This year, within the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community, we achieved a lot. More than we could have ever expected, for sure, and I think that we should look back and reflect on some of the more significant events that happened this year.

In March, the German Wikipedia reached 1,000 featured articles, a very significant milestone for the wiki. The Foundation also introduced it's new licensing policy, which affected all of the projects, and caused some noticable controversy among several sites. We also launched the Planet Wikimedia blog aggregator, which currently has over 50 blogs being aggregated into it.

In July, Wikimedia Taiwan was approved by the Board. On the 12th, the tally for the Board of Trustees was completed, and Erik, Kat re-joined the Board, with Frieda joining for the first time.

In August, Wikimania took place, attracting over 1000 participants from over 92 countries. Wikimania took place in Taipei, Taiwan.

In September, the English Wikipedia reached 2 million articles, which was a very significant milestone for the English community.

In October, Alexandria was chosen as the location for Wikimania 2009, and Paris held it's first Colloque Wikipedia event. Amsterdam hosted the second Wikimedia Netherlands Conference, and Saint Petersburg (Russia) hosted the first Wiki-Conference in Russia. It was also announced that the Wikimedia Foundation would be moving to San Fransisco, California.

Last month, the 2007 Steward Elections began. On the 24th, the new Ombudsman commission was approved.

Looking back, Wikimedia has had a great year, a great community, and a surge of events, growth, content, and quality, with several projects (including Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks, and many of our projects). If we can acomplish this much this year, we can acomplish even more in the next year, and I personally look forward to working with all of you to continue to create, maintain, and develop the world's largest repository and community of free information. Happy holidays to everyone, and a very happy new year.

-- Thunderhead http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Thunderhead http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thunderhead

_______________________________________________ DISCLAIMER: I hold no official position in the Wikimedia Foundation. This message expresses the views of a single Wikimedia user and not necessarily the community at large.