Hello dear Brazilian Wikipedians. My name is Matthew Roth and I'm part of the fundraising team at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, California. During fundraisers in past years, we've relied on Jimmy Wales to do most of the fundraising with his banner and he's done very well helping us achieve our yearly funding targets. This year, however, we're broadening the scope and reach of the fundraiser by incorporating more voices and different people on the funding banners and appeals that will start running full-time on November 7th. We're testing new messages and finding some really great results with editors and staff members of the Foundation. See this page for more information: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011.

We've had quite a few editors and donors from North America, in large part because of the size of Wikipedia in English and because our offices are in the United States. We would like to do better outreach and more interviews with editors in other languages, particularly in South America. My manager recently proposed that I try to put together a trip where I fly down to Brazil to conduct interviews in person, hiring translators and making sure the interview process is as comfortable as possible. If this happens, I would likely try to travel in the first or second week of November.

I wanted to first see what level of interest you might have in participating in an interview with me. Logistically, I would travel to São Paolo and Rio and want to conduct the interviews in a centralized location, either at a university, a hotel, or a similar site. This effort is part of the fundraiser, so we are trying to learn about your experiences with Wikipedia and why you spend you volunteer time editing. We also want to know your feelings about how Wikipedia is changing the way we relate to knowledge, education and each other. So would you be interested in sitting down with me for 60-90 minutes to tell me about yourself and your relationship to Wikipedia? Please email me directly at mroth@wikimedia.org. If there is enough interest, we will continue with organizing the trip.

Obrigadões, Matthew