Thanks for writing this email Brion. I agree that the movement needs to invest more in people and the processes that support people.
One of the largest challenges facing the wikimedia movement, including WMF, is creating good models for how people in the movement can successfully engage with each other.
This means investing in people and structures that provide ample time and motivation to engage/collaborate with other people.
For the past 4 years (at least), I've had the sense that WMF is attempting to accomplish important public facing projects/programs/initiatives on a tight time line, and it is causing strain inside WMF, with affiliate organization, and with the larger wikimedia community.
Instead of a well executed "continual improvement process"1 like "Kaizen" 2, "Agile" 3, or "Lean" 4, the timelines are rushed and too often WMf staff is redirected from their planned activities.
Affiliates and the community have to shift their priories so are not well positioned to engage with WMF. The work sprints appeal to people in the wikimedia movement who tend towards addictive personalities and unfortunately it normalizes the process. And the tight timelines hinder engagement from people in the global movement who do not regularly engage on meta.
While there has been justification made in each situations for the accelerated timelines, this form of community engagement is far from ideal and it has contributed to the miscommunication and stress felt by WMF staff and the whole wikimedia movement.
So, while I'm eager to have changes that improve governance of WMF and strengthen the wikimedia movement as a whole, I strongly urge that an adequate time, resources and people are invested in the process to implement the changes.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_management 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development#Lean_principles Warm regards, Sydney Poore User:FloNight
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 4:29 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think there are many different interpretations of what it means to "be a high-tech organization", which makes it a difficult label to base arguments around; readers will interpret it very differently depending on their personal experiences and biases.
One view might concentrate on notions of "innovation", "excellence", or "return on investment" achieved through super-smart people creating unique technology -- this view associates "high-tech" with success, competitive advantage, brand awareness/marketshare, and money (profit for traditional corporations, or investment in the mission for non-profits).
Another view might concentrate on other features considered common to "high-tech" companies such as toxic work environments, lack of diversity, overemphasis on engineering versus other disciplines, disconnection from users' needs, and a laser-focus on achieving profits at the expense of long-term thinking. This view associates "high-tech" with social and economic inequality and exploitation of employees and users for their labor & attention to the detriment of their physical and emotional health.
And there are many, much subtler connotations to be found in between.
I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period. Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's how loyalty and passion are developed, and I believe they pay dividends in productivity and recruitment.
Absolutely Wikimedia Foundation needs to build better technologies -- technologies to serve the needs of our editors, our readers, our photographers, our citation reviewers, etc. This means Wikimedia Foundation needs a good relationship with those people to research, brainstorm, plan, develop, test, redevelop, retest, and roll out software successfully. The people who represent Wikimedia Foundation in those relationships are its staff, so it's important for management to support them in their work and help them succeed.
It is my sincere hope that when the current crises are resolved, that the Board of Trustees and the executive can agree on at least this much as a shared vision for the Foundation.
-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe