[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Press release: Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Appointments to Board of Trustees]

[Jay Walsh]

Hi everyone, I'm pleased to notify everyone that we just sent the following press 
release out on our media mailing list.

As most of you know from Florence's earlier note, this news was made public 
yesterday here at the Wikimania conference.

Regards,
Jay Walsh

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Press release: Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Appointments to	Board 
of Trustees
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:15:37 +0300
From: Jay Walsh <jwalsh at wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: jwalsh at wikimedia.org
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation
To: press-release at lists.wikimedia.org

'''Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Appointments to Board of Trustees'''

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT & SAN FRANCISCO, CA – July 17 – Earlier today the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees Vice-Chair, Jan-Bart De Vreede announced important
changes to the Board, including the selection of a new Chair, and appointment of
the newest community-elected member.  The decisions were made following aseries
of Board meetings coinciding with the annual Wikimania conference at the new
Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt.

Effective today, Michael Snow is Chair of the Board of Trustees, succeeding
long-standing Chair Florence Devouard.  Mr. Snow has been a Board member since
February, 2008, and an active volunteer on the English Wikipedia since December
2003, particularly in the areas of communications and outreach.  In 2006,he
created the Wikipedia Signpost, a community newspaper for the English Wikipedia.
He is a lawyer, based in Seattle, Washington.

"I'm excited about the opportunity to serve in this capacity as our volunteer
community works to share knowledge around the world," said Michael Snow. "I look
forward to helping the Wikimedia Foundation better connect with and support its
large and engaged community of contributors. We have an important job to do, and I
am delighted to be able to help."

His predecessor, Florence Devouard, has served on the Board since June 2004, and
as Board Chair since October 2006.  During that time, she oversaw significant
development of the organization, including the growth and professionalization of
the Foundation's staff, the relocation of its headquarters from St. Petersburg,
Florida to San Francisco, California, and considerable growth of the reach of the
projects.

The Board of Trustees is also pleased to welcome Ting Chen, newly elected
community member of the Board.  Three seats on the Board of Trustees are elected
directly by the Wikimedia community, through an online voting process.  Ting
(user:Wing) started editing with the German Wikipedia in 2003, later moving on to
the young Chinese Wikipedia.  He grew up in China and studied electrical
engineering in Germany, where he now resides and works with IBM Germany in Mainz.

'''About the Wikimedia Foundation'''
http://wikimediafoundation.org

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit, charitable organization dedicated to
encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual
content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the
public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited
reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10
most-visited websites.

All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by
volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely
edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that
license.

For more information, contact:
     Jay Walsh, Head of Communications
     jwalsh at wikimedia.org
     +1 415 839 6885


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-- 
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609