At 15:34 +0000 10/12/08, Thomas Dalton wrote:
There is a bigger discussion needed here than just gathering some volunteers to appear on TV. We need to work out how we want to handle press in the UK, with relation to the (imminent) new chapter. There are two ways we can talk to the press, as volunteers speaking just for just ourselves and as representatives of Wikimedia UK speaking for the chapter (obviously, no-one is authorised to speak for WMF, we'll leave that to them). We need to decide when press work should be handled under each category, and who should do it. Obviously, anyone can speak for themselves and they can say what they like.
Speaking for the chapter can be done by anyone the board chooses, but the real question is who decides what to say. Should individual board members, or even non-board press contacts, be able to decide for themselves what do say or should the board determine an official position, which then gets presented by whoever does the interview (obviously the person doing the interview needs a certain amount of leeway otherwise it doesn't work, but the basic idea of what the official position is can be decided in advance)?
[...]
I watched a presentation (online) by a chap from Amazon yesterday at LeWeb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Vogels
"He is the only executive apart from Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos to speak publicly on behalf of Amazon.com."
I wonder if that is a model?
Gordo