[Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

[Michael Snow]

Erik Zachte wrote:

>Michael Snow
>  
>
>>As Anthere has alluded to, some of the results still need to be
>>organized, discussed further, and agreements reached. The board retreat
>>did not decide every course of action for the Wikimedia Foundation for
>>all time. Much more will be shared and discussed with various people in
>>various forums as we go forward. But we cannot recreate the entire
>>retreat for everyone who wasn't present, or produce a three-day-long
>>video for you to watch it all unfold.
>>    
>>
>Michael, you seem to say that I and maybe others are overasking.
>
Others more than just you, Erik, and I chose not to respond to your 
message directly because I didn't want to single you out. But I was a 
little disappointed to see people responding to Oscar's effort in 
creating his report by commenting that it "says nothing" and in other 
ways calling it inadequate.

>What I did plead for was to share analysis, conclusions, priority lists, in
>short structured and condensated results, like SWOT and priority lists are
>meant to be, so that others can be informed and provide feedback before
>these are turned into decisions.
>
This is understandable, like Anthere I'm mostly asking for a little more 
patience, as much in people's tone as in whether they have additional 
requests or not. Most of the important conclusions were already in 
Oscar's report. The analysis that went into it, Anthere has now posted 
the SWOT list, and some of the rest we may be able to put together and 
share as well. A few specific things, especially dealing with legal 
concerns, need to be kept confidential.

Also, not everything we discussed was necessarily finalized, even with 
respect to the small group that was present. Three days was good, but 
hardly enough to tie up every loose end in such a very loosely 
structured organization. For example, we worked on drafting a formal 
vision and mission statement, but still had some wording issues to deal 
with. I suggested that those be put forward for adoption by the 
community in a referendum, and I'm looking forward to Board releasing 
them in their final form.

--Michael Snow