Please see my new blog post here: http://thomas-dalton.com/blog/2012/09/22/success-and-its-curse/
TL;DR: Wikimedia UK has had many successes throughout the last four years, but it has moved too fast and this has caused problems. We need to stop and think. To give ourselves time to do that, we need to rewrite the 2013 Activity Plan so we’re not doing too much.
On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Please see my new blog post here: http://thomas-dalton.com/blog/2012/09/22/success-and-its-curse/
TL;DR: Wikimedia UK has had many successes throughout the last four years, but it has moved too fast and this has caused problems. We need to stop and think. To give ourselves time to do that, we need to rewrite the 2013 Activity Plan so we’re not doing too much.
I have to agree with some of this.
I think that there is definitely a risk with Wikimedia UK that because of the relatively large budget the chapter has, the board may rush headlong into things which there isn't volunteer backing for.
We need to focus more on ensuring that we have enough volunteers that we can actually pursue the goals we want. The important thing is that all of the projects Wikimedia UK really ought to be pursuing are the sorts of things that you can't just throw money at to solve. The money should be there to support the activities of volunteers rather than having the strange situation of having the money and the staff and the ideas ready to go and having to scrape around to find volunteers.
That is a slightly different argument to the one I'm making. I'm arguing specifically for a less ambitious 2013 plan so that we can concentrate on getting our house in order and planning for the future. We can go crazy again in 2014 once we have everything in place to do it properly.
I don't necessarily see a problem with throwing money at problems. If it is a problem worth fixing and throwing money at it is the easiest way to fix it, then why not? We have money.
Volunteers are very important to our organisation, but they are important because we realise they are generally the best solution. In cases where they aren't, we shouldn't be afraid to use better solutions.
That said, we certainly do need to work on improving our volunteer base - the volunteer coordinator is one of the things that shouldn't get crossed out. On Sep 23, 2012 3:47 PM, "Tom Morris" tom@tommorris.org wrote:
On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Please see my new blog post here: http://thomas-dalton.com/blog/2012/09/22/success-and-its-curse/
TL;DR: Wikimedia UK has had many successes throughout the last four years, but it has moved too fast and this has caused problems. We need to stop and think. To give ourselves time to do that, we need to rewrite the 2013 Activity Plan so we’re not doing too much.
I have to agree with some of this.
I think that there is definitely a risk with Wikimedia UK that because of the relatively large budget the chapter has, the board may rush headlong into things which there isn't volunteer backing for.
We need to focus more on ensuring that we have enough volunteers that we can actually pursue the goals we want. The important thing is that all of the projects Wikimedia UK really ought to be pursuing are the sorts of things that you can't just throw money at to solve. The money should be there to support the activities of volunteers rather than having the strange situation of having the money and the staff and the ideas ready to go and having to scrape around to find volunteers.
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
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