[Foundation-l] Report to the Board, September 2008

[Erik Moeller]

[Sending this on Sue's behalf, who is on vacation until Monday. -- Erik]

Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

Covering:       September 2008
Prepared by:    Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for:   Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

MY CURRENT PRIORITIES

  1. Board meeting prep
  2. Funders' briefing follow-up: prioritizing and strategizing re
major donors and foundations
  3. Online fundraiser prep
  4. Gearing up for travel/presentations throughout October and November
  5. Ongoing major donor solicitation and stewardship, foundation
proposal follow-up
  6. Bits and pieces (Wikimania postmortem, office space revamp,
launch of NomCom, etc.)

THIS PAST MONTH

OUTREACH AND PROGRAMS

In the first week of September, a mailing list was created for
potential Brazilian and Belgian chapters.  Work was also done to
finalize our bid for the European e-Inclusion Award, and preparations
began for the next on-line course for the 50+ age group that will
start on Nov. 3.  Work continues on development of WikiProject videos
with the first German Wikipedia video in production.  An international
workshop on photos and videos is in the planning stages.

At the end of the month, WMF said goodbye to Delphine Ménard in her
role as Chapters Coordinator.  Delphine had been Chapters Coordinator
for three years: first as a volunteer, and since February 2007 as a
paid external contractor.  Delphine is leaving the role to enable a
"reboot" of the relationship between the chapters and the WMF: to
encourage the chapters to self-organize, and to interact directly with
the staff of the Foundation without an intermediary.  The Wikimedia
Foundation is extremely grateful to Delphine for her help over the
years: she plans to continue as a volunteer (including her chapters
committee work), and we look forward to working with her in that
capacity.

The international survey of Wikipedia readers and contributors is
expected to launch in October. We are working with a contractor to
help us project manage the translations and the deployment of the
survey.

Wikimedia community member Andrew Whitworth, with help from Chapters
Committee members, has developed a briefing paper looking at
U.S.-based chapters development. Based on that work and some legal
research from Mike, Sue and Erik developed a proposal called A
Framework for Encouraging Sub-National Chapters.  Both will be
submitted to the Board of Trustees at its meeting in October, where
next steps with regards to development of sub-national chapters will
be determined.

On September 25, Wikimedia contractor Naoko Komura released the
results of the Wikimania 2008 postmortem survey here:

http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Survey

Thus far, the postmortem project has received input from participants
and speakers via the survey and from the staff of the Foundation and
21 planning volunteers; it currently awaits specific recommendations
from the local planning team, the program committee, and scholarships.

Frank has begun working on templates for different kinds of events,
such as a "Wikipedia in the classroom" event.  For that purpose, he
has also worked closely with a group working on such an event in
Germany.

TECHNOLOGY

The migration of existing and deployment of new servers in a new data
center (in the same building as our primary data center) continues.

Brion has begun development of a code review tool, which is planned to
be integrated into MediaWiki.org and to become a central part of the
MediaWiki development process.

Hiring interviews for three technology positions took place, and top
candidates were identified. As per the standard hiring process, offers
will be extended once the reference checking process is complete and
will be contingent on successful completion of background checks.

We provided feedback to Luca de Alfaro regarding his trust computation
tool and potential integration into Wikimedia Foundation websites.

Work has begun on new fundraising campaign management tools for the
online fundraiser (for example, to systematically test and compare
different sitenotice designs during the course of the fundraiser). We
also continue to invest significant time in auditing and improving the
fundraising database CiviCRM.

Further refinements have been made to the PediaPress Wiki-to-PDF tools
to get them ready for production usage.

We're in the process of inventorizing and cleaning up our domain name
registrations.

We experienced some brief site-wide outages in September; Brion has
blogged about the relevant issues here:

http://leuksman.com/log/2008/09/22/wikipedia-downtime-2x-today/
http://leuksman.com/log/2008/09/24/why-is-everything-broken-this-week/

COMMUNICATIONS

The early part of September was spent finalizing the Annual Report and
working on the budget.  Work began on the online fundraiser PR
strategy and going over RFPs from prospective branding agencies.
There were no press releases, but we responded to media inquiries from
the San Francisco Bay Area public television station KQED; Connecticut
newspaper the News Times; Danish newspaper Dagbladet Børsen; the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website CBC.CA; the Associated
Press; Washington D.C.-based website America.gov; the New York Times;
Australian news site News.com. au; the Washington Times and the
Washington Post.

FUNDRAISING AND GRANTS

On September 11, the first formal Funders' Briefing was held in New
York, hosted on our behalf by the Sloan Foundation.  On September 12,
Sue & Erik did a presentation for the Ford Foundation as a part of
Ford's lunchtime speakers series.  The San Francisco Funders' Briefing
was held at Kapor Enterprises on September 23. Both briefings were
well attended and well received.  The agenda included endorsements by
Wikimedia supporters and board members, a presentation by Sue and Erik
walking through Wikimedia basics, and a wide-ranging discussion about
goals and funding.  Some immediate donations were received as a result
of the briefing, and the groundwork was laid for cultivation of new
supporters.

Work has begun in earnest on many fronts to prepare for the online
fundraiser.  Rand Montoya, Head of Community Giving, is managing the
project, working mainly with the technology team, Jay Walsh and Cary
Bass. For the first time, a formal agreement is being developed for
chapters which are interested in participating in the fundraiser.
We've also continued to improve the database, document procedures, and
streamline processes.

We have developed one primary grant proposal related to usability and
public outreach.

FINANCE AND ADMIN

The Audit Committee met on September 29 with the audit firm to review
the draft 07-08 audited financial statements.  The statements are
expected to be finalized shortly and then will be sent to the Audit
Committee for its official approval. Once the board has received and
approved them, they will be published. This will also trigger their
inclusion in the 2007-08 Annual Report, which will enable us to
publish it on the Wikimedia Foundation website.

A Wikimedia Foundation Employee Handbook is in development by Mike and
Veronique.

LEGAL

A number of policies were revised and/or finalized prior to review by
the Board of Trustees at its October meeting. These included: the Gift
Policy, the Privacy Policy, and the Board of Trustees' Pledge of
Personal Commitment.

Michelle Paulson is our new law clerk volunteer for the fall.

OTHER

The Nominating Committee continued its work to identify, research and
recommend candidates for the appointed Board positions involving
"specific expertise." Its  members are board member Ting Chen,
community member Milos Rancic, community member BirgitteSB, advisory
board member Melissa Hagemann, Executive Director Sue Gardner and
board chair Michael Snow.  The Nominating Committee has now
brainstormed names for potential board members, and generated criteria
for potential "specific expertise" board members  here:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria

In October, Michael Snow will update the board on the work of the
Nominating Committee, and the board will send the Nominating Committee
feedback.  The four "expertise" seats are expected to be filled by
January 2009.

Sheryl Roman, an external HR consultant, is working with individual
staff members to help them develop goals and timelines.

IN COMING WEEKS

* Board meeting being held October 4, 5, & 6 at WMF office.
* Sue speaking in Mainz, Germany
* Sue speaking  in Orlando, Florida
* All-staff meeting being held November 6 & 7 at the WMF office
* First production deployment of wiki-to-print technology
* Launch of multilingual Wikipedia general survey in mid-October
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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