Hi all,
here's a little announcement for y'all: I'll be changing jobs in May, leaving the general counsel job at WMDE in order to work as a lawyer in the German federal ministry of the interior, in a department called digital society and information technology (abbreviated DG). My future team lead asked me whether people would see this as 'moving to the dak side', but I reassured her that policy Wikimedians are way too professional to misunderstand it that way ;) In DG I'll have opportunity to work on some of the very same government projects that we at WMDE tried to influence, and I'm pretty sure that they hire me at least in part because of that civil society background. So, if it is in fact dark over there in certain ways, they seem to strive for some additional light through recruitment (several people from NGOs were hired recently).
As of now, I don't really know much about how close the DG department is to what the German government does in the Council and to European affairs in general. Much of that is done by / through the foreign ministry. But if you have specific suggestions or wishes around data policy in Germany and such, let me know. I cannot of course guarantee anything, but as mentioned above, there seems to be openness for the civil society mindset and good ideas are hard to stop. And, simultaneously to me moving to the ministry, the policy team at WMDE is now complete, with the last vacancy filled, There's now more people power available at WMDE for wikimedian policy work than ever before. That, plus all of you (plus WMEU as a platform) will help shape digital policy that benefits Free Knowledge. At some point I might re-join as a volunteer, still to be figured out, and there will probably be a replacement GC at WMDE soon to help with legistic stuff.
In the mantime, find me on LinkedIn or get in touch via private email at jhweitzmann@web.de, yours
John