FYI - belatedly forwarding after internal announcement:
- - -
Hi folks,
Guillaume Paumier has been Technical Communications Manager in the
Engineering Community Team since early 2011. In this role, he's been
instrumental in developing the monthly engineering reports (including
all the underlying infrastructure on mediawiki.org), vetting and
writing technical blog posts and social media updates, and most
recently, co-launching the weekly tech newsletter and keeping it
running.
Guillaume's role is changing, and he will shift to my department as
part of the Engineering/Product department division. He will report
directly to me as Senior Analyst, and I will deploy him to projects of
strategic importance that require his expertise (any Guillaume
deployments will not be noted on the deployments calendar). Guillaume
will continue to put some of his time towards the tech newsletters and
reports for the time being (though we're considering to merge the
two), but other communications responsibilities will be handled by
Katherine's team.
What does it mean to be a Senior Analyst? As a long-time Wikimedian
(since 2005), Guillaume understands many of Wikimedia's workflows
deeply. As a self-confessed OCD introvert, he loves documenting,
analyzing; breaking apart things and putting them back together in
novel ways. He's awesome at information architecture, and at really
thinking through all the options to solve a complex product problem.
In other words, when I see a product that benefits from deep community
expertise, I can throw Guillaume at it and he'll help. :)
The first project Guillaume is taking on in this new role is the file
metadata cleanup drive, preparatory to the Structured Data work the
multimedia team will focus on in coming months. You can read more
about it here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_metadata_cleanup_drive
Finally, it's my pleasure to announce that Guillaume is also
relocating (back!) to the San Francisco Bay Area. Please join me in
congratulating Guillaume in this new role and wishing him a
stress-free move to San Francisco.
Warmly,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
Dear friends and colleagues,
I am delighted to announce that Jake Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi, User:Ocaasi (WMF))
is joining the Grantmaking department at WMF to lead The Wikipedia Library
(TWL)[1], an online resource for Wikipedians to get free access to
journal subscriptions.
In the last year, TWL has helped nearly 2000 unique users access 3000
accounts of sources like JSTOR, Elsevier, De Gruyter, and Oxford University
Press,[2] and is now experimenting with community-run branches in Arabic,
German and other languages.
Jake will be a full-time contractor with part-time support from Alex Stinson
(User:Sadads, User:Astinson (WMF)) for an initial period of six months.
They are both working with an amazing volunteer team of Wikipedians guided
by Head of Volunteer Coordination (User:Nikkimaria). We're particularly
looking forward to seeing how TWL can expand its global (non-English) work,
and what it can teach us about the best ways to support some of our top
contributors, and improve content on our projects.
Many of you know Jake well, but for those who don't: Jake (Ocaasi) is a
long time Wikipedian, with two Individual Engagement Grants from us, and he
has been on the IEG grants committee for the past two years. Jake works
remotely from Philadelphia but is frequently in the Bay Area, especially
during long and dark East Coast winters. Alex has been involved for many
years with both Education and GLAM outreach. He resides in Kansas where he
works on Digital Humanities at Kansas State.
You can catch up on all of TWL's new happenings in the latest edition of
the Books and Bytes newsletter.[7] We're excited to bring The Wikipedia
Library on board and look forward to its growth and evolution!
Warmly,
Anasuya
Jake Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi) started editing in 2007 as an ip. Early on he
worked on articles about religious groups, political movements,
and alternative health. Around 2010 he shifted focus from editing
to helping new users, working in the irc-help channel and developing the Plain
and Simple guide for New Editors [3] and its COI counterpart [4]. In 2012
Jake began developing projects through the Individual Engagement Grants
department at WMF. He built The Wikipedia Adventure,[5] a playful
interactive game to onboard new editors. He also began establishing and
expanding donation partnerships in The Wikipedia Library to provide free
research access to top article contributors. He helps out as a board member
of Wiki Project Med Foundation [6] and gives talks about Wikipedia's role
in education. Jake grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and studied
political theory at Wesleyan, before starting a tutoring company in
Colorado. He currently splits his time between coasts, working
full-time on Wikipedia
projects. His contract with WMF will focus on expanding the number and
global reach of Wikipedia Library partnerships.
Alex Stinson (User:Sadads) is a 9-year editor with over 80,000 contributions,
actively involved in different forms of outreach. He
is currently a project manager with the The Wikipedia Library, a long time
volunteer with The Wikipedia Education Program, and supporter of GLAM-Wiki
outreach. Alex has a Masters degree in English Literature from Kansas State
University with research focused on cultural studies and the digital
humanities. He works as a digital humanist at K-State, where he helps
develop projects and create partnerships with educators and cultural
institutions.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/The_Wikipedia_Library/Renewal/Fi…
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PANDS
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PSCOI
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WPMED
[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Newsletter/Au…
--
*Anasuya SenguptaSenior Director of GrantmakingWikimedia Foundation*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Support Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
TL;DR: Please comment on any or all of the 11 2014-2015 Round 1 proposals
from Wikimedia movement organizations to the Annual Plan Grants program
from now til 31 October!
Greetings, Wikimedia community:
We are happy to share with you that eleven applicants have submitted
proposals in 2014-2015 Round 1 of the Annual Plan Grants (APG) process.
These Wikimedia organizations are requesting general funding to support
their annual plans, which include both programmatic and operational costs.
These eleven requests in Round 1 total about US$5.2 million of US$6 million
available in both rounds this year. In November, the Funds Dissemination
Committee (FDC) will meet to review and deliberate on these proposals. They
will make a recommendation to the WMF Board of Trustees about how to
strategically grant funds to these applicants in order to achieve the most
impact.
>From now until October 31, we invite everyone to review the proposals, and
to provide thoughts and ask questions on the discussion pages of the
proposals:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/Community/Review.
About community review: The APG proposal submission date on October 1 is
followed by a 30-day open comment period, when anyone is invited to provide
input on and ask questions about specific proposals on the discussion pages
of the proposal forms. Applicants are also expected to respond to input and
questions during this period, although they are not able to change the
proposal form itself after the submission date.
The FDC will review the discussion pages during their deliberations in
November as one of many inputs to the decision-making process. While anyone
can comment on proposals after the open comment period closes on October
31, the FDC may not be able to take comments made after this period into
consideration when making its decisions.
How to join in the review: Please visit the community review page to view
the proposals being considered and follow the instructions on that page.
The proposals are only available in English, but your comments on the
discussion pages can be in your own language.
Why your feedback matters: We hope that this open comment period will add
to an in-depth and robust review of each proposal. The community review
process also helps make our grantmaking transparent and collaborative. The
FDC highly values feedback and insights from the Wikimedia community in
making its funding recommendations.
Here are a few milestones to keep in mind with the FDC process:
* Proposal forms submitted: 1 October 2014
* Open comment period / Community review: 2 October 2014, until 31 October
2014
* Staff proposal assessments published: 8 November 2014
* FDC deliberations: 15-18 November 2014
* FDC recommendation published: by 1 December 2014
* Board decision: by 1 January 2015
* Start of new grant terms: 1 January 2015
Visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information for more
information about the APG program, the FDC, or the dates listed here. Please
let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about the
process. We are always happy to talk! The FDC support staff can be reached
at FDCsupport(a)wikimedia.org
Warm regards,
Katy Love and the FDC staff