1) «Invest in software developers to improve management of volunteer code contributions and to execute strategic priorities (e.g., database dump production, usability initiatives)» (p. 7). 2) «Increased spending on technical infrastructure»; «Additional technical staff»; «deferred necessary spending fot reliability, backups & performance; elimination of artificial restrictions on upload file size» (p. 13). Great (especially devs, reliability, backups & performance), but why do you think that we will not underspend 2 M$ next year, too? And how can we nearly decuple «in-kind revenue» and «income from live feed deals, trademark deals, etc.» (p. 8)? Thanks, Nemo -----Messaggio Originale----- Da: Jay Walsh A: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Data invio: martedì 1 luglio 2008 22.23 Oggetto: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation 2008-2009 Annual Plan Hello everyone - this note is cross-posted on the Wikimedia blog at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/01/wikimedia-foundation-2008-2009-annual-… Earlier today we uploaded the Wikimedia Foundation's 2008/2009 Annual Plan presentation and Questions and Answers page to the Wikimedia Wiki. These materials were approved at the June 20 Board of Trustees meeting. They can be accessed via the Finance Report page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report Posting our plan and (hopefully) answering some of your questions in advance is part of our commitment to providing transparent information about the Foundation's goals and spending. The Annual Plan lays out projected spending through the next fiscal year (which for us starts today and runs the rest of the year). The plan describes spending in our three main operational areas: technology, programming, and financeand administration. We also introduce our 2008/2009 organizational goals, which we hope to discuss in more detail in the coming months. For your information and awareness! -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 609 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

GerardM, 2 2008 14.50 find I'm not happy if I saved money because I was not able to buy food and I'm starving, especially if other expenses drained all my money. E.g., we need servers, although the situation is not catastrophic. Nemo _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

E.g., we need servers, although the situation is not catastrophic.

So the upshot is, we will not need to spend X amount of general operating cash on hardware, since it will likely end up being paid for by an external party :-)

Without speaking on behalf of the tech team necessarily, I would make the observation that it seems generally conservative about spending. That's not unique to Wikimedia; it's consistently been my experience that tech people tend to be fairly cautious spenders. Our team did not want to spend money until it needed to: that is not a bad thing.

From that experience I think I've taken the position that the best

I spent a number of years directly in charge of spending a technology budget of size comparable to Wikimedia's.

If we assume that moore's law applies directly to price/performance (which isn't a totally outrageous assumption in many cases) money differed on technology spending has an annualized return of 60%! Thats astonishingly good: almost as good as printing money.

It's important to remember, of course, that the accounts that have just been published are for the period ending a year ago - much has happen in that year, so they shouldn't be relied on to describe the current state of the foundation.

<snip>

just been published are for the period ending a year ago - much has happen in that year, so they shouldn't be relied on to describe the current state of the foundation.

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I don't understand this sentence. Can you rephrase it? And can you explain how it applies to non-profit organizations? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: That only helps if your goal is "profit". For a non-profit, you don't want them to have lots of unplanned savings because that implies they have not allocating resources effectively. I don't think Nemo's comment about servers is fair (they are working well by historical standards), but at the same time one can ask: "Does not spending this money mean that the mission is 6 months behind where it could be?" Any real budget will include contingencies and have unplanned variances, but at the same time we don't want the budgets to be consistently too high OR too low as it generally implies resources are not being allocated as efficiently as they could be towards accomplishing the Foundation's goals. We want to know that unplanned resources go towards making the world better. Having savings and a contingency fund can be part of that, but it should be part of the plan and not just something one falls into for the lack of other things to do. -Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Please don't put words in my mouth. Trying to reduce costs is a good thing. Trying to get donated hardware is a good thing. Anytime you make a budget sometimes you will have unplanned savings, and sometimes you will have extra expenses. My reaction is motivated by your comment that "it is GOOD when there is some conservative bookkeeping", which I disagree with. Conservative bookkeeping shouldn't be the goal. Rather, we want effective bookkeeping that includes planned contingency funds but is on target more often than not. It is too early to say whether the WMF will ultimately have a good track record, but I would discourage a policy of intentionally overstating likely spending. Being conservative, with the intent of being consistently underbudget, would be a bad thing. It would imply that one is holding too many resources back and misrepresenting your needs to the donor community. AND if there are going to be large variances, then I would want to see that money put to good use. For example, if UNICEF (or insert your favorite large charity) did have the good fortune to decrease their operating costs by a large percentage, then you can bet they would almost immediately put more money into feeding starving children (or your appropriate analogy). Having extra savings is not a bad thing, but unless there is a good plan for those savings then it is a sub-optimal place to allocate resources. For example, if you discover that you don't need to buy servers now, then one could choose to accelerate hiring etc., which serves the mission more directly that simply sitting on capital. I'm not upset with the recent WMF performance (there are much worse things than saving money), but in the long-run underutilizing capital should be seen as an anomaly and should not be seen as a desirable goal. -Robert Rohde On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Now of and to has well but Having part _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

We do things for people not languages.

Hoi, As I have to spell it out for you: - Wolof: 3,612,560 people

- Swahili: 772,642 first language 30,000,000 second language users

- Xhosa: 7,214,118 people

- Zulu: 7,214,118 first language 15,700,000 second language users

None, but did Polish need it? I think you can't compare the situation of a language in Africa with that of a language in Europe. The question is, what would be the added value. Asking what we did with other languages that did not need it sounds ridiculous to me, sorry (at least your other arguments make *some* sense... ).

I don't understand... why do people in Europe have a lesser need for knowledge than people in Africa? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Except, Africa faces problems that extend far beyond simple language penetration: there is simply not enough internet and broadband coverage, not enough computer access and computer ownership, and in several countries the political climate inhibits any access to free information. If we're truly worried about peoples of Africa, we ought to be addressing those problems first, rather than setting up languages for them. We can't bring knowledge to Zimbabwe if Mugabe kills all of his opponents and their supporters, and controls the internet access. We can't bring knowledge to Somalia if there simply aren't enough telecom companies doing business there to achieve significant internet access. Such issues are far more pressing than languages. -Dan

Have you two guys already been to Africa ? You seem to have a rather "limited" view of a huge continent with incredible diversity of situations. Even within a country where some poeple are dying from hunger or diseases, there are scholars and educated people who can help get the ball rolling. Ant

Chad wrote: Have you two guys already been to Africa ? You seem to have a rather "limited" view of a huge continent with incredible diversity of situations. Even within a country where some poeple are dying from hunger or diseases, there are scholars and educated people who can help get the ball rolling. Ant _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Florence Devouard &lt;Anthere9(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Ever been to Antarctica? Is it cold there? -Dan

2008/7/3 Florence Devouard &lt;Anthere9(a)yahoo.com&gt;om>: ohnoes, tell me you're kidding! Only first class.... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Dan Rosenthal wrote: When the OLPC people have saturated their "market", there may be opportunities for the One Laptop Per Penguin project. ;-) Ec _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

And you know...basic necessities like food and water. Call me naive, but I think those are more important than bringing them a DVD with articles about everything from [[w:Walrus]] to [[w:Fantasy (fragrance)]]

European needs are filled because there are Europeans to fill the needs. African subjects in European languages (at least English) can too easily get tied up in some people's advanced society notions of notability and verifiability. We have few enough people to work on these, so it woule help to bemore relaxed on these standards.

The upcoming Wikimania is in Africa, so I would expect to see more Africans when I get there.

Hoi, This is not specific to non profit organisations, it is true for all organisations. A dollar not spend is a dollar saved and a dollar profit. This is what keeps the bean counters happy :) Thanks, GerardM On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 8:47 PM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Anthony? When you play blackjack do you bet all your money the first time the odds look like they are in your favor? Why not?

You'd just bet the money later when the odds looked no better. ... If you did, you would not be playing for long.

Presumably operating Wikimedia isn't entirely like gambling, but the truth remains that sometimes there will be times where luck (or good judgment!) is in short supply, and it would be a loss to everyone if things ran dry and either had to either shut down or change drastically simply because income is not constantly distributed through all time.

Would you really rather a future where the foundation found itself subject to the whims and manipulations of large sponsors (or public fads!), possibly against the interests of the mission, because a failure to heed these forces would result in program cancellations, layoffs, or other results which the management considered to be unacceptable?