[Foundation-l] CTO role (Was: Re: Priorities and opportunities)

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:
>> Putting aside the unnecessary bad faith and challenges to the
>> foundation's integrity:   I find this all exciting - planning for
>> significant tech budget support, possible major sponsorships (I've
>> always hoped we would one day find multiple sources for long-term
>> in-kind support of servers and bandwidth), &c.  I would simply like to
>> see more open discussion of what our perfect-world tech dreams are,
>> and how to pursue what sorts of sponsorships.
>
> Thanks, Sam. I find the discussion of the last few days symptomatic of
> the problems we've begun to brainstorm about with regard to the
> signal/noise ratio, healthiness and openness of this particular forum.
> (And by openness I mean that a forum that is dominated by highly
> abrasive, high volume, low signal discussions is actually not very
> open.) I do want to revisit the post limit question as a possible
> answer, but let's do that separately.
>
> The thread did surface some topics which are worth talking about, both
> in general and specific terms, and I'm taking the liberty to start a
> new thread to isolate some of those topics. For one thing, I think
> it's always good to revisit and iterate processes for defining
> priorities, and for achieving the highest impact in those identified
> areas.
>
> Developing more sophisticated processes both for short-term and
> long-term planning has been precisely one of the key focus areas of
> the last year. Internally, we've begun experimenting with assessment
> spreadsheets and standardized project briefs, drawing from the
> expertise of project management experts as well as Sue's specific work
> in developing a very well thought-out prioritization system at the
> CBC. Publicly, we're engaged in the strategy planning process -- the
> associated Call for Proposals is a first attempt to conduct a
> large-scale assessment of potential priorities. (I hope that with
> future improvements to the ReaderFeedback extension we'll be able to
> generate more helpful reports based on that particular assessment.)
>
> Ideally, the internal and public processes will converge sooner rather
> than later. For example, I posted a project brief that I developed
> internally through the strategy CfP:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Volunteer_Toolkit
>
> I believe this one was submitted by Jennifer:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Volunteer_Management_practices_to_Expand_Participation
>
> And this one by Tim:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Directed_community_fundraising
>
> The next phase of the strategy planning process, the deep-dive task
> forces, will be an interesting experiment in serious community-driven
> planning work, complemented by the research conducted with the help of
> our partners at The Bridgespan Group. All of this will become part of
> the institutional memory of the Wikimedia movement, and hopefully
> we'll continue to raise the bar in our thinking, planning, and
> collaboration.
>
> - - -
>
> Of course separately from setting priorities, there's the critical
> need to improve our ability to execute upon those priorities. This
> includes the further development of project pipelines, more systematic
> volunteer engagement, additional internal HR support, additional
> hiring of staff to address key capacity gaps, etc. I'm thrilled by how
> far we've come, and to be able to have supported, and continue to
> support, an unprecedented large-scale initiative like the usability
> project. I'm well-aware that there continue to be key priorities that
> we aren't executing as effectively as we could.
>
> The first thing many partners, donors and friends say when they visit
> Wikimedia Foundation is how astonishing it is that an operation of
> this scale can function with so little funding and staff. The truth is
> that by any reasonable measure of efficiency and money-to-impact
> ratio, we're achieving wonderful things together, and that's easy to
> forget when looking at issues in isolation. (Yes, it would be
> wonderful to have the full-history dumps running ASAP. Hm, it would be
> nice to have the full-history dumps for some other top 50 content
> websites. Oh, right, they don't provide any.)
>
> But I don't measure our success compared to other organizations. The
> most important question to me is whether we are continually raising
> the bar in what we're doing and how we do it. The most recent
> Wikimania was the most thoughtful and self-aware one I've ever
> attended, with deep, constructive conversations and very serious
> efforts of everyone involved to re-ignite and strengthen our movement.
> There are elements of groupthink, but also very systematic attempts to
> break out of it.
>
> There are great opportunities today for anyone to become engaged in
> helping to shape the future of what we do, and to accomplish real
> change in the world as a result. Ultimately we all have to make a
> choice how we spend our time -- how we spend our lives -- but I hope
> we're creating a legacy that will fill us with pride and joy, and
> inspire others to do the same.
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation


I'm encouraged by taking the positives out of the earlier discussion
and moving forwards.

I have a specific question regarding the CTO role which has been
floating around not yet completely defined.  Brion announced the
impending opening a while ago now and the formal definition of the job
role (and possibly title, I suggest it's more of a CIO role than CTO
per se) was to follow.

As operational technical concerns are a credibly large part of the
overall concerns people have about strategy and execution, can you
tell us if there's a defined timeline on the new CTOish role being
formalized, announced, etc?

Thanks.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com