Hi all,
the new bulletin from Wikimedia Italia (#41) is available.
This time we write about Wiki Loves Monument aftermath, the preparation of
third Open Data Day and the forthcoming celebrations for 10 years of CC
licenses.
As usual a link has been added to meta, at
Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Italia ; raw text of the bulletin
follows below.
ciao, .mau.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
*WikimediaNews* - no. 41 - December 12, 2012
Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
Wiki Loves Monuments Italy in the world
Wiki Loves Monuments Italy has been a wonderful journey and still is: we
started with a handful of "freed" monuments and we ended up with two
pictures classified in the international contest! The image of the Teatro
Comunale di Ferrara by Andrea Parisi came fifth, while the photo of the
Baptistery of San Pietro di Asti was ranked fifteenth. More info on the blog
of Wiki Loves Monuments
Italy<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/2012/12/litalia-nel-contest-internazionale/>.
The great satisfaction of Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 motivates us to design
a competition even more exciting for next year. But we still need your
support! This time you can help us without spending a dime, but simply by
voting: we have passed the first stage of the contest "Che fare" ("What To
Do"), and now we are trying to pass at the third stage. The winner of the
contest will receive a prize of €100,000. Go to Che fare!
site<http://www.che-fare.com/>and vote for the project no. 31!
Wikimedia Italia at Open Data Day
Wednesday, December 5, the first preparatory meeting for the third Open
Data Day <http://opendataday.it/> was held in Bologna. The Open Data Day
which be February 23, 2013; Italy will participate for the first time. It
is a public discussion, with the aim of involving all those who have so far
worked on open data in Italy in support of the activities of Italy Digital
Agency. Many events will be organized throughout the country, and the main
one will take place in Rome.
lettera27 for tenth birthday of Creative Commons
lettera27 Foundation celebrates 10 years since the creation of Creative
Commons licenses, used by Wikipedia and all the other Wikimedia projects,
with an event which will be held in Milan on December 14. lettera27 is a
foundation that supports the right to literacy, education and more
generally access to knowledge and information in every part of the world
and particularly in its most deprived areas. Thanks to the collaboration
between the Foundation and Wikimedia Italy, in 2006 project
WikiAfrica<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:WikiAfrica#Contribuire_a_WikiAfrica>was
born, that this year has reached the goal of contributing to Wikipedia
with 30,000 images and texts about Africa, released under a free license.
This is a good reason to give thanks and celebrate Creative Commons.
News in brief
(Note: in this translated version only the news regarding Italy are shown)
- Wiki Loves Monuments Italy blog is hosting a tour of the best pictures
in the world edition of the contest. See the WLM Tours in Spain and
Andorra<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/2012/11/wlm-tour-spagna-e-andorra/>and
France
and Switzerland<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/2012/12/wlm-tour-francia-e-svizzera/>.
Dear all,
I am sending you the monthly report of Wikimedia Deutschland for November
2012.
Highlights this month:
* the eleventh general assembly of Wikimedia Deutschland and the community
event Open Sunday<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Offener_Sonntag>
*the research project RENDER <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RENDER>finished
its second year successfully
*the annual fundraiser<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraiser_2012>started
and WMDE uses personal appeals from Wikipedia volunteers for the
first time
The report is available on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Deutsch…
Enjoy,
Katja
--
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstraße 72 | 10963 Berlin
Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen
Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
**** Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales
Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird.
Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition! http://wikipedia.de ****
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Dear all,
The Affiliations Committee [1], the committee that is responsible for
guiding volunteers in establishing Chapters, User Groups and Thematic
Organizations ("affiliates" in short) and approving them when they are
ready is looking for about 6 new members.
The main focus of AffCom is to guide groups of volunteers in forming
affiliates. We make sure that the group is large enough to be viable
(and advise them on how to get bigger), review bylaws for compliance
with the requirements and best practices, and advise the Board of the
Wikimedia Foundation on issues connected to Chapters, Thematic
Organizations and User Groups.
This requires communication with volunteers all over the World,
negotiating skills and cultural sensitivity and the ability to
understand legal texts. We try to get a healthy mix of different skill
sets in our members.
Key skills/experience that we are looking for in candidate members,
are typically:
* Excitement by the challenge of helping to empower groups of
volunteers worldwide
* Willingness to work in a sometimes bureaucratic, sometimes political process
* 4 hours per week availability[2]
* International orientation
* Very good communication skills in English
* Ability to work and communicate with other cultures
* Strong understanding of the structure and work of affiliates and the WMF
* Communication skills in other languages are a major plus
* Experience with or in an active affiliate is a major plus
With the help of the Affiliations Committee, 2012 has been an exciting
year of transformation for the movement with the introduction of new
types of affiliation. This means that the workload of the Committee
has increased and diversified and help is wanted! Currently many
applications to become a Chapter, Thematic Organization or User Group
are in the pipeline and can use your attention and dedication!
You can send your applications with your name, contact data (e-mail,
wiki username), experience and motivation to join to the AffCom email
address, affcom AT lists DOT wikimedia DOT org by January 12, 2013.
You will get a confirmation that your application came through.
Members are usually selected every twelve months for staggered two
year terms. The applications will be considered by the current members
and outgoing members and Committee advisers, who are not seeking
re-selection.
Since I will be a candidate for re-selection myself, this process will
be managed by another committee member, Lodewijk Gelauff. I hope for
many suitable applications. If you have any questions, please don't
hesitate to email me or Lodewijk[3] privately. We are happy to chat or
have a phone call with anyone about our work, if this helps them
decide to apply.
Please distribute this call among your networks, and do apply if you
are interested.
Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair,
Affiliations Committee
[1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee (please
follow the links and familiarize yourself with our work)
[2]: Our member standards of participation are at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Standard_…
[3]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Effeietsanders
Dear Wikimedia friends,
let me announce the foundation of Wiki Support – Czech Republic based NGO
focusing the human resources development. Following our mission, we would
like to run some Wikipedia related projects. The motivation is to do things
differently using a help of external volunteers. In the upcoming year we
would like to perform two projects. The first should help Wikimedia
community and Wikimedia Foundation to set and/or customize the Wikipedia
environment to retain more newbies. The second will focus on getting more
content and participants to Wikipedia.
If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us via info at
wikisupport.cz or grab user Juandev via IRC channel. More information on
our Google+[1] and Facebook[2] page.
Best regards,
Jan Lochman
(user Juandev)
Wiki Support
President
IRC: Juandev
E-mail: jan.lochman(a)wikisupport.cz
[1]
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/115222603542943567426/115222603542943567426/p…
[2] http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wiki-Support/326520464111180
Hi all,
The minutes of the WMF board meeting of October 26-27, 2012, have been
ratified and published here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2012-10-26 .
Regards,
Geoff
--
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
Hello folks,
On-passing this FYI --- I hope the formatting doesn't break too much.
If people want to discuss this, maybe the first person could put it on
a wiki page (attached to Narrowing Focus, maybe?) so the discussion is
recorded for other interested parties and can be revisited later,
rather than just being ephemeral.
Thanks,
Sue
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Sue Gardner" <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Dec 5, 2012 7:05 PM
Subject: Announcement: Wikimedia Foundation restructure (Global Dev &
Engineering)
To: "Staff All" <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
hey folks,
The purpose of this note is to lay out some changes to the structure
of the Wikimedia Foundation. Some will take place immediately, and
others will play out over the next six months. I’m announcing it in a
single big note rather than bits & pieces because I want everyone to
have the overview: where we’re headed and why. This will be long ---
please bear with me.
First, some context. Why are we restructuring? Basically: if an
organization’s going to function well, it needs to reorg every now and
then. As an organization grows and changes and learns, its
organizational structure gradually gets out-of-date --- it needs to be
refreshed based on our experiences and our ambitions, or else it’ll
eventually stop working. And structure should follow strategy: as
strategy evolves, structure needs to evolve as well. With the
Narrowing Focus emphasis on engineering and grantmaking, we’ve revised
our strategy, and so we need to refresh our structure too.
So what’s the purpose of this restructure? What are the problems it’s
aiming to solve, and what coming changes do we want to be ready for?
The whole purpose of this restructure is to support increased emphasis
on engineering and grantmaking. Some specific issues:
* The FDC is off to a good start: it’s proved it’s able to make tough
choices, and its decisions are being respected by the chapters and the
community. For the FDC to do a really good job for us next year
though, it's going to need to be able to assess the impact of the
funding it’s given out --- not just “is this organization capable of
spending this much money competently” but “to what extent is this
spending helping the movement achieve its goals.” The FDC won't be
able do that without support from us, and so we need and want to
invest in support for programmatic evaluation. At this point the
movement has very little ability to say “x kind of activity is having
a good effect” and “Y kind of activity is not” -- we need to help
equip it to do that.
* Currently more than half the organization’s staffing and spending is
concentrated in engineering. That’s great and it fits with our
strategy, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense to have half the
organization reflected at the C-level by a single person. I would like
the C-team to be less admin-heavy and more weighted towards
programmatic activities.
* Currently, as Erik has said in an earlier note, he personally makes
any trade-offs that need to be made in terms of where to focus
engineering/product resources. He believes, and so do I, that we could
get better decision quality if there were more debate at the executive
level about tradeoffs.
* After a couple of years of developing the foundations of the
engineering department, we’re ready now to upwards-prioritize user
experience, analytics, and high-level strategic planning and
assessment. We want to add more resources to those areas.
So, what are we going to do?
First, we’re going to revamp Global Development. Starting now, that
department will be called Grantmaking and Programs. It will be co-led
by Anasuya (grantmaking) and Frank (programs). Anasuya and Frank will
have separate direct reports and budgets, but we’re going to keep it
as a single department because neither sub-department is very large
and because the two are deeply interlinked: we wouldn’t have one
without the other. Anasuya, currently Director of Global Learning and
Grantmaking, will become Senior Director of Grantmaking, and Frank,
currently Global Education Program Director, will become Senior
Director of Programs.
Anasuya will be responsible for running all grantmaking processes (for
both individuals and entities) and for helping movement entities, like
chapters and thematic organizations, to develop and mature. Reporting
to Anasuya will be Asaf Bartov, Jessie Wild, Oona Castro and Siko
Bouterse, as well as a Senior Program Officer for the FDC (a new
position that will be filled within the next month or so).
* The Senior Program Officer will be responsible for facilitating the
FDC process, which recommends funding allocations for the largest and
wealthiest Wikimedia organizations such as Wikimedia Germany and
Wikimedia France.
* Asaf continues to be responsible for the Wikimedia Grants Program,
supporting younger, smaller Wikimedia organizations like Wikimedia
Venezuela and Wikimedia Mexico, and for finding non-Wikimedia
organizations that we can fund to carry out good programmatic
activities in developing countries, particularly where there are no
chapters.
* Jessie will be responsible for evaluation and learning for all our
grantmaking --- both helping us internally optimize our processes, and
helping us and the grant recipients assess organizations’ development
(for Anasuya) and the impact of the programs funded by movement
dollars (for Frank).
* Oona will continue to run the Brazil program. Consistent with the
Narrowing Focus plan, she is actively seeking a partner to continue
the work in Brazil within a grants structure similar to the one we
recently negotiated with CIS in India.
* Siko is taking over responsibility from Asaf for all funding for
individuals. This will make it possible for us to grow our individual
grant-making, and it will also free up Asaf to do more small
organization development. Siko will also be responsible for
documentation and analysis of all grants except the ones funded by the
FDC. It’s important for us to grow grantmaking to individuals because
individuals create 99% of the value in the projects. They do it with
practically no funding, but in some cases a little money will be able
to make something great happen.
Frank will be responsible for designing and implementing a
collaborative program evaluation process that will help the movement
optimize its programs, including, but not limited to, those funded by
grants. His clients for that will be fund-seeking entities (to help
them make decisions about what programs to run) and the grantmaking
groups (to help them make decisions about what requests to fund). He
will also continue to hold responsibility for the Wikipedia Zero
project and the Global Education program.
Reporting to Frank will be Kul Wadhwa and a new Senior Program Officer
for the Global Education team (a new position that will be filled
within the next few months, and to whom Annie Lin and LiAnna Davis
will report). Frank will likely also begin to build a small team
supporting program evaluation: he is starting now to develop a plan
for that.
* The Global Education Senior Program Officer will be responsible for
running the Global Education Program, which supports Wikipedians and
educational institutions in running programs in which students write
Wikipedia articles as part of their classwork. This program, which
started a couple of years ago, has proven effective at improving
article quality without costing much money. Inside Global Ed, LiAnna
is responsible for communications (creating and improving materials
and tools for teachers, students and volunteers), and Annie is
responsible for expansion to new geographies. LiAnna and Annie’s roles
won’t change.
* Kul continues to be responsible for leading the Wikipedia Zero team
which makes deals with mobile providers giving their users access to
Wikipedia with no charges for data.
* Jessie reports to Anasuya, but will also support Frank in his
program evaluation work. And, Frank’s program evaluation plan may
result in us creating new positions for evaluation work.
That’s Global Development. Now Engineering.
62% of the Wikimedia Foundation’s staff (79 of 127 people) are in
Engineering and given our increasing emphasis on engineering and
grantmaking we can expect that proportion to grow. That’s a pretty big
span of control for a single person, and so as you know over the past
month we’ve been discussing whether to split the department in two:
one focused on Engineering, and the other Product. After talking it
through (a lot), we’ve decided not to do that right now: we think it’s
possible we may be able to achieve our objectives without breaking up
the department.
So what are going to do?
For the moment, we’re going to keep Engineering as a single
department, incorporating Platform (Rob Lanphier), Features (Terry
Chay), Ops (CT Woo), Mobile (Tomasz Finc), Languages (Alolita Sharma)
and Product (Howie Fung). No change there. We want to
upwards-prioritize user experience, analytics, and high-level
strategic planning and assessment. Here’s what will happen next with
regards to that:
* Erik and Howie are going to hire a Director of User Experience. The
position will be posted sometime in the next few weeks, and we hope to
have the person in place around February/March. Once that happens,
Brandon Harris, Heather Walls, Munaf Assaf, Pau Giner and Vibha Bamba
will report to the Director of User Experience.
* We’re going to have a series of meetings to figure out how best to
structure analytics work. These meetings will include (in various
groupings) me, Erik, Rob, Howie and other internal analytics clients
and stakeholders, and research/analytics staff. To date, the people
working in research and analytics have been distributed throughout the
organization on different teams, reporting to different bosses. Right
now, we are leaning towards combining all those people into a single
department so that they can concentrate their energies and give the
organization maximum bang for its buck. That would include: Aaron
Halfaker, Andrew Otto, Dan Andreescu, Dario Taraborelli, David
Schoonover, Diederik Van Liere, Evan Rosen, Erik Zachte and Ryan
Faulkner. At this point, we’re operating on the assumption that we
will post and board a Director of Analytics (or some similar, possibly
more expansive title) position, probably late in the first three
months of 2013.
* Erik, Gayle and I are going to meet to discuss options for what can
come off Erik’s plate to free him up to focus more on product,
strategy, user experience and analytics and evaluation. In January,
we’ll meet with the Engineering directors to make a final decision
about whether to split the department or add more resources to
Engineering in some other fashion.
Geoff and I are also pleased to announce a change in title for Jay
Walsh. Effective immediately, Jay’s title will change from Head of
Communications to Senior Director, Communications, owing to the
expanded duties and scope of the Foundation's communications team.
Since he started, Jay has grown the team from one to four people (Jay,
James Alexander, Matthew Roth and Tilman Bayer), and it now has a
wider range of responsibilities, including creative direction,
editorial/news production, research, and merchandise. And so, we're
pleased to recognize the considerable work of Jay and the team. (This
really isn’t a restructure-related announcement, but I’m putting it in
this note so all the news comes at once :-))
That’s the roadmap for where we’re headed right now. To summarize:
Global Dev’s name is changing to Grantmaking and Programs, and it will
be co-led by Anasuya (Grantmaking) and Programs (Frank). Some people’s
job functions and reporting lines will change. In Engineering, we are
adding two new positions: a Director of User Experience (search will
launch in January), and a Director of Analytics (or some similar
title) (search will launch by March). We will also be discussing in
January whether to break Engineering into two departments, Engineering
and Product & Strategy, or not.
Last thing I want to say: We’ve been talking about this restructure
for a month or so --- it’s used up a fair bit of organizational energy
and caused some noise and anxiety. So I was interested to read the
other day a new blog post by Clay Shirky, in which he said this: “Open
systems are open. For people used to dealing with institutions that go
out of their way to hide their flaws, this makes these systems look
terrible at first. But anyone who has watched a piece of open source
software improve, or remembers the Britannica people throwing tantrums
about Wikipedia, has seen how blistering public criticism makes open
systems better.”
I am not actually asking for your blistering public criticism :-) But
I am asking you to accept that things are going to be a little messy
for a while, and to continue to engage in good faith as we work
through this stuff. This stuff can be raw because of the implications
for people personally: I’m grateful that for the most part people seem
to have been able to set aside their individual self-interest and
think about what’s good for the organization overall --- I’d ask you
to keep trying to do that.
If you’ve got questions about this, you can ask them here on the list,
or at the metrics meeting tomorrow morning, or speak with your boss or
me.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
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