As Liam said: Beautiful document. To enhance it for the non-English speakers, is it possible to translate it? I began (for the French language) but it would be a waste of time if it cannot be published in French, or at least indicated on [1] there is a (eventually unofficial) French version. There is also a lot of page layout which must be adapted (are the sources of the PDF available? in a Scribus/InDesign/other format).
Sébastien/Seb35
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
From: Jay Walsh jwalsh@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:09:45 -0800 Subject: [Foundation-l] 2008/2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report Hi all,
In the next day or so Rand and the fundraising team will be sending out an email to all of our donors (about 230,000 - thanks to a tremendous fundraiser) recapping the campaign sharing our 2nd annual report, which you can also read here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
As with our previous year's report, we make an effort to describe the year's activities, our major accomplishments, our financial successes, and where we're heading in the coming year/years. This is a crucial tool for our fundraisers and for building strong relationships with our major stakeholders, and of course to let our chapters and our vast community of volunteers get a snapshot of our work. It's primarily intended to work as a print document, and one that quickly presents top-line data and key information, as well as a basic structured narrative about the Foundation and our volunteer community's work.
You'll note that our report is out later than last year, and this isn't a pattern we'll duplicate :) We did spend more time on design and narrative this year, with the intention of bringing more depth to the story, especially in features like the center-spread anatomy of an article. We also wanted to put more of a forward-facing direction on the report. Optimally our report will always come out 2-3 months after the close of fiscal, as soon as our audited statements are complete.
There's still more good work to be done, but it's a big leap from last year. This year's designers David Peters and Rhonda Rubenstein did a great job (collectively known as 'ExBrook design' here in SF http://www.exbrook.com/). Lane Hartwell's ccbysa photos feature prominently - she's been shooting our staff portraits for the last two years (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photography_by_Lane_Hartwell).
We'll be starting work on the next edition in a few months. About 1500 copies will be printed here in the next week or so. We'll be sure to bring copies to the chapter meeting and of course Wikimania. We can ship some copies out as well if there's interest (but in limited quantities only, it's a pricy shipment after 10 locations :)
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
-- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 609, @jansonw
Very impressed with the report, I found it rather inspiring.
Is it too late for a proof-reading note?
On page 12 headed "Gathering Support", attached to the timeline at the bottom, there is a caption saying "Annual Giving Campaign surpasses $6mm goal from over 125k donors globally".
I guess there should be just one 'm' following the '6'?
On 24 January 2010 18:57, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Very impressed with the report, I found it rather inspiring.
Is it too late for a proof-reading note?
On page 12 headed "Gathering Support", attached to the timeline at the bottom, there is a caption saying "Annual Giving Campaign surpasses $6mm goal from over 125k donors globally".
I guess there should be just one 'm' following the '6'?
Probably, but you can justify two. It is common to repeat an abbreviation to denote the plural ("pp. 5-7" for "pages 5 to 7"), so $6mm would mean "six millions of dollars", which is an odd way to say it, but not strictly incorrect. (Gordon Brown, the British PM, often pluralises "million" and "billion" when talking about large sums of money - it always annoys me!)
Great, great work folks. The report looks awesome and beautifully communicates the achievements of the Foundation and its projects in 08-09.
Nathan
Hello,
Thanks for the comment. The "mm" signifies millions which is the amount the timeline is representing, $6 million from 125,000 donors globally. If we were to replace it with one "m", that would signify only $6 thousand.
See also: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_abbreviation_of_million
Veronique
Bod Notbod wrote:
Very impressed with the report, I found it rather inspiring.
Is it too late for a proof-reading note?
On page 12 headed "Gathering Support", attached to the timeline at the bottom, there is a caption saying "Annual Giving Campaign surpasses $6mm goal from over 125k donors globally".
I guess there should be just one 'm' following the '6'?
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks for the comment. The "mm" signifies millions which is the amount the timeline is representing, $6 million from 125,000 donors globally. If we were to replace it with one "m", that would signify only $6 thousand.
See also: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_abbreviation_of_million
I'm not sure whether to take you seriously given the reference at that link but anyway...
How about the fifth bullet point here:
2010/1/25 Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org:
Hello,
Thanks for the comment. The "mm" signifies millions which is the amount the timeline is representing, $6 million from 125,000 donors globally. If we were to replace it with one "m", that would signify only $6 thousand.
See also: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_abbreviation_of_million
"M" before the abbreviation of a unit means 1,000, but on its own it is far more commonly used to mean 1,000,000. "m" never means 1,000 - it means 1/1,000 when used with the abbreviation of a unit, but on its own it usually means 1,000,000 too.
On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure whether to take you seriously given the reference at that link but anyway...
Since Veronique is the WMF employee responsible for the accuracy of the number, you probably should. I've seen mm used for millions in dollars used before; its uncommon, but not incorrect. Kind of a picayune criticism anyway, that could have been communicated directly rather than on-list.
~Nathan
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Thomas Dalton wrote:
2010/1/25 Veronique Kessler vkessler@wikimedia.org:
Hello,
Thanks for the comment. The "mm" signifies millions which is the amount the timeline is representing, $6 million from 125,000 donors globally. If we were to replace it with one "m", that would signify only $6 thousand.
See also: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_abbreviation_of_million
"M" before the abbreviation of a unit means 1,000, but on its own it is far more commonly used to mean 1,000,000. "m" never means 1,000 - it means 1/1,000 when used with the abbreviation of a unit, but on its own it usually means 1,000,000 too.
I beg to differ, Thomas. It may be an Americanism (I would have to find a source for that), but "M" is generally understood to refer to thousands in currency. It comes directly from the Latin "Mille".
- -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 6:17 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Kind of a picayune criticism anyway, that could have been communicated directly rather than on-list.
It was less than a picayune criticism; it wasn't a criticism at all.
I expressed my great satisfaction with the document, as have others.
I think it would be apparent that I was merely trying to help.
Much good it has done me.
Translation would be a dream, of course. And in every thing we do we try to establish a means for creating a translated version. For a complex design document like this, translation is never going to be easy.
The Outreach team's bookshelf project is exploring this challenge in detail, and in the next few months I hope we can collaboratively develop a production strategy for multi-lingual documents. If so, there's a chance that we might use that approach for the subsequent annual report. It's a very difficult undertaking, and not one that would easily unfold economically or in the same look and feel style that we're aiming for in the report.
Certainly something to consider.
On 01/25/2010 10:26 AM, Cary Bass wrote:
"M" before the abbreviation of a unit means 1,000, but on its own
it is far more commonly used to mean 1,000,000. "m" never means 1,000 - it means 1/1,000 when used with the abbreviation of a unit, but on its own it usually means 1,000,000 too.
I beg to differ, Thomas. It may be an Americanism (I would have to find a source for that), but "M" is generally understood to refer to thousands in currency. It comes directly from the Latin "Mille".
If there's one mailing list in the world where readers will forgive me for digging into this, I imagine it's this one.
The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg all use "m" after currency to denote million. E.g.:
"Yahoo! reported a profit of $153m in the fourth quarter." [1] "Boston Scientific To Pay $22M To Settle DOJ Investigation" [2] "Avatar takes $242m globally in first weekend" [3] "Waterland May Bid $100M for MetLife's Taiwan Unit, Times Says" [4]
The New York Times, as far as I can tell, always writes the word out. And Reuters seems to use both mln and m.
The only common use I can think of where M doesn't represent millions is in the advertising term CPM, or cost per mille:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_mille
William
[1] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15406816 [2] http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091223-710631.html [3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94f9e866-ee99-11de-944c-00144feab49a.html
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 1:08 AM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
The only common use I can think of where M doesn't represent millions is in the advertising term CPM, or cost per mille:
Okay, so how about we just ask them to use "K" for thousands in the future, to reduce confusion, and let this thread die? :-)
Casey Brown wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 1:08 AM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
The only common use I can think of where M doesn't represent millions is in the advertising term CPM, or cost per mille:
Okay, so how about we just ask them to use "K" for thousands in the future, to reduce confusion, and let this thread die? :-)
Better still is to avoid abbreviations altogether. This is a multicultural environment, and very few abbreviations, including "K", avoid confusion; they mostly create it. The Chicago Manual of Style does not appear to mention these abbreviations at all. Spelling things out is just good writing style.
Ec
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