Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Carolyn Doran cdoran@wikimedia.org wrote:
What reason would we have to be near a consulate? ~ C
Any organization that claims to be international in scope, would ideally be based in close proximity to representatives from many national governments. Of course, that is not the only thing to consider.
-- mav
I hardly consider that to be a major issue for an organization that is founded upon and relies upon electronic communication for most of its activity. In America (assuming that this means the WMF must stay in the USA) that really leaves just a very limited number of cities you could put it in: New York City and Washington, DC. In California, while there are many consulates there, they tend to be split up between Los Angeles and San Francisco in roughly equal proportions depending on the country involved. And for smaller countries they will only have an embassy or consulate in DC or NYC.
For those particular situations where face to face meetings are absolutely required, you can easily fly from St. Pete to one of those two cities anyway at a modest cost, or even to the country who you are trying to deal with directly. I would presume that any such meeting would be a very rare exception anyway and would not be at all necessary in terms of day to day operations of the foundation. Certainly the cost of an airline flight would be trivial compared to the increased cost of daily living in either of these two cities for what would realistically be of marginal improved value for the foundation.
-- Robert Horning