This press release is also available online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_we…
A version of this as a blog post is available here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/27/wmf-welcomes-vp-partnerships/
Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Kourosh Karimkhany as VP of Strategic
Partnerships
- *New position to advance knowledge and mission through strategic
collaboration *
The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to welcome Kourosh Karimkhany as Vice
President of Strategic Partnerships on March 30, 2015. In this newly
created role, Kourosh will initiate, maintain, and grow strategic
relationships and partnerships that advance the Wikimedia mission, support
the community, and increase access to knowledge globally.
Today, Wikipedia attracts nearly half a billion visitors and more than 20
billion page views each month. At the same time, hundreds of millions of
people interact with data and content from the Wikimedia projects on third
party platforms and properties. Our mission is to make the sum of all human
knowledge freely available to the world, and content distribution and
sharing play a key role in that process.
The Wikimedia Foundation has created this new strategic role to identify
and manage these opportunities, and convert some of them into sharing and
distribution partnerships in order to advance our mission. Kourosh joins us
in this senior leadership role to craft a partnership strategy and create
long-term value for Wikimedia projects through partnerships, projects, and
relationships.
“Our aim is to empower people around the world with knowledge,” said Lila
Tretikov <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov>, executive director
of the Wikimedia Foundation. “To fulfill that goal, we need to think
creatively about opportunities to work with like-minded organizations.
Kourosh will help us focus on our continued service to our community and
users, and progress toward our mission.”
As Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Kourosh will oversee the
Wikimedia Foundation’s partnership strategy, including Wikipedia Zero, a
partnership-based project. Wikipedia Zero is designed to increase access to
knowledge for people around the world. Applying additional focus to that
work and orienting it within a larger partnerships strategy will help us
work more effectively to achieve our mission.
The many fruitful and creative partnerships the Wikimedia community has
already built to support knowledge creation and sharing around the world
will be better supported as a result of this change. The partnerships group
will help us identify the strategic initiatives we must take on at the WMF
and increase our ability to support the movement and mission.
Kourosh is an experienced digital media executive. He started his career as
a technology journalist covering Silicon Valley for Bloomberg, Reuters and
Wired. He switched to the business side of media when he joined Yahoo as
senior producer of Yahoo News. Later, he was the head of corporate
development at Conde Nast where he spearheaded the acquisition of
Wired.com, Ars Technica and Reddit. He also cofounded Food Republic in
2009, which was acquired in 2013. He is an active angel investor and
startup advisor.
Kourosh will report to Chief Advancement Officer Lisa Gruwell under the
newly created Advancement Department. To learn more about these changes,
please see our FAQ <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Partnerships_FAQ>.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
-
https://wikimediafoundation.org
-
https://blog.wikimedia.org/
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia consists of more than 34
million articles in 288 languages. Every month, tens of thousands of active
volunteers contribute to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. With
nearly half a billion monthly users, projects operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation are one of the most popular web properties in the world. Based
in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
Wikimedia Foundation Press Contact
Katherine Maher
-
+1 415-839-6885 ext. 6633
-
press(a)wikimedia.org
--
*Juliet Barbara*
Senior Communications Manager I Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94105
jbarbara(a)wikimedia.org I +1 (512) 750-5677
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This press release is also available online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Guy_Kawasaki_joins_Wiki…
A version of this as a blog post is available here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/24/guy-kawasaki-joins-wikimedia-board/
*Guy Kawasaki joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees*
-
*Author, entrepreneur to bring unique experience to the Wikimedia movement *
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the newest member of its Board of
Trustees, Guy Kawasaki <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Kawasaki>. Guy is
a noted entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. He currently serves as chief
evangelist of Canva, an online, graphic-design service, and as an executive
fellow of Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There are few projects in the history of the world that can have the
long-term impact of Wikimedia.” said Guy. “The democratization of knowledge
that Wikimedia stands for has been a long time in the coming, and I relish
applying my passion and experience to this amazing mission.”
“Guy joins the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees at an exciting time,”
said Jan-Bart de Vreede, Wikimedia Foundation board chair. “We have great
opportunities ahead, and Guy brings a wealth of experience and perspective
as we look to that future.”
Prior to joining Canva, Guy served as special advisor to the CEO of the
Motorola business unit of Google. He is perhaps most widely known for his
time at Apple, where he developed and popularized the concept of “secular
evangelism” for Apple’s brand, culture, and products as the firm’s chief
evangelist. Guy will continue in his full-time role as chief evangelist of
Canva.
Guy is a *New York Times* bestselling author of books such as *The Art of
the Start 2.0*, *The Art of Social Media*, *Enchantment*, and ten other
books about change, innovation, marketing, and disruption. He gives more
than fifty keynote speeches a year and is a frequent public commentator on
subjects such as innovation, enchantment, social media, evangelism, and
entrepreneurship.
"Guy grasps what really moves people," said Lila Tretikov, Wikimedia
Foundation Executive Director. "His passion for extraordinary experiences
is a perfect fit for Wikipedia's remarkable mission. I am confident this
will be an incredible collaboration."
Guy holds an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA
from Stanford University. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Guy is an American who
resides with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Please see the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Guy_Kawasaki> for a
complete biography of Guy Kawasaki.
*About the Wikimedia Foundation*
- https://wikimediafoundation.org
- https://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia consists of more than 34
million articles in 288 languages. Every month, tens of thousands of active
volunteers contribute to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. With
nearly half a billion monthly users, projects operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation are one of the most popular web properties in the world. Based
in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
*Wikimedia Foundation Press Contact*
Katherine Maher
- +1 415-839-6885 ext 6633
- press(a)wikimedia.org
--
*Juliet Barbara*
Senior Communications Manager I Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94105
jbarbara(a)wikimedia.org I +1 (512) 750-5677
(To be unsubscribed from this press release distribution list, please reply to communications(a)wikimedia.org with 'UNSUBSCRIBE' in the subject line)
See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T93210 for details.
Quoting from the discussion: «As of today, there is broad consensus in
support of the proposal, as discussed by an ample spectrum of users
active in multiple wikis. Several users stressed that: talk page access
is crucial, to ensure communication with mobile users; errors of the
past, like the mobile uploads campaign, must not be repeated; local and
global effects in terms of (un)productive contributions will be under
constant monitoring and re-evaluation per the usual processes.»
Nemo
This press release is also available online here:
*https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_adopts_Open_Access_Policy_to_support_free_knowledge
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_ad…>*
A version of this as a blog post is available here:
*https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/>*
*Wikimedia Foundation adopts Open Access Policy to support free knowledge*
-
Future research supported by the Wikimedia Foundation to be made freely
available
The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to making knowledge of all forms
freely available to the world. Beginning today, our new Open Access Policy
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy> will ensure that
all research work produced with support from the Wikimedia Foundation will
be openly available
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiative#Definition_of…>
to the public and reusable on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. We are
pleased to announce this new policy at the 18th ACM conference on
Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work and Social Computing <http://cscw.acm.org/2015/> (CSCW
2015).
“Wikimedia is committed to nurturing open knowledge for all, unrestrained
by cost barriers,” said Lila Tretikov
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov>, executive director of the
Wikimedia Foundation. “The Wikimedia movement has a longstanding commitment
to open access practices. Today, we are excited to formalize that
commitment with this policy.”
Over the past decade Wikipedia has been the subject of hundreds
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2021326> of academic
studies on topics such as flu forecasting
<http://www.technologyreview.com/view/532246/how-wikipedia-data-is-revolutio…>,
the influence of major global languages
<http://language.media.mit.edu/visualizations/wikipedia>, and Wikipedia’s
own geographic imbalances
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geographic_imbalance>. The
Wikimedia Foundation has made this research possible through a commitment
to making Wikipedia’s data open and accessible.
Open access scholarship is central to Wikimedia's mission to empower people
around the world to participate in knowledge creation. Access to these open
sources is critical to ensuring that articles on Wikipedia are reliable,
accurate, and reflect our ever-evolving understanding of the world.
Paywalls and copyright restrictions too often prevent the use of academic
research in this effort.
Our new Open Access Policy will ensure that all research the Wikimedia
Foundation supports through grants, equipment, or research collaboration is
made widely accessible and reusable. Research, data, and code developed
through these collaborations will be made available in Open Access venues
and under a free license <http://freedomdefined.org/> in keeping with the
Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to support free knowledge.
The Wikimedia Foundation is proud to join the growing ranks of leading
institutions with open access policies.
Wikimedia Foundation Open Access Policy
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy>
1. Expectations
Researchers will need to provide unrestricted access to and reuse of all
their research output if their research receives support from the Wikimedia
Foundation in the form of:
-
funds;
-
letters of endorsement;
-
equipment, hosting, or office space;
-
access to non-public data or special API privileges; or
-
other support under an agreement between researchers and the Wikimedia
Foundation.
A. Proposal. Researchers will document their project on Meta-Wiki,
including the original research proposal, main research questions, and key
outcomes.
B. Supporting Materials. Researchers will deposit their work in a public
repository by the time of publication of any respective research article or
within three months after the termination of the project, whichever comes
first. The deposited work should be licensed as follows:
-
aggregated and properly anonymized data produced as part of the project
under an Open Definition-conformant license
<http://opendefinition.org/licenses/>, preferably CC0;
-
source code under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or any
other Open Source Initiative-approved license
<http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical>;
-
media files under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 or any
other free license <http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses>.
C. Published Materials. Researchers will publish all output in an Open
Access outlet under a Free License.
-
If a work based on the project is accepted for publication in a peer
reviewed outlet that does not make its articles available online, free of
charge, and under free licenses, an electronic copy of the author’s
accepted manuscript will be submitted to a public and permanently
archived repository by the official date of publication, without any
embargo period, and released under a Free License.
2. Limited waiver
Specific waivers from the expectations above may be applied in limited
circumstances on a case-by-case basis. Researchers wanting a waiver are
required to submit to the Wikimedia Foundation, in writing, a detailed
explanation of why they require the waiver. The Wikimedia Foundation will
publicly post a summary of the request and its response.
The WMF Open Access Policy is effective as of March 18, 2015 for all new
research agreements. For more information, see the Frequently Asked
Questions <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy/FAQ> on
this policy.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
-
https://wikimediafoundation.org
-
https://blog.wikimedia.org/
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia consists of more than 34
million articles in 288 languages. Every month, tens of thousands of active
volunteers contribute to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. With
nearly half a billion monthly users, projects operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation are one of the most popular web properties in the world. Based
in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
Wikimedia Foundation Press Contact
Katherine Maher
-
+1 415-839-6885 ext. 6633
-
press(a)wikimedia.org
*Juliet Barbara*
Senior Communications Manager I Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street I San Francisco, CA 94105
jbarbara(a)wikimedia.org I +1 (512) 750-5677
(To be unsubscribed from this press release distribution list, please reply to communications(a)wikimedia.org with 'UNSUBSCRIBE' in the subject line)
Dear Wikimedians,
At the Wikimedia Foundation, our mission is to empower, support and engage
people around the world to share in free knowledge. One of our top
priorities for the WMF in 2015 is improving organizational effectiveness in
service of this mission. This means we need to strengthen WMF's ability to
set and deliver on commitments, improve organizational discipline around
decision making, and mature internal processes and systems.
To ensure we can execute on our vision, mission, forthcoming strategy and
our Call to Action, we have hired for a new position within our C-level
team. Terry Gilbey will be joining us as interim Chief Operating Officer,
responsible for building rigor and discipline around our operational
processes. Terry’s role will help WMF stabilize our core operations so we
will be ready and able to adapt and innovate in our changing environment.
It will also help me find more time to focus on our products and
communities.
Terry comes from managing his own consulting firm and has been in a
consulting role at WMF working on a number of projects such as
goal-setting, financials, and budgeting. He has first-hand experience
working with the WMF leadership team, and we are all excited to work more
closely with him. Previously, Terry was the Executive Director of
Enterprise Operations at Kaiser Permanente, a nationwide healthcare
organization, and served in various management roles at IBM Global Services.
Terry is originally from England and has lived in the U.S., Europe, Asia,
and Central America. He currently lives in the South Bay, but also spends a
lot of time in Panama on a rural farm. He spends his spare time pursuing
unusual hobbies, such as bull riding, surfing, and more recently,
supporting a women’s flat track roller derby team. He also rides
motorcycles, does metal work, and has an avid interest in sustainability.
An early adopter of Tor, Terry believes strongly in the right to privacy
and the free and open access to knowledge as an equalizer.
With the COO position, we will be organizing our HR and Finance teams to
report to Terry. Garfield will continue as the CFO for the organization, a
member of the C-level team, and Treasurer of the Board. His roles and
responsibilities will remain unchanged, reporting to Terry. Terry and
Garfield will manage all financial and business planning activities and are
already making progress together. We’ll introduce Terry properly with a
short Q&A at the April metrics meeting.
It is with sadness that I report to you that Gayle Karen Young, Chief
Talent and Culture Officer has decided move onto her next adventure. Gayle
let me know she has been looking to move on some time ago, and she felt
this was the right moment in time. In her three and a half years within the
Foundation, she has made a tremendous impact creating a HR department that
is fundamentally about caring for the people in the organization and
offering services that allow people to do their best work, which has
supported our mission to help our communities thrive and curate knowledge.
While we will miss her wisdom and warmth, we thank her for her leadership
and celebrate her future adventures. HR will report directly to Terry at
this time.
Our purpose is to help Wikimedians around the world make the sum of all
knowledge available to everyone. We believe these changes, effective
immediately, will help us focus on our continued service to our community
and readers, and progress toward this mission.
Please join me in welcoming Terry as the newest member of our leadership
team and wishing Gayle well. We have much exciting work in 2015, and I’m
looking forward to all the great things we will accomplish as we work
together to support our vision.
~~~~Lila
Hi all,
We're proud to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation today joins the
growing ranks of major institutions with open access policies. Our new Open
Access Policy <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy>[1]
will ensure that all research the Wikimedia Foundation supports through
grants, equipment, or research collaboration is made widely accessible and
reusable. Research, data, and code developed through these collaborations
will be made available in open access venues and under a free license
<http://freedomdefined.org/>[2] in keeping with the Wikimedia Foundation’s
mission to support free knowledge. You can read more about this effort in
today's blog post
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/>[3].
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy
[2] http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
[3] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/
Manprit Brar
Legal Counsel
*Wikimedia Foundation*
*NOTICE*: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical
reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.