Andrew Gray wrote:
On 22/09/2007, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In making this decision, we assessed five major
cities: Boston, London,
If that assessment took more that say 20 seconds we have a
problem.
Could you elaborate? Are you saying that it should be, in some way,
obvious that London is a bad choice? In what way is that?
As discussed interminably on some other list this very week, British
defamation law is voracious and enthusiastic. Having WMF operating in
a British jurisdiction, or keeping assets there, is pretty much an
invitation for someone to sue us in a UK court - a situation where we
might win but we would certainly suffer.
It's home to plenty of like-minded organizations
and possible partners,
top-tier universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley, world-class support
services, and major media.
You want to go near the major media groups?
Why
not? You can work with your competition to mutual benefit, you know.
Indeed, they're not our "competition" any more so than, say, a random
academic publisher is.
(Incidentally, the real key to this announcement strikes me as not
"San Francisco versus New York", but "anywhere but suburban
Florida"...)
Right on it :-)
It is interesting to see that many of the discussions focus on a
question of costs or on a legal question. Will moving out of Florida
increase costs ? Without any doubts :-) But in the long run, moving out
of Florida has become necessary to allow the Foundation to grow and
mature. Sue already mentionned several reasons to move out, such as
getting nearer similar-minded organizations, making international travel
easier, major media or top universities. I have another argument to push
along, which I think would impair our grown very soon in the future.
People. People as in staff. We had the chance to find very good people
in St Pete (or had the chance some staff members, such as Brion, moved
to Florida in the past), however, we must face a fact: we are more
likely to find the skills we need for our development in a big
multicultural city than in St Pete, in particular for the senior
management. St Pete is a very confortable place to live, but not exactly
a anthill of experts in fundraising, business development, grant making,
open source mouvement etc...
We were faced with the option to move now, or to move later (as in 6
months - 1 year), or to stay in St Pete. We all agreed staying was
making our development difficult. Now, Sue is planning to significantly
expand the staff in the near future; you guys know we need more
developers, we need a new COO, we need staff on fundraising etc...
Did it make sense to find staff now and make them move (or have to find
new staff members) in 6 months, or to move before expanding the staff ?
Well, the expanding, then moving was likely to be much more disruptive
for the projects AND for the life of dozen of people, than moving first
and expanding second.
ant