Everton Zanella Alvarenga, 25/08/2013 15:42:
2013/8/24 Romaine Wiki romaine_wiki@yahoo.com
It is possible to have one location where everything is organized and arranged, but WMF is an international organisation to support the world wide Wikimedia movement. I think it would be good to have WMF deeper inside the world wide community, both digital and physical. I think it is healthy not to focus on one location, but to have an office more inside the Wikimedia movement, at least one on each (largely populated) continent.
For local communities WMF is far far far away, while localizing WMF would bring WMF and communities more together.
Romaine, I think a lot of people would agree with you, but I insist you to analyse the trial to create offices in India, Brazil and Middle East. This plan has changed and here is the very short explanation:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus#We_plan_to_c....
I think a big mistake here was to try to make 3 offices, instead of focusing in one and make it really well.[...]
This is important to keep in mind, but I don't think it's related to what Romaine is talking about. Those were not just "offices", they were offices for a project. Distributing existing projects (like engineering) in different locations is an entirely different matter than establishing new activities in new locations, not that I have opinions on either.
Nemo