Thanks Christophe. Looking forward to (collectively) work on the strategy. I personally welcome a quick and hopeful mail like this, and I'm quite happy about where we are right now.

Aubrey

On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 7:19 PM, Christophe Henner chenner@wikimedia.org wrote:

Hi Everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met in Esino Lario during Wikimania. The minutes will be published in the coming days, but we deemed it too important to wait to share the outcome of this really great meeting.

During the meeting, the Board felt that it was important to establish three clear priorities for the coming year: We will focus on three specific topics:

• Improving the Board itself

• Supporting the Executive Director, Katherine Maher

• Fostering the creation of a strategy for the movement

Every trustee acknowledges that there's a clear need for the Board to assume a leadership position for our movement. That being said, the eight of us are only temporary stewards of our positions. We need to work toward creating the best environment for all of us to push our mission forward.

That is the reason our first topic is about Board improvement — to work to become the trustees you all need. The governance committee [1] is continuing its work on incremental improvements, as well as on defining the further actions we need to take.

Our second priority is to support the Executive Director. As you all know, the Board proposed to Katherine Maher to move from her interim ED position to a permanent one. We are thrilled she agreed.

We must not consider this decision as the end of the process, but as a beginning. In order for the Wikimedia Foundation to achieve great things, the Board needs to be supporting the ED. This means providing her with a consistent and clear explanation of the intentions in our decisions, and to act as sparring partners to her.

The HR committee[2] will work toward that end, and the Board as whole is ready to take any steps necessary to provide her, and the staff, with the best environment possible.

Finally, the lack, or fuzziness, around movement strategy has been a pending question for years. One that we never managed to tackle. And perhaps because no one wanted to take on that charge. The Board of Trustees decided that within the next 12 months we will have to define our vision and strategy. A strategy that is suited with our goals, our values, and is inclusive of every agent of the movement.

The past fifteen years were amazing. But now we have to think of the next fifteen years. There are many challenges ahead of us if we want to keep on changing the world.

We must not shy away from those challenges, nor from the decisions we have to make.

Within the Board of Trustees, Maria Sefidari and I take the lead on the necessary steps are being taken. Katherine and Foundation staff already have worked on the first steps to reach that goal.

Our goal is to make sure we — as a movement — will have a strategy that we can all embrace and push forward together.

As ever, decisions need action, and we will take them and share them quickly so that you know that we walk the talk, and we want to walk it with all of you.

We will be happy to answer any questions you have whether on list or off list.

Thank you to everyone for those past fifteen years, and I’m looking forward to what we'll achieve in the coming ones!

Christophe

[1]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commit...

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/HR_Committee _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

While I as much as any hope for positive developments in relation to the board, and certainly it's good to hear of enthusiasm and recognition of the need to improve the board, if I might inject a note of caution.

Every trustee acknowledges that there's a clear need for the Board to

assume a leadership position for our movement.

I suggest it is not even /possible/ for the Board to assume a leadership position for the movement, and that the Board's efforts to do so over the past ten years have been damaging to the movement. The core idealism of the movement --- the thing that drives volunteers to donate passionate labor, which can only be driven by idealism --- is, I maintain, that information providing should be in the hands of The People; a fundamentally bottom-up ideal. The more the centralized WMF tries to direct things, the more it conflicts with the ideal in fact; and the more it is /seen/ to try to direct things, the more it saps the desire of volunteers to donate labor because it seems less like pursuit of the ideal. If the WMF has a useful role to play in the movement, it is neither leadership nor top-down software initiatives (which most of the current initiatives are).

It has also been clear in recent times that the Foundation has evolved a corporate culture that self-justifies some of its most unfortunate attitudes, and in this regard I admit I am unsettled when I see statements such as

We must not shy away from those challenges, nor from the decisions we have to make.

From the outside, I honestly can't tell whether to cheer or cringe. This

would be a good attitude to take toward various necessary changes to the Foundation, yet it also sounds like the reasoning that was used, not long ago, to justify a position that any volunteers who disagree with the Foundation's dictates should leave.

Within the Board of Trustees, Maria Sefidari and I take the lead on the

necessary steps are being taken. Katherine and Foundation staff already have worked on the first steps to reach that goal.

Our goal is to make sure we — as a movement — will have a strategy that we can all embrace and push forward together.

I do hope that everyone together can find a positive way forward (says the optimist in me, even while the pessimist in me lists all the things likely to go wrong).

Pi zero