[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/9/11 Philippe Beaudette <pbeaudette at wikimedia.org>:
>
> On Sep 11, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>> We're not talking about culture, we are talking about lunch. They are
>> human beings, the same as we are, they have the same needs when it
>> comes to food.
>
>
> This, in fact, is one of the great fallacies of international
> organizations.  Failure to notice and work within the context of
> cultural norms condemns an organization very quickly.  In Italy, I was
> far more likely to take business partners to long elaborate meals than
> I would be in California.  Please, can we at least acknowledge that
> it's not as simplistic as you present it here?

It is that simple. If we were talking about having lunch with people
outside the Wikimedia movement, it would be different because we have
to comply with what they expect. We can expect people within the
Wikimedia movement to change their expectations to fit what is best
for the movement. It is not best for the movement to be spending money
of their lunch when they are perfectly capable of getting their own
lunch (as evidenced by the fact that they would be eating if they
didn't go to the meeting). Either buying Wikimedian's lunch is a good
use of money, or it isn't, culture doesn't factor into it.