Dear All<br><br>Thank you for the welcome. <br><br>I'm tremendously
motivated by this assignment. Wikimedia's mission is both noble and
inspiring. I can't imagine a more exciting time and place to be in.<br>
<br>There's been a huge amount that's already been achieved in India by
the community - and I am eager to learn from the community how this was
done. I also know that there's incredible opportunity to make even more
rapid strides, and I look forward to working with the community for
this.<br>
<br>Warm Regards,<br><br>hisham<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Barry Newstead <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bnewstead@wikimedia.org">bnewstead@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal"> <font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2">Dear colleagues, (please feel free to
cross-post this to local lists within India)</font></font></span><br>
<br>
<span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2">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.</font></font></span><br>
<br>
<span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2">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.</font></font></span><br>
<br>
<span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2">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. </font></font></span><br>
<br>
<span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2">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:</font></font></span></span></font></font></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none"> <font color="#000000"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></font></font></font></p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none"> <font color="#000000"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">Support the launch and
implementation of community-initiated programs that
seek to increase the editor base for Wikimedia
projects </span></font></font></font> </p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none"> <font color="#000000"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></font></font></font></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"></span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">We have scheduled an IRC chat with
Hisham and myself for Thursday, February 17 at 22:00
India Standard Time (16:30 UTC). </span></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">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></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">Please join me in welcoming Hisham to
the Wikimedia movement.</span></span></span></font></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"></span></span></span></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">Note: An FAQ will follow shortly.</span></span></span></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">Best,<br>
Barry<br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">[1] </span></span></span></font></font></span></font><a href="http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF" target="_blank"><font color="#000099"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><u><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF</span></span></u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent"><br>
</span></span></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">[2] </span></span></span></font></font></span></font><a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.html" target="_blank"><font color="#000099"><font face="Arial"><font style="font-size:11pt" size="2"><span style="font-style:normal"><u><span style="font-weight:normal"><span style="background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent">http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.html</span></span></u></span></font></font></font></a></p>
<pre cols="72">--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 6634
Skype: barry.wikimedia
Twitter: @bazanews
</pre>
</div>
</blockquote></div><br>