Dear all, A year ago, the board chose me to be the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation. Soon after, I sent an email (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-October/024619.html), where I tried to outline what I intended to focus on as a chair. This year, the board agreed to reappoint me as their chair for the coming year, I would like to thank them for the opportunity. The past months were hard time, I hope we'll get more peace in the coming months. Looking back, what I considered being last year priorities are largely fixed now, or on the way of being fixed. New priorities are however showing up :-) Staff: With Sue's arrival and several people hired during the year, the situation is currently largely under control and in a much more satisfactory situation than it was last year (thank god !). The next steps are the relocation (timeline: next three months) and hiring more staff (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings). Some of the challenges of the coming year will be to make sure the professionalization of the WMF does not mean the editors are less involved. This will in particular require to welcome and gently, warmly, educate our future staff members, so that they understand what our projects are about. For example, this year, we were very lucky with Sandy, who successfully worked with volunteers on communication issues and relentlessly learned about what we care about. It will probably also mean working on our values. Another priority will be to build up a review procedure, to evaluate Sue's performance, based on job description, including relationships with the board, staff and community; project planning and implementation; and of course management of the organization and staff. Procedures to review of head of staff performance are important for the long-term sustainability of any organization. Board: I am pretty satisfied of the work accomplished this year :-) The board partly changed with the arrival of new members (Kat and Oscar in november; Jan-Bart in december; Frieda in june). The board was expanded from 5 to 7 board members. We clarified the mission of our organization. We adopted new bylaws. We completed the first 3 years annual audit. We are now having regular, well organized meetings, proper reporting systems. We hired Sue. We approved a budget, several policies and guidelines. Etc... However, we are lacking a treasurer, and our financial control over the organization was insufficient during the past year. We improved the situation in the past few months, but now need to push forward the issue. So, finding a new treasurer, formulating/approving financial policies and generally improving financial controls will be one of the top priorities on my agenda (timeline: next 3-6 months); I'd like as well to work more with the board to assess board performance. Advisory board: In the past year, we populated the advisory board, held a advisory board meeting in Taipei, and got several of these members involved in various issues (ED search, fundraising, Wikimania 2008, relocation, hiring etc...). Overall, I am rather satisfied of our job with the advboard in the past year. Naturally, we can do much much better, and I hope we'll do more in the coming year, but to be fair, we have a lot on the table and I do not have a specific agenda for now on this point. Chapters: tough point. During the year, we approved guidelines for chapter creation and recognition, as well as for limited use of our brands. The past year was however the object of many frustrations, with many delays for agreements to be approved. Still, there is a lot to define in terms of relationships between WMF and wikimedia chapters, and I intend to make that a priority of the coming months. Of course, there is a lot more to do, such as to work to develop and start implementing a long-term plan. I expect this will happen little by little, as the organization builds up. But I nevertheless wanted to point out to a few of my priorities. Last point. A few days ago, I gave a talk at the Elearning conference of Lisbon. After my talk, someone came to me and told me I just got it all wrong, and the only thing I should have explained to the audience was that Wikipedia was the tool which would bring peace on Earth. Indeed, that point was discussed the previous day at dinner, and it was argued that beyond knowledge, Wikipedia was a fabulous tool to get people to realize that we are all different, but that differences are precious. A tool helping all of us to learn basic skills such as listening to others, tolerance, consensus-seeking, negotiation, mediation, and even conflict resolution. We also learn that we might scream at each other one day, but still work together the next day because we believe in the same goal. At the same time, I felt I could not say publicly that Wikipedia was one of the tools to bring peace on Earth because I also know working on our projects (not only Wikipedia) is somehow becoming increasingly difficult. We are more numerous, more protective to our featured-content, less welcoming to our newbies (for technical or social reasons). How many experts have been driven away by the agressivity of some of our members ? How many new editors just were discouraged by the difficulty of editing a table or a template ? How many newbies were blocked because they just did not understood quickly enough how to use a talk page ? Also, during the year, several cases of online or offline harassment of contributors were reported. Harassement which came as a result of their contributions to our projects. For all what is worth, I would like to offer my moral support to newbies, contributors and administrators who experienced harassment, or simply lack of respect for the work they provided, or poor welcoming experiences. And I would like to urge all contributors and administrators individually, and projects generally, to condemn or at least not facilitate harassment, to adopt a warm and friendly attitude toward other participants, to think of and implement social and technical changes which would give users a more pleasant experience. And when anger flares (which happens to nearly all of us), to remember that apologies can do wonders. We all want the same in the end.

... I felt I could not say publicly that Wikipedia was one of the tools to bring peace on Earth because I also know working on our projects (not only Wikipedia) is somehow becoming increasingly difficult. We are more numerous, more protective to our featured-content, less welcoming to our newbies (for technical or social reasons). How many experts have been driven away by the agressivity of some of our members ? How many new editors just were discouraged by the difficulty of editing a table or a template ? How many newbies were blocked because they just did not understood quickly enough how to use a talk page ? Also, during the year, several cases of online or offline harassment of contributors were reported. Harassement which came as a result of their contributions to our projects.