Anthere wrote:
Gavin Chait wrote:
The most immediate concern for the Wiki Foundation is less the idea of an office with furniture and windows, or even the difficulties of collaboration, mostly it is continuity.
At the moment the founders are involved. They have an idea of what they want and how to achieve that. There are now thousands of regular contributors who are influencing that direction. There are millions of occasional contributors who muddy the edges. How do you ensure continuity?
One of the first development organisations I worked in 15 years ago was a student-run endeavour at the University of Cape Town. Every year hundreds of students volunteer and contribute to different projects. Each project is run by older students. Continuity is difficult where students graduate and leave each year. Sometimes entire projects vanish when the students who know how to run them fail to come back.
The solution was to employ a small band of professionals whose task is to make sure that projects are properly budgeted and accounted for, keep track of how the different projects interact, and ensure that the overall emphasis of the organisation remains focused. The professionals ensure consistency while the volunteers contribute fresh ideas, fresh thinking, new directions and lots of enthusiasm.
A few thoughts however. It is not correct to say "the founders are involved". One is still involved and the other long left the project and regularly comment on it, but as an outsider.
I think it would be incorrect to oppose the founder as the stable one in comparison to all the contributors (the ones vanishing). Many of us (more than a handful) have been there for several years. Some even have been there since the beginning of the project. I consider them just as stable as Jimbo.
It is very likely that these old-timer currently ensure consistency, whilst the band of professionals (who may be old timers or may be absolute newbies) do not necessarily do so. To be frank, a good part of the "fresh thinking" of the past few months came from a newbie, working for us as a professional... whilst us old-timers ensured the stability ;-)
In our organisation, the volunteers themselves offer stability. Much more than professionals are likely to do.
Which raise another big issue for me. We are currently considering expanding the board. In a way that I can understand, it is likely that at least part of the future board will not be constituted from community people such as Angela or I, but rather of big shots, who may be great people, with potential great input and probably very precious to the Foundation. But who have two main defaults as far as I am concerned. All the names considered are from a continent over there...accross the ocean... not Africa if you see what I mean ? So, a loss in diversity. And all of them will actually bring fresh ideas... but also instability.
So yeah, offices are far less important than continuity. Just have to see how we can best ensure continuity :-)
ant
It has worked well for more than 50 years for this organisation.
Offices are far less important than continuity. And the more you rely on volunteers, the more important it is to have a solid base of professionals - where-ever they may be.
you speak a lot of sense.
Ant