Kelly and Arnnon, good to meet you! This is an exciting time to join the movement; your experience and insight will be welcome. I hope you have a chance to share public thoughts from time to time.
Anthere:
I appreciate Kelly is a woman as well. I would suggest changing the
profile picture though, otherwise the fundraising team might hire you to be Jimbo staring eyes replacement.
Now would that be so bad?
But yes, the board is missing a certain breadth of social, regional, and other perspective. We should think about ways to provide that perspective in addition to / more flexible than choosing a couple of trustees each year.
Lodewijk:
And, whether you would define the WMF as a "tech organisation"?
That's a fair question, even though the bulk of the staff do technical work of some sort. There are all-developer organizations that think of themselves as a 'design' or 'entertainment' or 'political' organization, where tech is just one of the powerful tools in their belt. And WMF has at times presented its role as roughly 'tech' + 'community' – facilitating, rather than directly realizing, the mission... and despite that feeling of uniqueness, similar efforts could support almost any mission.
Whether this is the best division of labor for a centralized org, I don't know; Wikimedians have tried other options in different regions, so there are many examples to learn from.
Sam