Hi,
I received 4 emails with feedback from folks on this list (not staff or board members) for our review last Saturday in Wales. All feedback was from people who had personal experience of working with or discussing issues with Jon, and was a valuable part of our review process. Genuinely, the feedback was useful having good independent observations; it has now been anonymized and passed on for Jon's review otherwise unedited.
Jon and I will be agreeing a plan for issues raised. The review was well balanced, recognising his hard work over the last six months as well as putting a focus on areas for attention.
Our experience of trying an open review process has encouraged us to consider how even more open feedback might work for an annual performance review of the Wikimedia UK charity as a whole. Again, as for this review, it would be open for all people affected or interested in our charity, not just members. We would like our strongest critics, as well as supporters, to know that we listen to them carefully, and take positive action where improvement is needed regardless of the source of feedback.
I would like to take the opportunity to give a personal thank you to Jon for his commitment and the massive levels of hard work he has been putting in over the last 6 months to speedily establish the UK office, ensure our governance and processes are kicked into order and his own rapid progress in understanding our needs and culture. We do notice, and we all know how complex our community is to understand, how uncompromisingly demanding our brightest community leaders are, and how contradictory and passionate our views can be too. ;-)
PS for those of you who did not see the weekend board meeting live, Richard is in the process of re-encoding the several hours of video and will be uploading it all to Commons later this week.
Cheers, Fae -- fae@wikimedia.org.uk Wikimedia UK Chairman - http://uk.wikimedia.org
I would like to take the opportunity to give a personal thank you to Jon for his commitment and the massive levels of hard work he has been putting in over the last 6 months to speedily establish the UK office, ensure our governance and processes are kicked into order and his own rapid progress in understanding our needs and culture. We do notice, and we all know how complex our community is to understand, how uncompromisingly demanding our brightest community leaders are, and how contradictory and passionate our views can be too. ;-)
I'd just like to second this, and to add my thanks to Jon for his very hard work and enormous professionalism over the last six months.
In a past life, I have had my own experience of being a staff member responsible to a group of volunteers, and it isn't always easy. Our situation, where we are not only building our first ever staff team but in many ways breaking completely new ground in everything we do, is a huge challenge, and Jon has dealt with it very well. I am very grateful for everything he's done, and am really looking forward to working with him (with whatever hats I still have after the Board election) in months and years to come.
Chris
On 27/04/12 20:49, Gordon Joly wrote:
On 27/04/12 17:59, Chris Keating wrote:
In a past life, I have had my own experience of being a staff member responsible to a group of volunteers, and it isn't always easy.
Ahem.
Gordo
I think this is the basis of me starting this thread.....
Staff are responsible to the Directors (who are also the Trustees in the case of WMUK). The membership of the Charity have a responsibility to the Charity, such as electing the Trustees at the AGM. The charity (a company) then reports to the governing bodies, Companies House and the Charity Commission.
WMUK as a body then supports a much larger volunteer base, and promotes the project widely.
Gordo
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org