I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
Thank you, Brion. Through your many years of volunteering and then staff work, you've secured your place in Wikimedia history. It's been a pleasure to work with you over the years, and I'm glad you'll continue to be involved. As I said privately, I'm happy you've found a great open source company to work for, but of course it's a great loss to the organization. :-(
We'll be doing lots of internal planning to manage this transition period. Separately, we'll also be posting at least two software engineering jobs soon, in addition to the CTO job which is already posted. If any of you have any referrals (ideally people who can relocate to San Francisco), please let me know off-list. And please be forgiving of tech delays in the coming months.
Thanks, Erik
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
This really sucks.
alnokta
2009/9/28 Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com:
This really sucks.
Hey, we'll all live, and he's alive and well :-)
I'm now sending the job opening around my SF contacts ...
- d.
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:33 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/28 Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com:
This really sucks.
Hey, we'll all live, and he's alive and well :-)
Yes. But I find it difficult to understand that he leaves wm for some social networking venture, I hope it is worth it.
I wish you the best, I just don't agree with your decision on leaving (if it is possible to revert it...).
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com wrote:
This really sucks.
As Kat Walsh alluded to on ... Facebook?!?... free/libre real-time services are more important than a lot of Wikimedians think (because we've spent so long pushing back against "merely" social uses of our wikis?). In the grand scheme of the things we care about, development in that area may be a more critical immediate need than continued work on MediaWiki. Brion put it perfectly:
"People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want."
Wikipedia has had enough success that it's bought some time in terms of establishing the ability (and right) of people to control and use educational material how they want. There's still a lot to do, but the free culture approach is starting to pick up momentum. For so-called social networking services, it's still an uphill battle.
-Sage
On 9/28/09 12:53 PM, Sage Ross wrote:
As Kat Walsh alluded to on ... Facebook?!?... free/libre real-time services are more important than a lot of Wikimedians think (because we've spent so long pushing back against "merely" social uses of our wikis?). In the grand scheme of the things we care about, development in that area may be a more critical immediate need than continued work on MediaWiki.
The social side is quite important here too... social interaction is probably one of the key areas we really need to improve on for Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
No matter what else we improve technically I think we all are aware that there are serious problems with how people interact in our community, and that's one of the major stumbling blocks for new users.
Wikipedia has had enough success that it's bought some time in terms of establishing the ability (and right) of people to control and use educational material how they want. There's still a lot to do, but the free culture approach is starting to pick up momentum. For so-called social networking services, it's still an uphill battle.
Yep... what I do find encouraging is that many of the big social-networking services are picking up on the idea that easy interoperability is a win for everyone a lot quicker than, say, the IM wars of the 2000s or the email wars of the late 80s/early 90s. (Remember when CompuServer and AOL users couldn't email each other? Hah!) But that's something that could disappear quickly as long as it's a world where there's only a small number of big players...
-- brion
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
(Remember when CompuServe and AOL users couldn't email each other? Hah!)
Speaking as a former CompuServe user, I remember those days fondly...
Austin
Brion, thank you for your tremendous work, enthusiasm, and grace, and congratulations on your new job. StatusNet will be lucky to have you, and I hope this means among other things that we will see better integration of real-time communication into platforms such as wikis.
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
social interaction is probably one of the key areas we really need to improve on for Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
Agreed, including both tracking real-time discussions and persistent personal status. There are many toolserver tools and extensions that share bits of this information, but it's tricky to maintain or search through.
Michael Snow writes:
I hope that his other work will also add significantly to the free culture movement, so that it really develops an ecosystem and not just a couple of peculiar organizations.
Yes, an ecosystem of peculiar organizations would be handy. :-)
SJ
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Congratulations on your new job, but I must confess to seeing this as bad news, rather than exciting news... I'm glad you intend to make your departure as smooth as possible, but it is disappointing that you couldn't stay full-time until there was a new CTO and handover properly. The Wikimedia movement is significantly worse off without you - I was really looking forward to you handing over the administrative part of your job and concentrating on coding, great things would have happened, I'm sure! However, I wish you the best of luck in the future and I looked forward to seeing you around here, even if it is a little less often.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Congratulations on your new job, but I must confess to seeing this as bad news, rather than exciting news... I'm glad you intend to make your departure as smooth as possible, but it is disappointing that you couldn't stay full-time until there was a new CTO and handover properly. The Wikimedia movement is significantly worse off without you - I was really looking forward to you handing over the administrative part of your job and concentrating on coding, great things would have happened, I'm sure! However, I wish you the best of luck in the future and I looked forward to seeing you around here, even if it is a little less often.
Fortunately, if you read Brion's entire message, the Wikimedia movement is not going to be left without him, and you will still be able to see him around (probably a little less often, yes). So I'm not sure why you finish up by referring to him in the past tense.
I certainly won't pretend that the Wikimedia Foundation is eager to see Brion leave its staff. But one of the things that's important to us is to make sure employees have opportunities to grow and develop, and in some cases that growth will lead them into new opportunities outside the organization. So with that I wish Brion all the best with his new job. I look forward to his ongoing contributions to MediaWiki development, and I hope that his other work will also add significantly to the free culture movement, so that it really develops an ecosystem and not just a couple of peculiar organizations.
--Michael Snow
2009/9/28 Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Congratulations on your new job, but I must confess to seeing this as bad news, rather than exciting news... I'm glad you intend to make your departure as smooth as possible, but it is disappointing that you couldn't stay full-time until there was a new CTO and handover properly. The Wikimedia movement is significantly worse off without you - I was really looking forward to you handing over the administrative part of your job and concentrating on coding, great things would have happened, I'm sure! However, I wish you the best of luck in the future and I looked forward to seeing you around here, even if it is a little less often.
Fortunately, if you read Brion's entire message, the Wikimedia movement is not going to be left without him, and you will still be able to see him around (probably a little less often, yes). So I'm not sure why you finish up by referring to him in the past tense.
I can tell you precisely why I finished up by referring to him in the past tense - I can't type! That should have said "look forward". I apologise for the misunderstanding!
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
I was really looking forward to you handing over the administrative part of your job and concentrating on coding, great things would have happened, I'm sure!
No reason he can't keep coding. He just won't be paid for it. :)
On 9/28/09 12:56 PM, Anthony wrote:
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
I was really looking forward to you handing over the administrative part of your job and concentrating on coding, great things would have happened, I'm sure!
No reason he can't keep coding. He just won't be paid for it. :)
The more things change, the more they stay the same? ;)
-- brion
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
* *Oppose* - It won't necessarily be so easy to find someone to fill your shoes and manage things as well as you have with improvements in MediaWiki, as well as site operations. You will be missed. ~~~~
Seriously, I'm disappointed to see you go, though wish you the best with your new position.
-Aude
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Aude wrote:
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
- *Oppose* - It won't necessarily be so easy to find someone to fill your
shoes and manage things as well as you have with improvements in MediaWiki, as well as site operations. You will be missed. ~~~~
Seriously, I'm disappointed to see you go, though wish you the best with your new position.
-Aude
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
Ack Brion, too quick on the draw... T_T I haven't gotten close enough to a extremely powerful JS based wiki engine to use this as propaganda to get people to try it out.
*cough* Erm... I said nothing
Heh, before I finished reading the e-mail. I was either thinking "Joke", or "Wiki Apocalypse".
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]
Hoi, Brion thank you for everything and more. I am happy that LocalisationUpdate is live... but I am sad for all the other things that will be postponed. I am sad because there are so many things that are waiting to be assessed. I am happy for you, but to me it feels like MediaWiki meets the truckfactor. I can imagine that there is never a good moment to leave ... but I am happy that you will be around ...
Am I write that StatusNet is the equivalent of Twitter ? I might give it a try :) Thanks, Gerard
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Obviously I've talked with Brion in person, so he knows this, but I will say it publicly too: he will be hugely, enormously, massively missed.
What Michael says is true: people have a right to pursue their dreams and goals and personal development wherever it takes them, and I too am happy that Brion will continue to be moving forward the free culture agenda and helping to build a better ecosystem of projects and organizations. I've got an account on identi.ca which I haven't yet used: perhaps my first use of it will be congratulate Brion on his new job :-)
IMO Brion is the single most central figure in the Wikimedia movement, second only to Jimmy. His work with us should be honoured and celebrated. We'll be doing some of that inside the staff within the next few weeks, and I expect the Board will plan something for him too. But we'll need to be creative: after all, there is already a Brion Vibber Day. New ideas are welcome :-)
Thanks, Sue
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/9/28 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Obviously I've talked with Brion in person, so he knows this, but I will say it publicly too: he will be hugely, enormously, massively missed.
What Michael says is true: people have a right to pursue their dreams and goals and personal development wherever it takes them, and I too am happy that Brion will continue to be moving forward the free culture agenda and helping to build a better ecosystem of projects and organizations. I've got an account on identi.ca which I haven't yet used: perhaps my first use of it will be congratulate Brion on his new job :-)
IMO Brion is the single most central figure in the Wikimedia movement, second only to Jimmy. His work with us should be honoured and celebrated. We'll be doing some of that inside the staff within the next few weeks, and I expect the Board will plan something for him too. But we'll need to be creative: after all, there is already a Brion Vibber Day. New ideas are welcome :-)
Thanks, Sue
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
And on that note, I propose we rename MediaWiki to BrionWiki. Added benefit: we can finally put the name confusion to rest ;-)
In all seriousness though. Brion: best of luck on the new job and with future endeavors. You will be missed greatly by both devs and Wikimedians alike. And you'll still have commit access, so I hope to keep seeing "Revert rXXX, totally broken"
-Chad
--- On Mon, 9/28/09, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet To: "Wikimedia developers" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org, "MediaWiki announcements and site admin list" mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, September 28, 2009, 1:32 PM I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
Congratulations on you new job! I am excited for you and to learn more about ident.ca. I appreciate the effort you are committing to the prolonged transition. Thank you for all you have done; your commitment to Wikimedia will be a hard act to follow. I hope I will still see you around here (foundation-l).
Birgitte SB
Brion,
congratulations on your new job, and you sound excited and happy with it, so that is good :-)
But I must admit that I am sorry to see you go - your commitment to wikimedia has always been over 100%, if such a thing is possible, and your personality has always been a pleasure to work with.
teun
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
teun spaans wrote:
Brion,
congratulations on your new job, and you sound excited and happy with it, so that is good :-)
But I must admit that I am sorry to see you go - your commitment to wikimedia has always been over 100%, if such a thing is possible, and your personality has always been a pleasure to work with.
I'd agree that Brion's personality is one of the great attributes that makes him so helpful to our endeavors. Fortunately, I see no reason to think that his personality would change along with his job.
--Michael Snow
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
<message cut short>
dear brion,
here's to your new job: congratulations!
to pioneer or to consolidate, it takes different personalities in most organizations...
i wish you all the best, while thanking you for your fantastic work, dedication, and the very pleasant cooperation during many years, extending well before the 4 years you mention ;-)
oscar
Shame to see you go Brion, but good luck in your new job!
Walter
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
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Дана Monday 28 September 2009 20:32:43 Brion Vibber написа:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I realize that this isn't a most informative, useful or even understandable comment, but... the thought that persistently comes to my mind when thinking about this is what happened to Yugoslavia after [[Tito]] died.
Brion's announcement is a big one and I'm sure many of us would like to get his thoughts, ideas and memories on many things.
To that end, in a couple of days I'll be interviewing Brion for the next edition of the WikipediaWeekly http://wikipediaweekly.org/ podcast. The interview will be published by next week.
So, if you'd like to suggest a question to ask Brion in his "exit interview" please write it here, or comment on other people's questions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikipediaWeekly/Episode_84
I've put up a couple of initial questions but feel free to add/move/merge/split things as you want.
Sincerely, -Liam [[witty lama]]
wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
_______________________________________________
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Brion,
congrats on your new opportunity and project and I'm bit on a relief to hear you would like to stay on our community, and I still remember the days you was a volunteer developer with great devotion (in those days e started to celebrate Brion Vibber Day) but still you won't be surprised I think your departure a loss in the project and you'll be greatly missed, though still your future is fully blessed by your friend Wikipedians.
Dankon Brion for your all commitments until now and hopefully also in advance.
Cheers,
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:32 AM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites.
I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community or MediaWiki development!
Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will continue to thrive!
I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a candidate in the door by the end of the year.
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO, Wikimedia Foundation San Francisco
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On 10/2/09 1:21 AM, Aphaia wrote:
Brion,
congrats on your new opportunity and project and I'm bit on a relief to hear you would like to stay on our community, and I still remember the days you was a volunteer developer with great devotion (in those days e started to celebrate Brion Vibber Day) but still you won't be surprised I think your departure a loss in the project and you'll be greatly missed, though still your future is fully blessed by your friend Wikipedians.
Dankon Brion for your all commitments until now and hopefully also in advance.
awwww *hugs* :)
By the way all, Liam's posted the first part of my interview w/ Wikipedia Weekly:
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2009/10/03/wikipedia-weekly-83-farewell-brion/
We went way overtime so the second half will be in the next episode. :)
-- brion
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org