I recall that in the interview Sue gave with the Wikipedia Weekly at Wikimania, she mentioned that the Foundation staff and Board haven't used the advisory council in a systematic way, and that strategies to do so should be sought. Has any thought been put into how we can better use that expertise, or if rethinking the advisory council is necessary? Looking at the wiki, we have a good team of people, but they're only useful if we tap that resource, instead of simply having blurbs on advisory.wikimedia.org.
I don't know whether this should be addressed in the context of the Wikimania postmortem or not, I was simply reminded as that's where the interview was given.
-Mike
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:58:08 +0000, foundation-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org said:
During August, staff and volunteers worked on a postmortem of Wikimania 2008, which included two IRC meetings and an online (LimeSurvey) survey of attendees, organizers and speakers. The postmortem is intended to reflect the experiences and views of all Wikimania planners and participants, and will result in a set of recommendations, to be implemented in time for the staging of Wikimania 2009. It will cover site selection, local planning and organization, logistics, program planning and speaker handling, scholarships, media/PR, public outreach, finance and administration, and sponsorships. Participating in the postmortem: Delphine Menard, Cary Bass, Jay Walsh, Kul Takanao Wadhwa, Frank Schulenburg, Veronique Kessler, Sue Gardner and 21 volunteers including members of the board and advisory board. The postmortem is expected to be complete in September or October: it currently awaits input from the local planning team, the program committee and scholarships.
Mike.lifeguard wrote:
I recall that in the interview Sue gave with the Wikipedia Weekly at Wikimania, she mentioned that the Foundation staff and Board haven't used the advisory council in a systematic way, and that strategies to do so should be sought. Has any thought been put into how we can better use that expertise, or if rethinking the advisory council is necessary? Looking at the wiki, we have a good team of people, but they're only useful if we tap that resource, instead of simply having blurbs on advisory.wikimedia.org.
I don't know whether this should be addressed in the context of the Wikimania postmortem or not, I was simply reminded as that's where the interview was given.
The advisory board was one of the major topics of discussion at our board meeting. It hasn't been used systematically partly because it wasn't organized systematically, being more a collection of people with some public profile who would be sympathetic to our objectives. The board and staff have benefited from the help of a number of individuals on the advisory board, however, and hope to strengthen that by a selection process designed for that purpose.
--Michael Snow
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