On 4/23/07, Kat Walsh <kat(a)mindspillage.org> wrote: :-) Indeed not. But thinking about the activities we want to pursue helps us to identify the strategies that we can use to resource them -- which, in turn, might reveal that choosing a controversial option over less controversial ones is neither wise nor necessary. Let me incorporate the ideas you listed into a broad spectrum of large scale initiatives, and then let's try to assess the resourcing strategies and the risks associated with each. On the broad "keep on running" front, I think we are doing fine -- our current revenues (both projected and real) indicate that we will be able to expand operational staff & keep up with web site traffic. One can always use spare capacities, of course. But let's think about some of the bigger ideas: == 1) The Copyright Liberators == OUTCOME: Acquiring copyrighted materials that would be useful to our projects (see [[m:copyright wishlist]] on meta which followed Jimmy's $100M brainstorming question). HOW TO GET THE MONEY: This seems like a task ideally suited for an organization exclusively dedicated to it, rather than WMF. I'm only aware of a few disjointed efforts by individuals in this direction right now. I could imagine some billionaire philanthropist might be willing to endow such an effort. Grants for liberation would be difficult, but a [[Blender (software)]]-style fundraiser for the community-driven liberation of specific works might be doable (WMF could potentially direct some broad attention to such an effort). RISKS: You can essentially sink infinite amounts of money into this that might be better spent elsewhere. My key question would be whether we could not benefit much more if we invested much smaller amounts of money in a joined copyright reform strategy, together with various other organizations of the broadly defined "Free Culture" movement. MY CONCLUSION: I'd support allocating some funds to develop a good software platform for this and then spin it off into a separate organization that partners with ours. I'm also interested in sustainable resourcing strategies that do not require spending incoming revenue that is needed elsewhere. == 2) One Encyclopedia For Everyone == OUTCOME: Massively distribute Wikipedia and other wiki content. Use anything that works: locally installed servers, DVDs, mobile phones, cheap newsprint copies, $100 laptops. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: The One Laptop Per Child project seems to succeed reasonably well in convincing at least some governments to buy into their program; where they do, we ought to partner with them (including a joined funding strategy), where they do not, we should investigate other distribution & funding models. International agencies like UNESCO could at least help in allocating resources, if not provide them directly. RISKS: The more we publish/distribute, the greater our risk of being held liable for various problems with the content. More systematic quality improvements seem like an absolute requirement before going far beyond our current DVD plans (where third parties typically deflect some risks). A very broad, indiscriminate approach seems likely to be quite wasteful and not necessarily very sustainable, no matter what the source of revenue. It is also not clear that the current content in Wikimedia is all that useful in countries where there are fundamental problems such as literacy, water sanitation, electricity, HIV/AIDS, war/conflict, incompetence and corruption, etc. MY CONCLUSION: As desirable as it may be to achieve short term impacts, I prefer a strategy of long term capacity building, starting where we can make the most realistic immediate difference. I believe our efforts ought to be coordinated with those of aid agencies, should be driven by real world demands (a ministry/institution/group indicates a need for particular educational resources), but also promote local participation. The "Learning4Content" initiative pursued by WikiEducator is also a very interesting approach: http://wikieducator.org/Metawikieducator/Learning4Content == 3) The miracle of technology == OUTCOME: Massive improvements to all elements of collaboration technology, from the wiki core to the supporting open source toolset around it. Whether it's WYSIWYG, advanced quality annotation, citation tracking, offline editing and syncing, real-time collaboration, RSS everywhere, or anything else you can dream up, someone will build it. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: My experience indicates that this will be surprisingly easy, especially if we devote manpower specifically to the task of pursuing grants & managing projects. MediaWiki is becoming the standard wiki engine, and interest from organizations / corporations is generally huge. See my recent reports on the meeting in Vancouver & the creation of the MediaWiki NG list, which are first steps to coordinate these activities. An open question is whether WMF is suited to lead this process -- right now, it clearly is not ready to assume a leadership role, but my hope is that we can build the capacity to do so with relatively small investments. Beyond specific interest holders in MW, one should not forget the role other large open source organizations & projects can play: Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, Ubuntu, all have a clear interest in improving open source collaboration & education tools. I've promoted internally the idea of a cross-organizational workgroup around this; unfortunately due to Florence's flight troubles we could not really discuss it at the March meeting (we only effectively had one day of Board meeting time). :-( I hope we can devote some brainstorming to this at the next meeting & press forward with it rapidly. RISKS: I'm not very objective here as I'm quite technology-biased, but I really find it hard to see risks with many small steps being taken in parallel & funded by multiple organizations. What we have to get away from is the situation we have right now, where most of these efforts happen in parallel with plenty of overlap & little coordination. One also has to be concerned about the effects large-scale initiatives have on the motivations of volunteer hackers. I don't much like "bounty" models where you have competing implementations for a certain reward, and I think one should hire from the pool of existing talent whenever possible. After much consideration, I consider any rewrite-from-scratch effort to be ill-advised; the risk here is simply too high as we play catch up with ongoing development work while trying to keep a clean migration path. MY CONCLUSION: Full steam ahead! ;-) == 4) March through the institutions == OUTCOME: Wikimedians speak regularly and internationally at schools, universities, libraries and other institutions, educating the world about the use of our projects, risks, benefits, and so forth. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: Much of this can be volunteer or quasi-volunteer activity, ideally involving both chapter-level and cross-chapter coordination (see my "Wikimedia Outreach" proposal for the idea of building a community of interests around this). By quasi-volunteer, I mean that many institutions can cover at least travel costs or small honorariums for people to give such talks. I'm convinced you could also get significant grant money for this, both on a small and a large scale, but this process needs to grow gradually on a chapter-level with small pilot projects. RISKS: Each chapter needs to build a database of volunteers it can trust, and needs to communicate clearly to institutions what that level of trust is ("We've not worked with this person before" etc.). You'll always win some & lose some -- some people are simply going to be poor communicators. Do good monitoring & evaluation (this also costs money and needs to be part of any funding proposal). Without clear guidelines for the volunteers, there's also a risk that people will make all kinds of deals with institutions on their own which they do not have authority to pursue. Moreover, without good information sharing, you'll re-learn lots of lessons again and again. MY CONCLUSION: Do it, but the WMF has more of an information hub role if any -- the chapters play the key function. That doesn't mean they cannot get funded by WMF for it (and this is where many sources of revenue could be useful), but ideally the chapters should build the capacity to develop sustainable strategies of their own. Sustainable long term funding is most likely to come from countries you're doing this in, unless you're talking about the developing world. == 5) Gather round the wiki campfires == OUTCOME: Besides one large international meeting, camps & events of various types are organized around the globe. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: Any event beyond a certain scale should be sustained by sponsorships whenever possible. Pumping WMF money into it also works, but I'd rather invest it in capacity building for event planning. That doesn't have to be a lot of cash - $50-$100K well spent on a few skilled and motivated organizers around the planet who just need some part-time remuneration might already get a lot of things going. RISKS: Events can easily become disasters if the planning is screwed up -- screw-ups which would inevitably taint the reputation of WMF and its chapters among sponsors and volunteers alike. You can't build these capacities simply by throwing lots of money at them at once. We also need to be careful how these events are timed & what role they play in our general events strategy. Where do Board members have to go, where do chapter reps, where do we have retreats, Advisory Board meetings, and so forth? We can easily shoot ourselves in the foot if we try to do too many super-great events in too short a timeframe. Finally, Wikimania itself is a huge challenge, and we cannot say that we have mastered the process of organizing it each year yet. MY CONCLUSION: Besides Wikimania, work with chapters to develop a few focused events like the "Wikipedia Academy" or maybe a summer camp for young people. Develop an events strategy around Wikimania for national events. Move carefully. == 6) Citizens, take back your media! == OUTCOME: "Citizen Media Centers" exist in major cities. These provide the resources (computers, equipment, teachers/guides) for all kinds of volunteer media activities, with a strong focus on Wikimedia projects. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: I've come to the conclusion that it would be smart to expand existing chapters around this idea. They will all need physical spaces sooner or later, and they are ideally positioned to attract interns, students, and others who will do great work for free or for little money. This is the kind of project foundations, governments, EU, etc., love to fund, so if you have a proper plan for it, resourcing it is not going to be very difficult -- and will build both your chapter capacities and your network of volunteers at the same time. RISKS: You don't want to become an Internet cafe, so you have to start with some pilot programs first to figure out sensible guidelines for running these things: how do volunteers get access, what kind of activities are permissible, what equipment is provided and under which policies, and so forth. Volunteer activism does not necessarily lend itself to "neutral points of view", so you need to be careful about legal risks & political implications. Without proper management, you have risk of theft and misuse of resources. A chapter needs to be sustainable and have project management experience before it can do this. MY CONCLUSION: Do a couple pilots ASAP - but needs proper planning. More on that in separate email. == 7) Bootstrap chapters == OUTCOME: Wikimedia chapters everywhere. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: Difficult - few would pay for "setting up organizations". Easier if it is tied to activities as described in 6). Here you could definitely use a lot of unrestricted money from generic revenue sources. RISKS: So far, our chapters were the result of volunteer action from people who were already passionate about our projects. Attract people by dangling dollar notes in front of their eyes, and you will get the wrong kind of person to run a chapter: someone who only wants a new career opportunity. Without existing interest & capacity, it seems almost prohibitively risky to "push" a chapter into a country. That said, lots of existing chapters could do with more resources; this is definitely an area where WMF could use some more money to help out. MY CONCLUSION: For new chapters, it might be wiser to tie such efforts to general outreach programs -- first organize speeches, events, volunteer programs, content development initiatives, and so forth in a country, then sieve the participants for those who you think might become chapter leaders. I don't see lots of money as very helpful here. For existing chapters, I'd love to see offices & staff. The most realistic path I see to achieving this is 6) - the notion of turning chapters into centers of volunteer or quasi-volunteer activity. Admittedly, having $100M/year in ad revenue would allow much faster development of international chapter infrastructure. Whether that approach is conducive to building sustainable, independent organizations is another question. == 8) We don't need no steenkin' volunteers == OUTCOME: Lots of people get paid to write or translate content for Wikimedia projects. HOW TO GET THE MONEY: Ask MyWikiBiz. ;-) In seriousness, many institutions and even businesses would be happy to fund neutral, well-referenced articles about their fields of activity; you could get some grants for this as well, especially for topics like open textbook development, which are pretty hot right now. RISKS: Obvious NPOV, volunteerism issues. If done by WMF, puts it in a much more active position with regard to project content, which may put it in greater legal danger than it already is. Possibly safer to be done by chapters or a separate organization. MY CONCLUSION: I think we need to experiment carefully with paid content creation, specifically in gap areas & languages. I think an organizational & policy framework that avoids many of the key problems can be found, and there's tremendous potential for funding from interested organizations (but again, one needs to be very careful what "interested" means here). I'd like some legal analysis on how this could be best positioned organizationally. == 9) Don't sweat the small stuff == Some responses to Kat's specific suggestions: *sponsoring student research on Wikimedia projects and conference fees Maybe -- but I think we can do a lot by simply coordinating the existing efforts more systematically. Research interest is already _huge_. *locating and scanning old PD materials Sounds like something that can be ideally done by interns, students, and volunteers if provided with a physical space & equipment to do it. *buying subscriptions to databases for community members to use for sources Many community members already have such subscriptions; I started http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Shared_resources a while ago, but something like this may need a bit more continued coordination. *placing advertisements in subject-specific publications and sites to attract volunteers who know about areas where we don't have enough content Sure - but you can get a lot of free PR if you talk to the right people. Wikipedia is a media darling. One problem is that there is simply no large community of volunteers specifically dedicated to outreach efforts. Is it possible to build such a community? I think so - spreadfirefox.com was pretty successful for a while, though they seem to have lost some of their enthusiasm (perhaps because of their success!). There are plenty of small technical projects we could contract out, and I hope a future CTO will do so; just spending $100K on 20 $5K projects could give you plenty of innovative little extensions & features. But see above on tech innovation. == 10) Do we need advertising? == Based on just the above few initiatives, I see no compelling argument why we need to rake in millions from advertising revenue and potentially divide our community (or confuse readers and potential authors). Most of the initiatives that we might want to pursue can be resourced elsewhere. WMF through its broad scope and its charitable mission has huge potential for interest from governments, grant-giving organizations, educational institutions, individual philanthropists, and so forth. We haven't even begun to tap this potential. Granted, having a secure source of revenue like this is tempting. At the same time, pouring tons of money into an organization that has growing pains as it is, is unlikely to help much. Our revenue needs to grow with our wisdom and capacity to spend it. I can see WMF and its chapters together spending billions of dollars years down the line, but let's take carefully considered steps to get there. Advertising may or may not play a role as part of future revenue streams eventually; currently I see no need for it whatsoever. That said, if anyone _wants_ to give us a billion dollars to spend right now, I'm sure we can think of something. ;-) -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic