Dear Wikimedians,
We are delighted to announce that the registration for the Wikimedia Summit
2020 [1], which will be held in Berlin from Friday, April 3, through
Sunday, April 5, is now open!
Following Katherine’s and Abraham’s invitation, we would like to provide
you with important information regarding the eligibility for participation,
participant number regulation, registration procedure, specifics in regards
to the travel and hotel booking as well as the visa application process.
== Eligibility criteria and participant number regulation ==
The eligibility criteria for participating in the Wikimedia Summit 2020 are
aligned to the Affiliates’ Agreements with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and User Groups must have shown signs of
recent activity (within the past six months as of September 30, 2019) and be
up-to-date on their reporting by the eligibility deadline (December 1, 2019).
[2] Moreover, affiliations need to have been officially recognized by the
Wikimedia Foundation before January 1, 2019. Before registering for the
conference, please check the eligibility and status overview of your
affiliate as well as the participant number regulation on meta [3].
== Registration information ==
We invite all eligible Wikimedia Affiliates to take part in the Wikimedia
Summit. To ensure that we use the in-person time as best as possible, we
ask Affiliates to only send delegates who will come with a good
understanding of the movement strategy process and the draft
recommendations, and are ready to take agency and responsibility to design
and implement the recommendations in collaboration with every part of the
Movement and our partners.
People, who are selected by their organization to represent them at the
conference, need to register via the registration form.[4] The registration
deadline is Monday at midnight CET, December 16, 2019. Please note that we
won’t be able to accept and process registrations
after this deadline.
We are looking forward to welcoming members of the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees and staff as well as the Affiliations Committee in
Berlin. We see a huge advantage in having their representatives participate
on site. Please also register via the registration link [4].
In addition to the core-conference, a post-conference “Train the trainers”
is organized by the WMF Community Development team. Should you be
interested in participating in this event, you can indicate your interest
in the registration form.
Further information on the registration process can be retrieved from meta
[5].
== Hotel and travel booking ==
The Wikimedia Summit will take place at the Seminar Campus Hotel in
Berlin’s green neighbourhood Dahlem.[6] A high number of hotel rooms
directly located in the same building have been reserved for the
conference participants. Based on WMDE’s great experiences at WikidataCon
and following our aim to reduce the environmental impact of this event, we
will provide vegetarian catering only during this event.
Representatives of affiliates with an annual plan grant (group 1) will need
to book and pay for their hotel rooms as well as travel individually. Our
hotel group code and price information can be found on meta [7].
Affiliates, which don’t receive funding via an annual plan grant (group 2),
will be supported by WMDE for their hotel needs and travel booking.
Members of the WMF Board, AffCom or WMF staff (group 3) receive travel and
hotel booking support by the WMF travel department.
As for additional participants specifically invited by the Program Curator,
Cornelius, to complement the conference program (group 4), WMDE will assist
you with your hotel and travel booking.
We advise you to check meta [3] to which group you belong to.
== Visa information ==
Please visit the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Berlin [8]
to find out whether you need a visa for travelling to Germany. In case you
are in need of a visa, we advise you to register until December 1, 2019, so
that WMDE can assist you with the application process and send you the
required visa documents sufficiently in advance. All relevant information
and necessary steps to undertake are also described on meta [9].
Wikimedia Deutschland is looking forward to welcoming you in Berlin in
April!
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us any time via
wmsummit(a)wikimedia.de should you have any questions or comments.
Best regards,
Jana, Florian, and Cornelius
Wikimedia Summit Organizing Team
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Eligibility_Criteria
[4] https://forms.wikimedia.de/apps/wmsummit2020/form.html
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Registration_Informat…
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Venue_and_Hotel
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Travel_and_Hotel_Book…
[8] http://wmde.org/germanyvisa
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2020/Visa_Process_and_Assi…
--
Cornelius Kibelka
Internationale Beziehungen | International Relations
Vorstandsteam | Office of the ED
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
http://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/
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 27/029/42207
Hi all,
I know I’ve sent several announcements to this list in recent months
regarding new members of the Wikimedia Foundation’s executive team. Today,
I’m excited to send the last in this series, and officially welcome Amanda
Keton as General Counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Amanda will be
starting on October 7, based in San Diego.
Amanda has dedicated her career to many of the same values we share as a
movement. She joins us from the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, where
she served as General Counsel. Tides is a U.S.-based public foundation that
distributes donor-advised grants and investments with the mission of
building a world of shared prosperity and social justice. Tides was a
partner for us in 2016 as we established our endowment, which remains
hosted at Tides. Amanda also served as Head of Tides Foundation and People
Operations and the CEO of Tides Advocacy, the policy affiliate in the
Tides family of organizations.
Before her work at Tides, Amanda worked for Ernst & Young providing
nonprofit organizations with consulting, advisory, and compliance
services. She currently serves on the Network for Good board and has
previously served on a number of other boards dedicated to equity and
justice.
In Amanda's words, "My work in nonprofits and the values I developed as a
social justice advocate make me especially excited to contribute to
Wikimedia in its next phase of growth. I want to be part of ensuring that
everyone finds a sense of belonging in the free knowledge movement, and
together we serve and defend it exceptionally well. After living in the Bay
Area for 11 years, my family and I recently moved to San Diego to be closer
to family, as we welcomed our son in August. I am always on a quest to find
the perfect playground, a new author to binge read, or a fresh recipe to
try."
Wikimedia always has been unique in the centrality of legal work as a
strategic aspect of our movement. From the first days of the Foundation,
our legal team has helped defend the Wikimedia communities and the
integrity of free knowledge. They work closely with the community to
advocate on behalf of open licensing, freedom of expression, net
neutrality, privacy, and other critical enabling elements of our mission.
I expect the importance of our legal and policy work to continue as we work
toward 2030. Today we see expanding government censorship and increased
infringements on access to knowledge around the globe. We see threats to
community members on the ground, and threats to the integrity of
information online. Our ability to engage proactively on these issues,
through strategic counsel, policy and advocacy, and impactful litigation
will continue to grow in importance to the Wikimedia mission. I’m excited
for Amanda to lead the Foundation’s accomplished Legal department as we go
forward.
I also want to take a moment to personally thank and acknowledge Tony Sebro
for his excellent work serving as interim General Counsel and Secretary to
the Board of Trustees while we searched to fill the position permanently.
Tony was a deft and thoughtful partner in addressing issues ranging from
copyright policy to malicious DDOS attacks to board governance, and a
valued voice on the Foundation’s leadership team. Amanda will continue to
work closely with Tony as he resumes the position of Deputy General
Counsel.
Please join me in welcoming Amanda to the Foundation!
Katherine
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi all,
I’m excited to officially welcome Grant Ingersoll as our Chief Technology
Officer! Grant will be starting September 23. He’ll be based in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
Grant comes from a long history of working on open source projects. Most
recently, he served as the Chief Technical Officer of Lucidworks, an
AI-powered open-source search services company which he co-founded. He is a
Lucene and Solr committer, co-founder of the Apache Mahout machine learning
project, and a long-standing member of the Apache Software Foundation. He’s
an author, having written a book for Java developers on how to wrangle
unstructured text for search, text-mining, and the like. He’s also a
long-time, committed remotee, having worked with the distributed Lucidworks
team from his home in North Carolina for nearly a decade.
In Grant’s own words, “The power of learning and knowledge have always
stood as key pillars in my career. I'm a big believer that access to free,
trusted knowledge is of vital importance as society looks to tackle large
scale challenges. My wife, Robin, and I recently moved from Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, our home for 10 years, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where
our daughter lives. We also just dropped our son off at college for his
freshman year. We're adjusting to the empty nest life with our dog Allie (a
black lab mix). When not traveling or exploring Charlotte, I can usually be
found on a bike, out kayaking, or writing code.”
Grant will be working with myself, Erika Bjune (who is transitioning to VP,
Technology), and others in the leadership of the technology department to
determine a set of priorities for his first year. I expect these will
likely focus around evaluating our current capacities and co-creating a
vision for the continued evolution of our technical platforms, supporting
the staff of the department, working with the finance and operations folks
on planning and budgeting for the future, and of course, getting to know
our technical community and the broader movement. Under Grant’s leadership,
we will continue the work of improving and modernizing our technical
ecosystem to respond to our future needs, as laid out in the movement
strategy.
I’m thrilled to have the CTO role filled, and to bring Grant in at a time
when the movement is digging into the question of what it means to “become
the essential infrastructure of free knowledge.” From our first meeting, I
was struck by his curiosity. He was genuinely interested in how Wikimedia
works, and was willing to get into what I often think of “Wiki PhD” level
conversations about the nuances of our community and values. I have
generally found that the folks who bring that sort of openness and humility
to their work are the folks who thrive in the challenges of our mission and
movement. As our movement expands, I’m glad to have Grant’s experience,
curiosity, and passion for building things on board here at the Foundation.
I want to also thank Erika Bjune for her work as interim CTO. She
passionately advocated for the importance of our platforms, embodied
partnership and cooperation, and her expertise on the interview panel was
invaluable. I’m thrilled she’ll be working so closely with Grant as we move
forward.
Please join me in welcoming Grant to the Wikimedia Foundation!
Katherine
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>