Hi everyone,
Prior to office hours, Geoff prepared a nice legal strategy overview.
Based on the interest there, I thought it might make sense to distribute
this more widely so that everyone knows what the Foundation's legal team is
up to and what their priorities are.
You can read the document at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham/Strategy.
pb
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce Sarah Stierch as our newest
Community Fellow. Sarah's fellowship begins in January, and she'll be
working on projects focused on the gender gap and editor retention. Read
all about it in our blog post:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/20/announcing-community-fellow-sarah-stie…
Welcome, Sarah!
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Community Fellowships
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
***Resending this note because the earlier version seemed to have
really broken formatting. Hope this is better.***
Hello folks,
I’m delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new
Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Gayle Karen Young.
Recapping: the purpose of the CTCO role is to have a person on staff
dedicated to continually strengthening and improving all our practices
related to people --such as recruitment, on-boarding, skills
development, organizational design, goal-setting, compensation and
performance assessment-- with the overall goal of ensuring that the
Wikimedia Foundation’s work culture is healthy and high-performance.
I created the role because I believe that for organizations to be
effective, it's critical that they have good talent and culture
practices. Most non-profits skimp on funding HR because they want to
be cautious with donors’ money, and they think investing in people is
a bit of a luxury. I disagree. At the Wikimedia Foundation, half our
spending is on salaries -- in other words, on people. So it seems to
me that recruiting great people and creating the conditions in which
they can flourish, is an excellent investment. That’s why the
Wikimedia Foundation has a CTCO.
Back to Gayle. A few months ago, Cyn Skyberg told Wikimedia she’d be
leaving us. I then hired Lisa Grossman of m|Oppenheim to find us a
successor for Cyn. Lisa spoke with hundreds of candidates, and brought
six to be interviewed by me, Erik and Garfield Byrd. Our finalist
candidates then spoke with Cyn, Barry, Geoff and Zack, and worked on
projects for us which involved interviewing Aaron Schulz, Alolita
Sharma, Asher Feldman, Brandon Harris, CT Woo, Dana Isokawa, Howie
Fung, Jay Walsh, Kul Wadhwa, Leslie Harms, Melanie Brown, Rob
Lanphier, Steven Walling and Tomasz Finc. They were also interviewed
by Jan-Bart de Vreede, the vice-chair of the Board and the chair of
the Board’s HR committee.
It was an extensive search! And I am really happy about the outcome.
Gayle Karen Young is a seasoned HR consultant and organizational
psychologist with expertise in leadership development, change
management, facilitation, group dynamics, and Agile team effectiveness
training. She has worked with a wide variety of non-profit and
for-profit organizations across industries including tech,
hospitality, restaurants, airlines, healthcare, and education. She is
the board president of Spark, a non-profit organization that engages
young people in global women’s human rights issues. Gayle is also a
facilitator for the Stanford Graduate School of Business for their
Interpersonal Dynamics course and their Women in Management program.
She mentors for the Thiel Foundation’s 20 Under 20 Fellowship program,
and generally supports futurist causes because she likes audacious
ideas and grand challenges. She has designed and facilitated
conferences for the Singularity Summit, BIL (TED’s un-conference
sibling), and the Seasteading Institute. She has a BA in psychology
from the University of San Francisco, and an MA in organizational
psychology from Alliant International University.
I think Gayle will be a really great culture fit for the Wikimedia
movement. She's an iconoclastic geek who goes to ComicCon, but unlike
most geeks she is warm and people-centred: when she was a kid, she
wanted to grow up to be Deanna Troi from Star Trek. She’s insatiably
curious and reads widely. She was born in the Philippines and travels
annually with Spark, most recently to China and Cambodia. You can read
more about Gayle here on her userpage on the English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GayleKaren, and you can see some of
the work she’s done for us here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GayleKaren/WMF_Recruiting_Strategy_Project.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in this long and elaborate
hiring process, and I want to especially thank Cyn. As the Wikimedia
Foundation's first CTCO Cyn had the unenviable task of breaking lots
of new ground – she leaves us in much better shape than she found us,
and I’m grateful to her for everything she's done for us.
Gayle will start work January 3. She’s a foundation-l subscriber, so I
believe she will see any replies to this e-mail. I'm on holiday for
the next three days, so if there are any replies to this note that
need a response from me, you'll hear from me Friday.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hello folks,
I’m delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new
Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Gayle Karen Young.
Recapping: the purpose of the CTCO role is to have a person on staff
dedicated to continually strengthening and improving all our practices
related to people --such as recruitment, on-boarding, skills
development, organizational design, goal-setting, compensation and
performance assessment-- with the overall goal of ensuring that the
Wikimedia Foundation’s work culture is healthy and high-performance. I
created the role because I believe that for organizations to be
effective, it's critical that they have good talent and culture
practices. Most non-profits skimp on funding HR because they want to
be cautious with donors’ money, and they think investing in people is
a bit of a luxury. I disagree. At the Wikimedia Foundation, half our
spending is on salaries -- in other words, on people. So it seems to
me that recruiting great people and creating the conditions in which
they can flourish, is an excellent investment. That’s why the
Wikimedia Foundation has a CTCO. Back to Gayle. A few months ago, Cyn
Skyberg told Wikimedia she’d be leaving us. I then hired Lisa Grossman
of m|Oppenheim to find us a successor for Cyn. Lisa spoke with
hundreds of candidates, and brought six to be interviewed by me, Erik
and Garfield Byrd. Our finalist candidates then spoke with Cyn, Barry,
Geoff and Zack, and worked on projects for us which involved
interviewing Aaron Schulz, Alolita Sharma, Asher Feldman, Brandon
Harris, CT Woo, Dana Isokawa, Howie Fung, Jay Walsh, Kul Wadhwa,
Leslie Harms, Melanie Brown, Rob Lanphier, Steven Walling and Tomasz
Finc. They were also interviewed by Jan-Bart de Vreede, the vice-chair
of the Board and the chair of the Board’s HR committee.
It was an extensive search! And I am really happy about the outcome.
Gayle Karen Young is a seasoned HR consultant and organizational
psychologist with expertise in leadership development, change
management, facilitation, group dynamics, and Agile team effectiveness
training. She has worked with a wide variety of non-profit and
for-profit organizations across industries including tech,
hospitality, restaurants, airlines, healthcare, and education. She is
the board president of Spark, a non-profit organization that engages
young people in global women’s human rights issues. Gayle is also a
facilitator for the Stanford Graduate School of Business for their
Interpersonal Dynamics course and their Women in Management program.
She mentors for the Thiel Foundation’s 20 Under 20 Fellowship program,
and generally supports futurist causes because she likes audacious
ideas and grand challenges. She has designed and facilitated
conferences for the Singularity Summit, BIL (TED’s un-conference
sibling), and the Seasteading Institute. She has a BA in psychology
from the University of San Francisco, and an MA in organizational
psychology from Alliant International University. I think Gayle will
be a really great culture fit for the Wikimedia movement. She's an
iconoclastic geek who goes to ComicCon, but unlike most geeks she is
warm and people-centred: when she was a kid, she wanted to grow up to
be Deanna Troi from Star Trek. She’s insatiably curious and reads
widely. She was born in the Philippines and travels annually with
Spark, most recently to China and Cambodia. You can read more about
Gayle here on her userpage on the English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GayleKaren, and you can see some of
the work she’s done for us here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GayleKaren/WMF_Recruiting_Strategy_Project.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in this long and elaborate
hiring process, and I want to especially thank Cyn. As the Wikimedia
Foundation's first CTCO Cyn had the unenviable task of breaking lots
of new ground – she leaves us in much better shape than she found us,
and I’m grateful to her for everything she's done for us.
Gayle will start work January 3. She’s a foundation-l subscriber, so I
believe she will see any replies to this e-mail. I'm on holiday for
the next three days, so if there are any replies to this note that
need a response from me, you'll hear from me Friday.
Thanks,
Sue
--Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The Wikimedia Foundation is happy to announce the release of the 2010-11
Annual Report, which is now posted on the WMF Wiki at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
>From here you can download a high and lo res PDF of the report, or go right
to the meta-hosted wiki version. And for the first time, you can access
translated 'summary' reports in 6 languages. Printed copies are being
worked on right now (proofs being developed) and copies should be in the
WMF office next week.
This year we considerably expanded our multi-lingual effort by adding 6
translated 'summary' reports in Arabic, Japanese, French, German,
Portugese, and Spanish. It's our first really visible multi-lingual
communications product, and it took some serious coordination to time
translation, design, production and wiki publishing.
This year's report focusses on global celebrations around Wikipedia 10, our
emerging work in India, the global education program, our mobile expansion
efforts, and on our major engineering/product accomplishments and
ambitions. We center the book around the amazing Arab Spring article,
highlighting the inspiring quote from Wael Ghonim 'Our revolution is like
Wikipedia...'
The report is as much a story of the work and activities of our
international community as it is a traditional report on the work of WMF
through the year. We hope it's not construed as a report focussed on the
work of WMF staff, rather a wide-ranging review of the work of chapters,
volunteers, partners - individuals and other kinds of volunteers. We aim
to enlighten the reader with the incredible range of activity and
innovation in our movement - to take them beyond the idea that Wikipedia is
simply text living on the web and show them a thriving and dynamic
community.
We also hope that the report can find an audience in those completely new
to our projects and our movement. It should enlighten and deepen someone's
understanding of what this world is about - spurning (requiring!) that they
join us - whether as an editor, donor, partner or even employee.
We open the book with the declaration 'the way the world tells its story' -
an idea the report production team was fascinated by. Wikipedia grown to
become the default place where all people are welcome to share their
history, geography, cultures - the story of the world. The Arab Spring
article stands in the center of this metaphor, a page that took shape in
this extraordinary year and helped millions of people around the world
develop a deeper, neutral, and timely understanding of the events that have
changed the middle east and the world forever.
As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions. You can add comments
along with the community on the meta wiki talk pages.
Many thanks to the report production team: Tilman Bayer, design strategist
David Peters, and our story consultant David Weir. Our communications
intern AJ was also a big help. Mostly we owe huge thanks to the Wikimedians
who made and shared the beautiful imagery in the book by posting it to
Commons. This is an ambitious, 100% fueled-by-free-works project. I'd like
to think it's one of the more unique and successful free culture printed
works out there - and it wouldn't be possible without our community.
Thanks and enjoy!
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
Today the Wikimedia Foundation posted an important update on how the Stop
Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation being considered in DC this week
threatens an open and free web, and particularly how it threatens Wikipedia.
The post is authored by WMF's General Counsel, Geoff Brigham, and can be
found here:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wi…
We encourage everyone to broadly share this information among our volunteer
community, throughout your networks, and wherever an audience passionate
about protecting the free and open web can be found.
Thanks,
jay walsh
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.orgblog.wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
WMF is now seeking fellowship applicants and project ideas for the
Community Fellowships Program. Community members from all Wikimedia
projects and all languages are strongly encouraged to apply by the deadline
of January 15th 2012.
Wikimedia Community Fellows are spearheading community projects,
undertaking research, and piloting new models for engagement to help scale
and increase sustainability of volunteer work in the Wikimedia movement.
The Foundation provides intensive, time-limited financial and logistical
support for fellows to focus on projects of strategic importance.
Submissions for Spring 2012 are encouraged to focus on the theme of
improving editor retention and increasing participation in Wikimedia
Projects.
If you'd like to work with WMF on projects to boost participation and
retention, or know someone who should be recommended for a fellowship, or
if you've got ideas for a fellowship project WMF could support, we'd like
to hear from you! Please visit
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships for more information.
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Community Fellowships
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org