(Adding to what Michael said.)
Yes, we're trying to catch up. May will be posted tomorrow, and June is being worked on right now.
These reports started off as simple staff activity reports (when I joined the Foundation two years ago), and when the staff was small they were fairly easy to put together quickly. Over time, we've added in new structured info such as the comScore Media Metrix data, lists of media interviews, fundraising totals, etc. That takes a little longer to gather -- for example, we don't have finalized fundraising totals until 20 days following the close of month, and comScore data can take even longer. Plus, growth in staff means it takes that much longer to collect and synthesize everyone's input.
Meantime, we've been working towards a parallel data-driven monthly report -- it would include comScore data, financial information, and metrics aimed at assessing participation and quality. The financial information for that report is now regularly produced on a monthly basis, and we are pretty close to having good-enough reach, quality and participation metrics regularly produced as well, thanks to Erik Zachte and others. The goal of the data-driven report is to focus less on staff activity, and more on a high-level assessment of the overall health of the Foundation and its projects.
Once we have the data-driven report in regular production, we can rethink reporting overall. For example, we might decide to publish the monthly data report + a richer text-based staff activities report once a quarter. That would mean the activities report could be less focused on small incremental changes (the staff worked on X, the staff continued Y) and more focused on providing greater detail about a small number of high-priority initiatives, e.g., the strategy project, the usability project, the bookshelf project, etc. Or, we could publish the data report, plus a lightweight, simple monthly activities report focused purely on staff work -- new hires and that kind of thing.
I definitely sympathize with people wanting to be connected and aware of what's going on with the staff. I'd be curious to know what kinds of information people find most useful of what we publish today, and what you'd like to see more of -- and also what you think of the other channels we publish through, e.g., the tech blog, the Foundation blog, press releases, etc. And I do also appreciate your patience as we get caught up on this most recent backlog :-)
Thanks, Sue
------Original Message------ From: Benjamin Lees Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List ReplyTo: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Sent: Aug 11, 2009 6:58 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board April 2009
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: April 2009 Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
I really like these reports, but they'd be more useful if they came sooner after the events they describe. Will you be able to catch up to a <1-month delay in the near future? (I wouldn't mind if the reports for May, June, and July were condensed, if that's what it took.) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2009/8/12 Sue Gardner susanpgardner@gmail.com:
I definitely sympathize with people wanting to be connected and aware of what's going on with the staff. I'd be curious to know what kinds of information people find most useful of what we publish today, and what you'd like to see more of -- and also what you think of the other channels we publish through, e.g., the tech blog, the Foundation blog, press releases, etc. And I do also appreciate your patience as we get caught up on this most recent backlog :-)
Of the monthly reports I find the Milestones and Key Priorities bit you always start off with very interesting and useful. Reports on one-off events that took place during the month (such as the chapters meeting in this one) are usually quite interesting (I was at the chapters meeting, so I already knew about that, of course! Usually it is stuff I wasn't previously aware of.). Tech stuff I usually find out about through out routes (mainly the wikitech-l mailing list, sometimes the tech blog), so I don't pay much attention to that section of your report. The rest I skim through and usually find one or two things of interest, but most of the interesting stuff has usually already been announced or at least mentioned elsewhere by the time the report comes out. More details about what is planned for the next month would be nice, since that gives us an opportunity to comment before it happens rather than just complain afterwards - of course, you need to carefully manage how much time you spend reading replies to your reports so as to find a moment here or there to do some actual work!
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