I've arrived home from Wikimania and am now starting to settle back into things. Thank you to everyone, whether on this list, privately, or the many people I spoke with at Wikimania, for your good wishes. I'm sorry I could not express my appreciation earlier, but as one of the few people in this world without a laptop it seems, I'm hardly ever online while traveling.
I'm excited about the future of our projects and that of the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization, and look forward to seeing what I can do to help with that as chair of the Board of Trustees. Florence has been a wonderful example of dedication and commitment in that role. She's a tough act to follow, and I probably can never match the amount of time she put into it.
Fortunately, the idea is that I shouldn't have to. By building a strong staff, the foundation makes it more feasible for board members to fulfill their responsibilities and still remain volunteers. We're slowly getting there, even though it will always remain more demanding than your average board.
The close to two years with Florence as chair involved a lot of changes, many of them dramatic. The foundation went from having a temporary ED who also held a separate position, to having no ED at all, then to a manager without the title, and finally to a full-fledged dedicated ED. There have been times when the board had to run the organization directly, which did not work well (no fault of Florence, since without her effort things would not even have worked as well as they did), while now we are moving much more toward strategy and oversight, and things are working significantly better. Hopefully we can continue the transition in this direction.
--Michael Snow