<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Barry - can you send this to:<div><a href="mailto:wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org">wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a></div><div><br></div><div>As well? I'll approve it right away.<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Barry Newstead <<a href="mailto:bnewstead@wikimedia.org">bnewstead@wikimedia.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">February 15, 2011 9:01:50 AM PST<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">WMF Staff <<a href="mailto:staff@lists.wikimedia.org">staff@lists.wikimedia.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Cc: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">hisham <<a href="mailto:hisham.mundol@gmail.com">hisham.mundol@gmail.com</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>[WMF Staff] Announcing Hisham Mundol as consultant for National Programs, India</b><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Reply-To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">WMF Staff Mailing List <<a href="mailto:staff@lists.wikimedia.org">staff@lists.wikimedia.org</a>><br></span></div><br>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">
</span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><span id="internal-source-marker_0.8602732780855149" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0,
0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear colleagues,</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am pleased to announce the
appointment of Hisham Mundol as a consultant to the Wikimedia
Foundation to support us in our program initiatives in India.</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you know, the Wikimedia
Foundation declared India to be a strategic priority during
the strategic planning process [1]. I announced our plans for
the formation of an office in August 2010 and the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees approved the creation of the
Wikimedia India chapter in June 2010. India is a priority for
the Wikimedia movement as it has a strong and growing
community of Wikimedians building the Indic and English
language projects. It is a country where the Wikimedia
movement can achieve our mission and learn important lessons
for achieving impact elsewhere. The engagement of Hisham will
enable the Wikimedia Foundation to pilot new initiatives aimed
at accelerating the growth of the community in India. I am
very happy we’ve now reached this point.</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I have mentioned in the
past, we have a lot of momentum in India but we have a long
way to go to achieve our full potential as a movement.
Indians represent 4% of the world’s Internet users today (and
this share is growing), yet they only represent 1.5% of page
edits on Wikipedia. We should be able to rapidly increase this
share - across all projects - and expand readership in a
corresponding fashion. </span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hisham’s title will be
Consultant, India National Programs. He will report to me.
His role will be to design and implement specific pilot
programs that encourage many more Indians to become
contributors to our projects in Indic languages as well as
English. The National Programs initiative will focus on the
following areas in the first year:</span>
<ul>
<li style="list-style-type: disc; font-size: 11pt;
font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color:
transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;
text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Design and implement an
India-wide program to increase Wikimedia’s footprint on
university and college campuses with students and faculty
with the aim of encouraging contributions to Wikimedia
projects</span></li>
<li style="list-style-type: disc; font-size: 11pt;
font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color:
transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;
text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support the launch and
implementation of community-initiated programs that seek
to increase the editor base for Wikimedia projects </span></li>
<li style="list-style-type: disc; font-size: 11pt;
font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color:
transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;
text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Engage with the
community and chapter to build a strong relationship among
these stakeholder groups and create communications forums
that allow for effective partnerships</span></li>
</ul>
<br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a newcomer to the
Wikimedia movement, Hisham’s first task will be to deepen his
understanding of us: our history, goals, values, culture and
mission. To that end, he will be spending the coming weeks
(not months!) in learning mode: Hisham and I will be meeting
with community members in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore on Feb
23-25 and then Hisham will join community meetings across the
country as they occur. Hisham will also spend time in San
Francisco with the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well
as with other like-minded individuals and organizations and he
will attend the chapter conference in Berlin. </span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hisham will be creating a
workspace on strategy wiki where he will share what he is
learning and develop the core elements of the action plan
going forward. We encourage active community engagement on
this wiki. We aim to move to action quickly and welcome input
and guidance from across the community.</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hisham was most recently a
consultant with the Public Health Foundation of India (in a
partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). He
designed and implemented large-scale national programs on
HIV/AIDS prevention. He worked to understand the dynamics of
hard-to-reach communities by conducting in-depth,
on-the-ground analysis (ask him to tell you about his
experience talking to drivers while sitting under their
trucks). The programs he designed and implemented sought to
convince people in large numbers - 400 million young people
across the nation - to change very personal behaviours. While
we are not tackling issues of such an intimate nature, we do
aim to convince large numbers of people across the country to
contribute their personal time to Wikimedia projects. During
this assignment, Hisham worked closely with public, private
and community groups (local and international) to work through
the details of the programs and build partnerships for
implementing them at scale. He did so in a manner that used
persuasion rather than power to build support to move things
forward. We think his experience navigating these varied
groups position him well to work in the Wikimedia community.
His earlier career was in marketing and business development
with a number of well-known businesses: Infosys, Accenture,
Cadbury and Unilever. This experience positions him well to
engage with a movement and organization that is global in
nature, in particular to work with a team that is based
halfway around the world. </span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have scheduled an IRC
chat with Hisham and myself for Thursday, February 17 at 22:00
India Standard Time (16:30 UTC). </span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to thank everyone who
helped in the selection process that identified Hisham. It was
a five month process in which we made an open call for
consultants (using my visit in September to drum up interest
via conversations with the community and the media) in India
and around the world. We had 197 applicants from a wide range
of professional backgrounds. Egon Zehnder’s India office,
part of a leading global executive search firm, helped screen
candidates and manage the process. Egon Zehnder conducted
indepth interviews with 25 candidates based on the inputs from
Bishakha and I who helped shortlist. I interviewed 12
candidates via Skype in the first round and then I had the
help of Bishakha Datta and Achal Prabhala to interview the top
seven in person in Bangalore. Our top two candidates met with
Sue and Erik in Delhi and then Hisham met with the entire WMF
leadership team and a broad group of staff members in San
Francisco. </span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are very happy with the
selection of Hisham. We recognize that we did not manage to
hire someone from inside the Wikimedia community or the open
source community. We did look for people with this background
and one of our finalists was a long time open source advocate.
We also engaged with a long time Wikimedian for a role, though
he ultimately decided to withdraw for personal reasons. We
are committed to seeing Hisham integrate himself into the
community quickly and to seeing him add people to his team
from the community. We hope that the community will engage
actively with him to bring him into the fold. Hisham will most
definitely bring fresh perspectives to the movement that will
help us grow and change for the better.</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please join me in welcoming
Hisham to the Wikimedia movement.</span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[1] </span><a href="http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0,
153); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: underline;
vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0,
0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0,
0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align:
baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[2] </span><a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.html"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0,
153); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal; text-decoration: underline;
vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.html</span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">
</span>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 6634
Skype: barry.wikimedia
Twitter: @bazanews
</pre>
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_______________________________________________<br>Staff mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Staff@lists.wikimedia.org">Staff@lists.wikimedia.org</a><br>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/staff<br></blockquote></div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">-- <br>Jay Walsh<br>Head of Communications<br><a href="http://WikimediaFoundation.org">WikimediaFoundation.org</a><br>blog.wikimedia.org<br>+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw</span>
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