. ------- Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ? If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service), but also make it known that we want to do so. As with an information kit different from the press kit. ------- Third, it makes sense to exactly know which type of business we want (or we can) to get into. In terms in revenue, aside from the regular donations and grants, here is what we can get right now * income from sales from cafe press. This revenue is partly business, partly promotion. We do not run the cafepress exclusively to earn money, but also because it is pretty cool to have a wikimedia mug or a wikipedia tee-shirt. * data services: afaik, currently, datafeed for website and a wap service (extremely basic...). Arguably, this is pure business, or a mix of business/distribution * brand with content distribution deal: we do not want to directly distribute offline versions of our content, and even less to make people pay for that. Legally risky. But we are happy others are doing, and when they run a business on this, we make a deal for brand use. Example, production of a DVD with Wikipedia content on it; in such case, we collect a small fee corresponding to the use of the logo on the DVD jacket. In such case, it is not only a business deal. It is business, but it is also part of our mission as it allows content to further disseminate. * pure brand deals: very few were done till now; That might be typically the Cisco deal, where a video used our logo and some money was collected. At a much larger scale, we could envision larger impact, with toys, computer equipment, etc... this is just to get money. * I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease). * on-site services, to improve the user experience. We might imagine a system of print-on-demand on the website itself, with a fee per printed/shipped book. Right now, there are few, if not no services of this type. * arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party. I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ? Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned the advertisement system, but there are others which might be controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ? Community can very largely provide input here. ------- fourth, legal frame. Are they deals we can not make practically or reasonably ? Or deals we simply should not go into ? Or deals we should not get into above a certain figure of income for tax reasons ? If we sell the right to use the brand, can we defend it is a brand and it is ours at the place where we want to make the deal ? (ie, were the tms secured ? ) All questions difficult right now with no legal counsel though. ------- Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable. ------- The revenue we right now get from business is largely inferior to what we could get, and I expect it will grow much larger in the coming year. But before it really become so, we have significant challenges in front of us. I hope that Vishal will become an important piece of that challenge and invite him to involve the community to deal with all this. Ant _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Fri, 18 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote: Nice. <communal welcome to Vishal> I don't know what "sure" means, since the public Foundation records aren't as transparent as they could be. Does anyone know for sure what the breakdown is? I will say this: I would bet you a good French dinner every night for a week* that Wikimedia+Wikipedia could raise its entire budget for the next year, if the budget reasons were clear, through donations alone, simply by asking its community for support. These do not exhaust the options. Do we want the public to hear that their favorite site is sustainable on the good will and voluntary donations of its avid readers? That sends a very powerful message that "supported by your favorite companies and brand-conscious advertisers" does not -- not just a message about *Wikipedia* but a message about our collective global community that is building this tremendous body of knowledge. It drives home strongly the fact that the most invaluable contributions to Wikipedia, millions of hours of editing time and vast subject expertise, are by definition donations from the community, There is no reason why we can't say "we manage thanks to public donations. We are also supported in part by these organizations (not because we need their support to survive, but because they like individual contributors think the projects are worth supporting)." A pity to put it this way. If there is a need for more funds, please ask the community for them. Until there is a specific need for funds beyond what the community regularly provides, why should one evaluate "how much [advertising] would bring in"? To encourage debates about whether ads are good or bad? Better to spend that community energy debating what the budget should include and how to focus collective priorities... How about sponsorship by a hardware provider or ISP, to do away with 80% of the budget in one swift move? That would be a sponsorship worth having, and a real in-kind service provided. Is this what our primary focus should be? I would feel better about this if there were specific plans for specific sorts of improvement, such as network development, outreach, language diversification, systemic bias reduction, or infrastructure to reduce recurring maintenance costs. To me, the focus should be on clarifying project goals and purpose and definition -- "brand" -- internally within the community before worrying about how they appear to the rest of the world. Numerous exciting potential projects have foundered in part on a confusion as to what the different goals and cross-purposes of different projects is/should be. SJ * I know, this isn't a fair bet, since you may have this already; or may not want seven straight nights of same. Suggest another?

Hello, On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard &lt;Anthere9(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Welcome aboard, Vishal! As GerardM said, you've got a lot on your plate :) Could someone from the office please review http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Business_Developer so as to launch translation in other languages? -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." Henry David Thoreau

On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard &lt;Anthere9(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details? This is getting pathetic. Anthony

On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard &lt;Anthere9(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Indeed :) Congratulations to Vishal, and welcome. That's quite a job description for one person, considering the size and complexity of the Foundation. I am very glad that there is a move to hire people, even on a short- or part- time basis, to help with budgetary and business-related data collection and reporting, both for the community and the board -- this is an area where we have had a real need for a long time. Those who say that it's a shame that we don't already have good information are absolutely right -- it is, and so welcome to Vishal. For the other areas -- partner ideas, coordinating sponsorship and revenue generation, and brand marketing -- I sincerely hope that those in the community who are interested in such things and have worked on them either at present or in the past will continue to do so *with* Vishal, both helping him understand what the current state of things are, and helping him work with the community of involved people. It would be great if Vishal can help ease coordination between the many people working on such business-related activities. For instance, there are half a dozen participants who have been working on Wikimania sponsorships for this year, and there are many other people who have worked on them in the past -- and there's a need for a consistent centralized list of what contacts we all have and who's done what that we could use from year to year for each new conference. A centralized "office" person like Vishal could really help get this going. Perhaps he could also work, with the community's help, on aggregating old (and often really good, but fallen by the wayside) ideas: [[m:Fundraising ideas]] and [[m:Three-year plan]], for instance. In general: I don't know what's been envisioned for Vishal's position, but the right answer is certainly not to dump all the work of sponsorships or business development onto one relatively new person; instead, we should all let Vishal know what we've been doing and help him do a good job of organizing, reporting and coordination. This need for reporting would hold true no matter what our different visions of the Wikimedia "business" may be: more data about what is happening *now* is a good thing. To that end, I'd like to be bold and extend an invitation to Vishal on behalf of the Wikimania team, the Special Projects Committee, and the meta community generally: we'd love to get to know you and to share old and new ideas about business development -- and please don't hesitate to introduce yourself, ask questions, and ask for help. Phoebe