Thank you, Sue. I always save these to read when I need a pick-me-up, and it's nice to have them out in time for comments to be relevant to this current month's plans. Questions/comments inline.
I've been holding up release of this report, waiting on comScore data.
That's the least time-critical piece of the reports for me :-) - Do we send supporters such as comScore things like http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipostcards ?
MILESTONES FROM JULY 1. Hiring concluded for the Strategic Planning Project
< The strategy project also intended to hire a Research Analyst and
interviewed a number of candidates, but has since reconsidered that
- Has the perceived need for research changed? - Wasn't there a discussion about possibly expanding that to a more stable research position over time?
I'd be interested to see this done scalably through the community, by defining what valuable reseach needs doing and seeding research groups. In the context of Strategic Planning, where are existing expressed priorities/desires of the Foundation published?
3. First Wikipedia Academy in the United States
< About 100 NIH employees received live presentations and
training on Wikimedia mission and culture, as well as editing skills. The event was live-streamed to the entire NIH staff of over 350,000.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy/NIH_2009
- Has there been any followup? - Is the idea for this sort of program to be organized by WMF in the future, or for local groups of Wikimedians to organize similar efforts?
A friend of mine at the Library of Congress is interested in engaging local Wikipedians more in their efforts to contribute to Wikipedia. <continuing a first contact with WMF from years ago>
KEY PRIORITIES FOR AUGUST 5. Meetings with donor prospects
Perhaps community groups should be prioritizing meetings with content-donor prospects. This seems to me one of the best arguments for a better-organized [network of] US chapter[s] -- since there are so many valuable archives in the US, and we have a national commitment to the public domain.
MediaWiki contract developer Andrew Garrett worked on modernizing the LiquidThreads discussion forum extension and solicited feedback from
- Are the recent discussions on f-l about how to improve our use of mailing lists already included in that feedback, or does someone need to bridge that gap?
A new 'wmf-deployment' branch was created for MediaWiki which allows
- Are there thoughts about a 'mediawiki-non-wikimedia' branch for customizations useful to the millions of smaller MWiki users out there, but not useful to Wikipedia & sibs?
private offsite mirror hosted by eBart Consulting in Europe.
Hooray!
Brion attended an Open Educational Research Search Discovery workshop
There was an unanswered question there : whether Wikiversity is interested in including overviews of the world's notable educational materials. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium#Wikiversity_as_key_OER...
< Open Translation Tools Conference:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/open-translation-tools-2009-report/
- What tools are being considered for more serious adoption? - What can people who weren't at the conference do to help?
This seems like a major area for improvement and optimization. Philippe and Casey have suggested recently that translation as we currently do it is a real burden for time-sensitive projects such as strategic planning; and as Ariel notes in that post there is a wealth of software out there that could make this much easier for us.
The development for the next release called “Babaco” [2] has started.
( I'm starting to love Babaco. )
Frank Schulenburg has also been focusing on building Wikimedia volunteer capacity by launching the Best Practices series on Meta
< http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_in_public_outreach
In July, Kathrin Jansen began volunteering in the San Francisco office
This is *fantastic*, and needs more public visibility. Perhaps even a site notice at some reasonable milestone. (As does [[m:public outreach]] in general. )
This sort of investment of energy into building our community capacity is one of the greatest things we can do.
The Wikimedia Foundation approved 21 funding requests from 11 chapters, in the pilot year of the chapters funding request process.
< http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants
I'd be interested to see discussions by individuals with similar requests. Including those who are pursuing supporting grants from outside bodies. That set of ideas, some of which may not have been submitted to the strategy process, are quite valuable.
During July, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with [...]
I appreciate these roundups. Something similar for potential supporters or partners who have been met or spoken to -- at least where that information is sharable public knowledge -- would also be lovely.
LEGAL
Mike Godwin completed a first draft of the revised trademark policy.
- Nice. Does this mean we are closer to a world in which awesome Wikimedia swag is easy to come by... and not through cafepress? [ sorry, CP! :) ]
Communications coach John Plank staged a series of workshops aimed at helping Wikimedia staff improve their presentation skills.
We might try to organize community presentation training (at meetups and wikimanias?) as well. See also [[m:public speakers]] .
SJ