Hi Everyone,
2015 is an election year for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees> as well
as for the Funds Dissemination Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee>.
As you may recall the Board has three directly-elected members who serve
for two years. Currently they are Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe>), Samuel Klein (SJ
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sj>) and María Sefidari (Raystorm
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm>). As in the past years we
rely on an effective election committee to coordinate the elections for us
along with staff support and a Board liaison. Not only do they guarantee
that the election is overseen by an independent body, but they also make
sure that the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done is taken care
of. My job, as this year's Board liaison, is to coordinate the formation of
this committee and to support them in their work while serving as the
primary point of contact with the Board regarding the process..
This is a call for volunteers to serve on the election committee. If you
feel that you can contribute to this committee, please email James
Alexander (Jalexander(a)wikimedia.org) and give a small summary of why you
think you would be able to help out with this process.
The Committee is responsible for planning and maintaining virtually every
aspect of the Board election. For example, the Committee plans the type of
voting, suffrage criteria, and criteria for candidacy, helps to draft and
organize all of the official election pages on Meta, verifies that
candidates and voters meet the criteria, audits votes to ensure there are
no duplicate votes or other problems, et cetera. You can expect that this
work will take an average 5-10 hours a week with a few periods of relative
quiet and a few periods of heavy work during and after each election (the
FDC and Board elections are planned to be separate this year).
If you decide to join the committee you will have to identify to the
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_handbook/email_templates#Notification_that_identification_is_required>
because
of the personal information you have access too and must be at least 18
years of age. In addition you cannot be part of the election committee if
you are planning to be a candidate or are planning to support any candidate
publicly.
To ensure we get going as quickly as possible, committee members will start
to be seated as soon as we have 4-5 good candidates with an anticipated
first meeting of Friday April 10th (or soon after, depending on committee
availability). The deadline for volunteers, however, is Friday, April 17th
UTC 12:00.
The committee and staff will be setting up the election pages soon and the
call for candidates, led by a letter from the Board, which will be going
out shortly. If you're interested in running for either the Board or the
FDC, I encourage you to read up on prior elections
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013>and
the groups themselves to prepare your statements!
Regards,
Alice.
--
Alice Wiegand
Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate