[Foundation-l] Priorities

[Florence Devouard]

Dear all,

A year ago, the board chose me to be the chair of the Wikimedia 
Foundation. Soon after, I sent an email 
(http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-October/024619.html), 
where I tried to outline what I intended to focus on as a chair. This 
year, the board agreed to reappoint me as their chair for the coming 
year, I would like to thank them for the opportunity. The past months 
were hard time, I hope we'll get more peace in the coming months.

Looking back, what I considered being last year priorities are largely 
fixed now, or on the way of being fixed. New priorities are however 
showing up :-)

Staff: With Sue's arrival and several people hired during the year, the 
situation is currently largely under control and in a much more 
satisfactory situation than it was last year (thank god !).
The next steps are the relocation (timeline: next three months) and 
hiring more staff (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings).
Some of the challenges of the coming year will be to make sure the 
professionalization of the WMF does not mean the editors are less 
involved. This will in particular require to welcome and gently, warmly, 
educate our future staff members, so that they understand what our 
projects are about. For example, this year, we were very lucky with 
Sandy, who successfully worked with volunteers on communication issues 
and relentlessly learned about what we care about. It will probably also 
mean working on our values.

Another priority will be to build up a review procedure, to evaluate 
Sue's performance, based on job description, including relationships 
with the board, staff and community; project planning and 
implementation; and of course management of the organization and staff.
Procedures to review of head of staff performance are important for the 
long-term sustainability of any organization.



Board: I am pretty satisfied of the work accomplished this year :-)
The board partly changed with the arrival of new members (Kat and Oscar 
in november; Jan-Bart in december; Frieda in june). The board was 
expanded from 5 to 7 board members. We clarified the mission of our 
organization. We adopted new bylaws. We completed the first 3 years 
annual audit. We are now having regular, well organized meetings, proper 
reporting systems. We hired Sue. We approved a budget, several policies 
and guidelines. Etc...

However, we are lacking a treasurer, and our financial control over the 
organization was insufficient during the past year. We improved the 
situation in the past few months, but now need to push forward the 
issue. So, finding a new treasurer, formulating/approving financial 
policies and generally improving financial controls will be one of the 
top priorities on my agenda (timeline: next 3-6 months);

I'd like as well to work more with the board to assess board performance.



Advisory board: In the past year, we populated the advisory board, held 
a advisory board meeting in Taipei, and got several of these members 
involved in various issues (ED search, fundraising, Wikimania 2008, 
relocation, hiring etc...). Overall, I am rather satisfied of our job 
with the advboard in the past year. Naturally, we can do much much 
better, and I hope we'll do more in the coming year, but to be fair, we 
have a lot on the table and I do not have a specific agenda for now on 
this point.


Chapters: tough point. During the year, we approved guidelines for 
chapter creation and recognition, as well as for limited use of our 
brands. The past year was however the object of many frustrations, with 
many delays for agreements to be approved. Still, there is a lot to 
define in terms of relationships between WMF and wikimedia chapters, and 
I intend to make that a priority of the coming months.


Of course, there is a lot more to do, such as to work to develop and 
start implementing a long-term plan. I expect this will happen little by 
little, as the organization builds up. But I nevertheless wanted to 
point out to a few of my priorities.



Last point.
A few days ago, I gave a talk at the Elearning conference of Lisbon. 
After my talk, someone came to me and told me I just got it all wrong, 
and the only thing I should have explained to the audience was that 
Wikipedia was the tool which would bring peace on Earth.

Indeed, that point was discussed the previous day at dinner, and it was 
argued that beyond knowledge, Wikipedia was a fabulous tool to get 
people to realize that we are all different, but that differences are 
precious.   A tool helping all of us to learn basic skills such as 
listening to others, tolerance, consensus-seeking, negotiation, 
mediation, and even conflict resolution. We also learn that we might 
scream at each other one day, but still work together the next day 
because we believe in the same goal.

At the same time, I felt I could not say publicly that Wikipedia was one 
of the tools to bring peace on Earth because I also know working on our 
projects (not only Wikipedia) is somehow becoming increasingly 
difficult. We are more numerous, more protective to our 
featured-content, less welcoming to our newbies (for technical or social 
reasons).
How many experts have been driven away by the agressivity of some of our 
members ? How many new editors just were discouraged by the difficulty 
of editing a table or a template ? How many newbies were blocked because 
they just did not understood quickly enough how to use a talk page ?
Also, during the year, several cases of online or offline harassment of 
contributors were reported. Harassement which came as a result of their 
contributions to our projects.

For all what is worth, I would like to offer my moral support to 
newbies, contributors and administrators who experienced harassment, or 
simply lack of respect for the work they provided, or poor welcoming 
experiences. And I would like to urge all contributors and 
administrators individually, and projects generally, to condemn or at 
least not facilitate harassment, to adopt a warm and friendly attitude 
toward other participants, to think of and implement social and 
technical changes which would give users a more pleasant experience.
And when anger flares (which happens to nearly all of us), to remember 
that apologies can do wonders.

We all want the same in the end.


Florence