Dear all,
Below is a note I've prepared that takes a look at the year past and
the year ahead for the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Development team.
An editable and formatted version can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Development_year_in_review_and_road_ahead,_2011
Barry
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Year in review and road ahead
Barry Newstead
I just passed my first anniversary since I joined the Wikimedia
Foundation and we created the Global Development team. It has been a
year in which we have put the team in place and built our
understanding of the opportunities and challenges we face in achieving
our goals.
Why we exist
At the heart, the Global Development team’s role is to help the
community to grow and thrive in places where we have not yet achieved
our movement’s potential. Places where the approach that worked in
the Global North has not yet taken hold in sufficient numbers. At a
time when Wikimedia’s editor community (dominated by Global North
editors) is slowly ebbing and readership on the personal computer is
plateauing, we need to be proactive in working to create strong
communities in the Global South, where more than half of Internet
users live today and an overwhelming share of future Internet users
will come from. It isn’t clear what specific programs will work, but
it is imperative that we work hard everyday alongside the community to
try new things and help scale up efforts that are promising.
The foundation has set clear goals in our strategic plan to reach 1
billion readers by 2015 and to increase the number of active editors
to 200,000 with 37% from the Global South. The Global Development
team will play an important role in catalyzing and supporting
communities to reach these goals.
The Past Year for the Global Development team
(1) Building a diverse team
When I started, we were a small team of 4 with Jay, Moka, Kul and
myself. We had very limited capacity and the team had a range of
foundation-wide responsibilities. Over the year, we have built a
diverse (and I’d say very talented) team to fulfill roles that I see
as vital. We have a mix of experienced Wikipedians on the team and
folks who bring valuable new capabilities to tackle the new challenges
we face. I’m particularly happy that we have a team that has a lot of
experience globally and brings diverse perspectives to the table. I’m
also glad that most of the recruiting work for me is finished, as I’m
ready to focus more time on getting results in our priority areas.
Our team will grow a bit in 2011/12, but it will focus mostly on
filling in the team in India and Brazil.
(2) Executing effectively
While we were building the plane, we were flying it too! We had
important accomplishments and I’m happy that all of these involved
close partnership with the community around the world and other teams
within the foundation. Some of the highlights include:
* Wikipedia’s 10th Anniversary celebration was a great success with
events in over 200 locations, many of which received special edition
T-shirts and buttons that help to bond our world-wide community. We
also garnered incredible media coverage that underscored the important
role of Wikipedia in the public imagination. I see this initiative as
a model for an initiative catalyzed by the foundation and made reality
by the community in innovative and effective ways.
* We launched our India catalyst initiative with efforts to help build
the community via visits by Jimmy and myself along with support for
community work on outreach. We met and introduced many people to
Wikimedia at meetups in many cities. We had amazing media coverage of
all of our (community and WMF) activities that added momentum to our
work. I’m also happy that we launched our first program in June - the
India Education Program.
* Our grants program more than doubled with a wide range of chapters,
like-minded groups and individuals, implementing initiatives large and
small aimed at contributing to the Wikimedia vision. In addition, we
continue to provide support for Wikimania and will be supporting a
large contingent of Wikimedians from over 20 countries to attend
Wikimania in August.
* In close partnership with community developers, we invested to
improve the tools available for offline projects with the integration
of OpenZIM into the collections tools and a usability upgrade for the
Kiwix reader.
* For the first time, we have the internal capacity to start
understanding how we, as a movement, are doing and we put that
capacity to work with our first systematic survey of the global editor
community. The survey was available in 22 languages (thanks to the
volunteer translator community) and was completed by over 5,000
editors - an amazing sample! We also embarked on a research effort to
understand the needs of mobile users in India and Brazil. Results of
this work will be published soon and are already informing our mobile
decision making.
* We worked closely with chapters involved in fundraising to resolve
some difficult issues regarding international funds transfers and we
improved the fundraising agreement. There is more work to do on this,
but we made a lot of progress and I’m happy that we are entering the
new fiscal year with few problems relating to funds transfers.
* We also managed to improve our joint compliance regarding chapter
agreements. This puts the relationship between chapters and WMF on a
stronger footing.
Not a bad year for our little team, though there have definitely been
bumps in the road. Two areas I would say we didn’t get the job done
are:
* We did not make as much progress on our mobile work. Mobile is a
huge priority for WMF and for Global Development in particular. We
struggled to determine our strategy and then get resources aligned
behind the strategy. I take responsibility for this and have been
acting aggressively to get us off to a fast start in 2011/12, both
through additions to the team, greater focus and attention from Kul
and me, efforts to accelerate discussions with partners, and close
work with our Mobile Engineering team to quickly strengthen our mobile
portfolio.
* We didn’t get our new online store launched. We made amazing
progress on improving our merchandise and putting the building blocks
in place, but we didn’t get it launched. We expect to launch in July
and I’m excited to see what the community thinks.
The year ahead
Our team starts the new fiscal year with a lot of momentum across the
board...and a lot to do. We have signed up to tackle two critical
foundation-wide goals for 2011/12: Reverse the editor decline and
dramatically increase mobile. We aim to contribute significantly to
the goal of returning our active editors per month to 95,000 by June
2012 and to increasing mobile page views to 2 billion. These goals are
both part of the five-year strategy...and we need to get moving on
them.
Global Development’s efforts to reverse the editor decline revolve
around our work with the community in the Global South and the scaling
of the Public Policy Initiative into the Global Education program. In
the next few months, we will expand the India Education Program,
launch additional programs in India, get started on work in Brazil,
support the launch of education programs in new geographies and make
grants to chapters and like-minded groups with a focus on editor
community health and growth. Our communications team will support
this effort with media and communications work that highlights
“contribution” starting in India with an [Edit] India campaign. Our
research team will capture insights from the editor survey and will
begin to generate insights from our own data to help identify
opportunities and challenges.
On the mobile end, we are beginning now to approach mobile operators
and handset makers to improve the prominence of Wikipedia in their
offerings. We would like to secure deals where mobile operators offer
Wikipedia access for free (no data charges) to their customers. We
think this will help advance our vision significantly and introduce
millions of new people to Wikipedia. In partnership with the Mobile
Engineering team, we plan to invest in creating applications for the
major operating systems and in developing features that enrich the
experience and, critically, create ways to contribute.
In addition, you will see other important work happening on the Global
Development team:
* We have doubled our grants budget again to $600,000 and Asaf Bartov
will be working with chapters and other groups/individuals (with an
emphasis on the Global South) to develop grant programs that achieve
the goals laid out in our strategic plan. Specifically, we plan to
start tracking the change in active editors in the geographies where
we make grants over the next year.
* We will continue to build on our initial work on offline projects
through continued efforts to improve the tools available and through
partnerships to increase the distribution reach. By the end of
2011/12, we aim to double the number of deployments of offline
Wikipedia around the world.
* We will be supporting Wikimania in Haifa with a $100,000 grant to
support the conference as well as funding ($130,000 from our own
budget plus a contribution of $30,000 from Wikimedia Germany) to
support scholarships for over 70 attendees. We will also provide
support for Wikimania 2012 in Washington, DC.
The Year Ahead for me
My first year was a great learning experience and I feel I’ve got a
clearer sense of the opportunities challenge ahead. My greatest
challenge this past year was the sheer breadth of the Global
Development portfolio. I constantly had to juggle a range of
activities and for much of the year, people were relying on me to
handle issues since we didn’t have our team in place. This gave me a
good perspective into the needs and expectations of our team, but also
left me feeling a bit unfocused. My goal for 2011/12 is to focus more
of my time on the top priority areas of growing the editor base in
India and Brazil, and implementing our mobile strategy.
For me, success in 2011/12 will mean:
* Mobile partnerships that reduce the cost of accessing Wikipedia to
zero (or close to zero) and market Wikipedia on the mobile in key
countries in the Global South covering over 500 million mobile users
* Wikimedia’s mobile services to include quality apps on Android,
Windows, iPhone and Blackberry; first set of contribution tools
integrated into the mobile offering; our mobile site works well on a
wide range of phones
* Strong growth in the India editor community with clear results in
terms of editor growth from WMF’s India program activities
* Shift in Brazilian editor community toward healthy indicators,
return to growth in the editor community and a successful launch of
WMF’s Brazil team in the second half of the year
* The Global Development team functions cohesively as a group and
partners well with the community, other WMF teams, chapters and our
partners.
* Staff on the Global Development team grow professionally and see the
impact of their work.
The year ahead promises to again be a busy one for the Global
Development team and we’ll be partnering with many groups in the
Wikimedia movement. We will be moving forward with a clear purpose of
meeting our goals, learning along the way and collaborating with a
wide range of groups and individual in the movement. Onwards!
--
Barry NewsteadChief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation