[Wikimedia-l] Questions for the Board post-Wikimania

[Bishakha Datta]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 2:22 AM, Steven Walling <swalling at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> During Wikimania's Q&A panel, the Board lamented that, as always, they did
> not have enough time to answer all the questions from the audience and
> posted beforehand on-wiki. They did say they were accessible to follow up
> with on unanswered questions though, so I am taking this opportunity to
> start an open thread.
>
> The question I am personally interested in, I posted on the Wikimania wiki
> page,[1] and it's...
>
> "The 2013-14 Annual Plan allocates 40% of the Wikimedia Foundation budget
> and 59% of the staffing to engineering and product development. However, it
> seems that few of Board members have professional expertise in theses areas
> (compared to previous years and in general). Does the Board feel it has the
> necessary expertise to lead the Foundation in this area? Would the Board
> consider recruiting expert seats with more experience in engineering and
> product development?"
>

Dear Steven,

This is a good question and I largely agree with Phoebe. In June 2012, the
then board did an exercise where we tried to identify missing board skills.

As part of the Board Governance Committee's aim of increasing board
transparency while retaining the privacy that we need to carry out our work
effectively, this has now been posted at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_skills_matrix_2012

Keep in mind that this is a year old. Even so, hope it provides some
overall context and a few indirect glimmers into answering the question
that you posed.

Needless to say, a similar matrix done now may yield somewhat different
results.

Best
Bishakha