If you've devoted much of your life to the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, and you enjoy interacting with our international community, this is an opportunity for you to turn your hobby into a profession. Effective immediately, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Volunteer Coordinator who will lead in opening up new opportunities for volunteers to contribute to the mission and day-to-day work of the Foundation. Ideally, you will work in the Wikimedia Office in St. Petersburg, Florida. Please also specify whether you would prefer part-time or full-time work. Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to: <jobs at wikimedia dot org>. == Responsibilities == As Volunteer Coordinator, your responsibilities will include: * maintaining a global, public list of tasks across different work areas, through communicating with committees/officers, which would indicate which areas need volunteer work the most critically at any given time. * advising the Board and ED during the setup of new volunteer groups and committees * ensuring that all volunteer groups in the WMF are operational and reporting their activities on a regular basis; evaluating performance (cat herding experience and international diplomacy skills will help ;-) * being a first personal point of contact for people who wish to do volunteer work for the organization, but don't know where to start * organizing and advertising regular online events and tutorials to educate people about different areas of volunteering * reporting when existing volunteer groups such as committees or workgroups are apparently dysfunctional, and recommending structural changes where needed * collecting and documenting best practices for volunteer management, partially based on communicating with other non-profits and studying research on the topic * representing Wikimedia at events where we might find useful volunteers from a specific background. In short, you will be responsible for achieving what is absolutely critical for the long term sustainability of the Foundation: involving volunteers in every part of our mission. == Prior experience == You should have some familiarity with the Wikimedia Foundation, its processes, and its projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and so on). Prior experience in online and real world volunteer organizing is a definite advantage, as is work experience in project management, scheduling, and communications. Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to: <jobs at wikimedia dot org>. If you have questions about this job description, please respond on the list or to me privately. Feel free to forward this message to other lists. Erik Möller Executive Secretary, Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hm. Methinks it is rather odd that an international organization does not have its head office in or near a world city. I mean, other than the cool wikijob and the nice weather what does St Pete / Tampa have in terms of services (including connections to like-minded organizations; not to mention easy access to consulates)?

Lack of income taxes is a nice feature. The cost of living is much more reasonable than say San Francisco or New York City, and you get much more living space for that money. There are quite a few beaches and parks, which I suppose goes along with the relatively nice weather. Unemployment is very low here right now. Internet access is fairly good - we have Fios available in lots of places and EVDO is available throughout the Tampa Bay area.

What reason would we have to be near a consulate? ~ C

--- Carolyn Doran &lt;cdoran(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Any organization that claims to be international in scope, would ideally be based in close proximity to representatives from many national governments. Of course, that is not the only thing to consider. -- mav

Any organization that claims to be international in scope, would ideally be based in close proximity to representatives from many national governments.

However, certainly a lot of good talent, from programmers to publishers to venture capitalists, gets attracted to San Francisco and similar areas, which is one possible reason to move -- an in-person volunteer community could be built around the office as well as an online one. -- phoebe

On 3/1/07, phoebe ayers &lt;phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I think that is better handled by regional chapters.

Daniel Mayer wrote: I hardly consider that to be a major issue for an organization that is founded upon and relies upon electronic communication for most of its activity. In America (assuming that this means the WMF must stay in the USA) that really leaves just a very limited number of cities you could put it in: New York City and Washington, DC. In California, while there are many consulates there, they tend to be split up between Los Angeles and San Francisco in roughly equal proportions depending on the country involved. And for smaller countries they will only have an embassy or consulate in DC or NYC. For those particular situations where face to face meetings are absolutely required, you can easily fly from St. Pete to one of those two cities anyway at a modest cost, or even to the country who you are trying to deal with directly. I would presume that any such meeting would be a very rare exception anyway and would not be at all necessary in terms of day to day operations of the foundation. Certainly the cost of an airline flight would be trivial compared to the increased cost of daily living in either of these two cities for what would realistically be of marginal improved value for the foundation. -- Robert Horning

I think to a great degree this is a modern shift; it's becoming less and less vital for an organisation to have to be in a major city in order to function, especially an organisation which is simply a central point for a wide virtual network.

I seem to recall that the primary purpose of this thread was to hire a volunteer coordinator. Volunteer coordinator, anyone?

For that matter, it's not even determined if the position is going to be full time or part time, and if it is going to require showing up at the office or telecommuting.

The concern that becomes apparent from reading this thread is that living in St. Pete's would very strongly favour having this job go to an American. To be sure some of the paying jobs can only be done at the headquarters, but this is very much an international organization which should do more to open opportunities for citizens of other nations. The nature of this opening suggests that the work could be done anywhere in the world without the need to move to the United States. Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote: I think that any specific location anywhere in the world is going to favor one nationality over another. Even Brussels is going to be very Euro-centric, and I could go on and on about other major cities throughout the world. This is not really a very legitimate reply.

I will say in defense of Florida (although Miami would be a bit better in this regard), this is America's gateway to the Caribbean Islands, and home to a very diverse number of ethnic groups that I would challenge you to find anywhere in the world outside of perhaps NYC or San Francisco.

To me, this is a very anti-American attitude that is strongly suggesting that perhaps the WMF needs to re-incorporate somewhere in the EU. If somebody from say South Africa were to work with somebody from Japan on a daily and face to face basis, where would you suggest that they find as a common location to meet, work, and live?

I will also defend keeping the WMF in America at least so far as I think you would have a very hard time trying to find a place that is more politically stable or has similar economic stability and 1st world infrastructure necessary to carry out the mission of the WMF. The last realistic attempted military invasion to the heartland of America took place in 1812.

Can you say that about any other country in the world except perhaps Switzerland? Even that could be argued in light of WWII, but I won't belabor that point. In addition, the WMF is already in America, and much of the legal underpinnings and relationships are based upon American law.

I guess I just don't see the point to all of this anyway or why this thread has brought out the attitudes that this has. We are a very diverse group of people all working together, where I, as an American living in rural America in the heart of the Rocky Mountains have nearly daily conversations with people from Poland, the UK, and South Africa on collaborative writing projects. Often I don't even know the nationality of the people that I am working with, or even what continent of the world they are really at when I am having these discussions. I fail to see why this particular position as a Volunteer Coordinator would have to be any different in this regard.