[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, so even if this was the case, would the foundation be wanting to
> rent or buy?  Buying would obviously be more cost-effective, but how
> much would the foundation be willing to spend on a new office?
> Doesn't most of the current budget go towards server upkeep/purchase,
> etc.?  Do we happen to have a tens of thousand of US dollars just
> laying around?  If meetups are more effective, why not just schedule
> more regular meet ups?  Meet in a library or some other suitable
> meeting area.  I came into this convo a little late, forgive my
> noobishness.

A couple more thousand per month would have a very minimal impact on a multi-million dollar per
year budget. There is a significant opportunity cost of having to set up meetings way in advance
because all the key people need to fly into one place vs simply having key people already on the
ground where we know contacts are already located. 

What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology
AFAIK. What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in D.C. and NYC? Representatives from just about every
nation on earth along with hundreds of like-minded organizations that share different parts of our
goals. If we had an office near D.C. or NYC, then meeting with any one of those key contacts could
be done casually, often, and without much notice beforehand. 

Strengthening ties like that is a great opportunity. Are we going to throw that away by pretending
that email and IRC with the occasional real world meeting have anything near the bandwidth of
frequent face-to-face communication? 

-- mav

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