As someone who is relatively new to the Foundation's Board (just over a year now) and has been through this kind of strategic planning exercise a few times, I thought I'd share some thoughts:
- There seems to be more agreement on a high-level vision ("every single human being can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge") in our community than in anything I've been a part of. And we're actually doing it -- last month one estimate had us bringing knowledge to over 325 million people around the world. That's not yet every single human being but wow, what a great start. - Despite that apparent high-level unity, it is very difficult to translate such a sweeping vision into a set of near-term priorities. - As we've grown and succeeded, we've attracted more donors (something like 135,000 in the last fundraiser) so now have greater financial resources to make investments and support the volunteers. - There are many things we could focus on: usability, quality, outreach in countries without chapters, language issues, technology scalability, performance, data center expansion, access for those with limited/no connectivity, legal/trademark/copyright protections, etc. - We can't do them all at the same time -- even with all our success we have limited money and volunteer energy. A strategic plan can help provide focus and prioritization. - The approach the Board and Sue have laid out -- widespread involvement from our entire community -- is unprecedented. Many organizations do strategic planning, but typically with a few dozen people. We are going to do it with thousands. That's just the way we do things. It will be harder and messier and take more time, but we're used to that. I also think it will as a result have a bigger impact. - I know our final answer won't match my personal priorities exactly, and as volunteers of course we can and will all still focus on our own passions. But the more we work together to agree on priorities, the more we can do as a community.
Finally, I want to say I'm incredibly excited about this process. I'm confident the same energy and cooperation that creates a great article will also create a great strategic plan, and that we as a community have an amazing opportunity here to come together and set some direction for how over the next few years we can best pursue our vision.
-stu stu <at> Wikimedia.org
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Michael Snow Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:47 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: [Foundation-l] More on Wikimedia strategic planning
To follow up on the board's resolution, here is some more information about the strategy development process we are starting. This is not necessarily the complete picture, that hasn't been fully laid out yet and you will hear more about it in coming weeks and months. We will share progress as we go, and discussion is welcome. I expect the other members of the Board of Trustees, along with Sue, will be happy to join in. We spoke briefly about the project at our meeting with the chapter representatives in Berlin a few weeks ago. They may be able to help answer basic questions, and I also anticipate that the chapters will be a good way to relay ideas from the wider community.
This is a rather unusual endeavor, as it is intended to be the world's first completely open and collaborative strategy development project. We aim to draw upon the experiences and knowledge of a wide range of
contributors: Wikimedia volunteers, experts in various fields, the board, the foundation's staff, and other appropriate advisors that may be suggested to us. I'm excited about the possibilities in this project.
Anybody who wants to help the Wikimedia projects is invited to participate. I expect that the primary activity will involve working groups developing pieces of the strategy on-wiki. That's both because it's the key tool for open collaboration we're all familiar with, and because it would be prohibitive in time or expense to coordinate strategic planning through a set of meetings, as might happen in a normal organization. All relevant planning outputs will be publicly available for review, as well as reuse, so hopefully we can produce some thinking that other groups will also find useful.
We expect the strategic planning project to officially launch in July, although this is a preliminary kickoff of sorts as well. In the meantime, Sue is planning to hire a project manager, a research analyst, and a facilitator to support it. Those jobs will be posted on the
Wikimedia Foundation site sometime during the next week. Between now and the launch, Sue will be hiring the project team. These positions will bring skills we already need, and while we want all the staff to have input, this will be the group designated to work particularly on this project.
Sue and I will also be working through the structure and framework of the project: essentially, which strategic questions require the most focus. You will hear more about this, and I will be asking for your views, as we begin to make progress.
--Michael Snow
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