[Foundation-l] Report to the Board (February and March)

James Owen jowen at wikimedia.org
Sun Aug 29 21:10:57 UTC 2010


FEBRUARY
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: February 2010
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

MILESTONES FROM FEBRUARY
Wikimedia Foundation receives $2 million grant from Google
Conducted Interviews and engaged candidates for the Chief Development  
Officer position.
Beta roll-out of new features and updates to the usability initative

KEY PRIORITIES FOR MARCH
Finalize the Stanton Public Policy Grant
Bi-annual all-staff meeting.
Begin the business planning phase of the strategy process.

THIS PAST MONTH
KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
345 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+14.8% (1 year ago) / -5.3% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.1 billion
+5.8% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 101,730
-1.5% (1 year ago) / -4.6% (1 month ago)
Source: February 2010 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_02_detailed.html>

KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.1MM vs. plan of USD 8.8MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 5.5MM vs. plan of USD 6.2MM
Unrestricted cash on hand as of March 24: USD 5.2MM while unrestricted  
CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.3MM

STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
Following the Board's endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation's high- 
level strategic priorities moving forward, the strategic planning  
process has shifted into two parallel processes. The first is the  
Foundation's business planning process, led by The Bridgespan Group.  
The goal is to develop a five-year action plan for the Wikimedia  
Foundation and a more granular one-year business plan for 2010-2011.  
This process will run through May.

The second is to complete the larger, movement-wide strategic planning  
process. Late in January, a Strategy Task Force formed, which started  
discussing and evaluating the recommendations and feedback from the  
Phase 2 Task Force process. That Task Force will continue to work in  
March to articulate and propose a set of movement-wide goals.

The sign of a good open process is that certain surprising things  
emerge. The team was surprised by the success of the Call for  
Proposals process in Phase 1, and are looking for ways to use those  
proposals as a way to activate the volunteer community. They were also  
surprised by the success of the Task Force process and people's desire  
to apply the processes of the strategy project beyond its original  
scope. Three new Task Forces have formed (BLPs, NASA, and Analytics),  
and the
team is looking forward to seeing others form as well.

GOOGLE GRANT AND VISIT
In February, the Wikimedia Foundation received a $2 million (USD)  
grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation.  
This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds  
will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation,  
including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly- 
increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be  
used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to  
use and more accessible.

Several Wikimedia Foundation staff members met with Google product and  
engineering managers in Mountain View to discuss possible  
opportunities to work together, ranging from infrastructure and open  
source technologies to public outreach programs. Google has designated  
a liaison contact for all future Wikimedia Foundation inquiries.

TECHNOLOGY – CORE
As noted in the previous report, Danese Cooper joined the Wikimedia  
Foundation as CTO, succeeding Brion Vibber. Erik Moeller and the  
Wikimedia Foundation technology team organized several orientation and  
transition meetings.
The process for decommissioning old, out-of-warranty Wikimedia  
Foundation servers and donating them to non-profit organizations  
continued in February:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/server-decommissioning-donations/

A follow-up meeting took place between Wikimedia and Microsoft  
Research India regarding MSRI's efforts to develop wiki language  
collaboration tools.

Wikimedia's BugZilla server was updated to version 3.4.5 with REST APIs:
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/wikimedia-bugzilla-upgraded-to-version-3-4-5-with-rest-apis/
A bug that caused 1.3 million Wikipedia article revisions from 2005 to  
appear as blank pages was resolved.

TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY
The usability beta was enhanced on February 4 with the following  
features:
Improvement in precision of navigable table of contents
Enhanced dialogs for links, tables, and search and replace
Language-specific icons for Bold and Italics
This release introduced an HTML iFrame element as a new technological  
foundation for richer editing features. Despite extensive cross- 
browser testing, the release introduced problems in editing such as  
extra line breaks, and the iFrame deployment and features dependent on  
it were rolled back for the time being.
Babaco Release page, http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases/Babaco
Blog: Deployment of Babaco Enhancements, http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/01/babaco-enhancments/
Browser Compatibility Matrix for features in Babaco,
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases/Babaco/Compatibility_Matrix
Blog: Iframe bugs, http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/iframe-bugs/

In February, design refinements and development of template collapsing  
and expansion features continued and staging in the usability sandbox  
started. The objective of template collapsing is to hide complex wiki  
syntax from the editor, which is important because, we observed that  
templates are an intimidating factors for new users..
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Citron_Designs#Templates
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/sandbox.6/San_Francisco

Based on the evaluation of proposals submitted by usability study  
firms, gotomedia was commissioned to conduct the last round of the  
usability study. The focus of the study is to evaluate the template  
collapsing and expansion features, and overall improvements in  
usability for the last twelve months.
gotomedia: http://www.gotomedia.com/

February ended with a total of 571,579 users having tried the Beta.
Approximately 59,100 additional users tried the Beta in February. This  
number is down slightly, even considering the fact that February is a  
shorter month.
The cumulative retention rate across all projects held steady at 79.8%  
as of February 28.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
Beta_Feedback_Survey#Update:_February_28.2C_2010

Regression tests across all supported browsers, interaction automation  
suites were set up using the opensource quality assurance software,  
Selenium. This test automation system will be used by the user  
experience team to increase the efficiency of software testing and  
release cycles. The plan is to open up this automation system to the  
wider MediaWiki developers community.
Selenium, http://seleniumhq.org/

MULTIMEDIA USABILITY PROJECT
Development of the new upload interface continued in February and  
preparations for setting up the system infrastructure for prototype  
system started. Product specification for a temporary staging area for  
incomplete uploads has started.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:NewUpload
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Incomplete_uploads

A call for proposals for the first study of the multimedia usability  
initiative was initiated. Four usability study firms submitted  
proposals. A usability study firm in San Francisco, gotomedia, was  
chosen based on quality, cost, and references. The study is scheduled  
to be conducted in March 2010.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:UX_study,_March_2010/CfP
Guillaume Paumier and Neil Kandalgaonkar appeared on IRC office hours  
on February 4. They received lots of interesting questions, including  
technical questions, from the participants.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2010-02-04

OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During February, Frank Schulenburg and Pete Forsyth embarked on  
writing a grant proposal for the second phase of the Public Policy  
Initiative. The Initiative's overarching goal is to develop a model  
for how to systematically improve articles of a specific topic area by  
encouraging and enabling subject-matter experts to contribute to  
Wikipedia. For this purpose, the Wikimedia Foundation will reach out  
to faculty members at select universities and encourage them to use  
Wikipedia as a teaching tool during the fall semester 2010 and the  
spring semester 2011. Over these two phases of the project, the  
Wikimedia Foundation will pilot in-classroom and didactic usage and  
improvement of Wikipedia in an experimental manner. Ongoing and  
systematic metrics development and evaluation will measure the  
project's success in terms of article improvement and educational  
experience.

Pete and Frank continued to strenghten the Wikimedia Foundation's ties  
to universities by giving a presentation at the John F. Kennedy School  
of Government at Harvard University. Under the title "Wikipedia – the  
encyclopedia that works only in practice, not in theory" they gave  
students and faculty at Harvard an introduction into the internal  
mechanisms of Wikipedia and answered the diverse questions of the  
audience. The presentation was part of a new lecture series called  
"Digital Workshops for Students" at the Kennedy School's Joan  
Shorenstein Center.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/students/digital_workshops.html

The Public Outreach Team did preliminary/exploratory work toward  
developing opportunities for collaboration and education among the  
community. Pete explored a possible partnership with Ontier, a  
producer of screen casting software; and had discussions with Howie  
Fung of the User Experience team about the dynamics that surround  
editor departure. Frank launched a chapters events calendar on the  
Outreach Wiki; and the Public Outreach department had preliminary  
discussions with Eugene Kim and Cary Bass about establishing a  
Compassionate Communications training program for community members.

Also in February, Frank hired Rod Dunican as a Education Programs  
Manager. Rod is a senior learning professional with more than twenty- 
five years of experience in corporate training, consulting, coaching,  
and project management, working in the areas of organizational  
development, operations, marketing, eLearning and instructor-led  
training programs. He will be the Project Manager for the second phase  
of the Public Policy Initiative.

Cary Bass worked on organizing the Wikimania Scholarships committee  
for Wikimania 2010 in Gdańsk. He also a acted as a staff coordinator  
for the very first meetup of San Francisco Wikipedia volunteers in the  
new office. Furthermore, Cary organized the relaunch and rebranding of  
the Living Persons Task Force on the English Wikipedia and selected,  
appointed and installed the current ombudsmen commission.

COMMUNICATIONS
A busy, though short month for Wikimedia communications. The Google  
grant announcement mid-month delivered the highest amount of coverage  
- resulting in more coverage than the closing of this year's annual  
campaign. Other coverage through the month focussed on general  
Wikipedia topical issues and interviews with Jimmy Wales.

* Announcements
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google
17 February 2010, Donation will support capacity investments in  
Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_announces_$2_million_grant_from_Google
Telefónica and Wikimedia Foundation Partner to Advance Learning and  
Increase Access to Free Knowledge
1 February 2010, Strategic partnership will improve access to  
Wikimedia educational and informational content in Latin America and  
Europe.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Telefonica_and_Wikimedia_partner_February_2010
* Blog posts
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/
* Media contact
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#February_2010
* Major coverage through February

1. Wikimedia and Telefonica partner to expand access to Wikipedia  
(February 1)
Considerably less coverage of the Telefonica/WMF partnership than  
previous major telco partnerships. Most media outlets copied press  
release verbatim or offered neutral perspective on the details.
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Telefónica-Wikimedia-Foundation-Form-Partnership-60911.ht 
m
http://www.finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/57337_Telefónica_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_partner_to_advance_learning_and_increase_access_to_free_knowledg 
/

2. $2 million Google grant for Wikimedia Foundation (February 16-17)
Heavy coverage of Google's grant/gift to Wikimedia Foundation later in  
February, in major blogs and mainstream media around the world.  
Prompted by an advance tweet from Jimmy, news spread quickly on blogs  
with mainstream coverage following the formal press release on  
February 17. Mostly positive coverage, with many bloggers highlighting  
the positive intentions of Google (most coverage focussed on Google  
rather than Wikimedia or Wikipedia).
http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/google-wikipedia-donation/
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/google-donates-2-million-to-wikimedia-foundation/
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?tag=3.5721%3Ficx_id=D9DU5MF00
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=dfpdnb404BjCScMC_C50XN2mj1b6M
Other worthwhile reads
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/02/10/more-video-coming-wikipedias-way
http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2010/02/02/News/Mcgill.Student.Group.Organizes.To.Raise.Funding.For.Wikipedia-3862444.shtml
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Students-at-McGill-U-Band/21033/
http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/02/why-wikipedia-beats-wikinews-as-a-collaborative-journalism-project/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/companies_on_wikipedia_apple_bt_nokia.php

* Communications campaign update
The Fenton communications team continued work on the three key  
communications products associated with part two of the campaign: the  
wikimedia story presentation, a leave-behind printed product, and a  
story video. The team held a consultation with Sue Gardner in late  
February to break down the basic pieces or 'acts' of a Wikimedia  
presentation, and submitted an initial creative brief framing up a  
collective voice for the communications products.

Fenton and SeaChange strategies also conducted survey design work with  
Wikimedia Foundation staff for the first qualitative, on-line focus  
groups of Wikimedia donors. This data will be combined with broader  
survey results to form a draft, compound demographic analysis of our  
donors - culminating in an donor audience tool to determine next steps  
for strategic outreach with donors.

During Februay, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews  
with SWISS Magazine (Basel, Switzerland); Televisió de Catalunya  
(Barcelona, Spain); NHK (Tokyo, Japan); KCBS (San Francisco,  
California, USA); DataCenterDynamics (San Francisco, California, USA);  
Wall Street Journal (New York, New York, USA); Associated Press (San  
Francisco, California, USA);UN Special Magazine; Wall Street Journal  
(New York, New York, USA); Denver Post (Denver, Colorado, USA); Parade  
Magazine (New York, New York, USA); Media Bistro (New York, New York,  
USA); Cell magazine (New York, New York, USA); BBC 2 (London, United  
Kingdom).

FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 3,450 donations in February,  
totaling approximately USD 2,108,885. Year-to-date, the Foundation has  
raised USD 11,259,228 in individual donations, 50% above its annual  
goal of USD 7,500,000. In February, the Foundation also raised USD  
500,000 of restricted and unrestricted grants, brining the total  
fundraising related revenue for the year to USD 13,309,228, 43% above  
the goal of USD 9,297,000.

The Community Giving team continued to wind down the 2009-10 Annual  
Fundraiser. The team entered in the final gifts from Dexia,  
Moneybookers, Citibank, and various other accounts in order to  
complete the transaction record for the fundraiser. They also  
processed refunds for suspected and real fraudulent credit card  
transactions. The Community Giving team began the 2010 Fundraising  
Survey project in conjunction with SeaChange to better access our  
donors and messaging.

In the area of major gifts, the month of February was packed with  
donor stewardship meetings, both to thank recent donors and explore  
new partnerships. In addition, Rebecca Handler planned and led a three- 
hour stewardship workshop for the board, and met with Jimmy Wales to  
discuss his Davos trip and our upcoming trip to New York City. Jan- 
Bart attended a donor meeting and was on message and a wonderful  
ambassador for the Foundation. Rebecca helped Anya prepare for the  
World Affairs Council, which ended up being a successful sold-out  
program on February 22nd.

LEGAL
In February, the Legal Department won an important domain-name  
decision through a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy  
(UDRP) proceeding and blocked a commercial entity from using the  
domain name "softwarewikipedia.com". The decision was tweeted to  
general approval in the community. Mike increased demand letters and  
other actions against trademark infringers, domain-name squatters, and  
other unauthorized users of Wikipedia marks. This action is in line  
both with the Foundation's efforts to build positive branding of the  
Wikimedia projects in the public interest world and with our business  
partnerships that center on co-branding.

MARCH

Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: March 2010
Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
371 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+13.3% (1 year ago) / +7.4% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.7 billion
+0.3% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 100,950
~+1% (1 year ago) / -0.76% (1 month ago)
Source: March 2010 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_03_detailed.html>

KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.3MM vs. plan of USD 9.0MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 6.3MM vs. plan of USD 7.1MM
Unrestricted cash on hand as of April 28: USD 12.8MM while  
unrestricted CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.7MM

STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
The working groups have finished most of their preliminary planning  
with the help of The Bridgespan Group. The strategy team will spend  
April and May finalizing and integrating that work into a cohesive  
plan. The Strategy Task Force has made progress toward drafting a  
movement-wide set of goals and priorities. A draft for comments should  
be completed by the end of April. There have also been a number of  
substantive conversations about the scope of content across different  
Wikimedia projects, which has resulted in a new Task Force.

TECHNOLOGY – CORE
Operations
Wikimedia sites suffered from a global outage on March 24, that lasted  
up to several hours for some users, due to a DNS corruption problem in  
the standard fail-over procedure to divert traffic from Amsterdam to  
Tampa. The tech team have reduced the Foundation's DNS update interval  
from standard 30 minutes to 5 minutes, and will be reviewing enhancing  
notification / escalation procedures to keep communications better  
informed of status during outages.

The entire Tech Team came together in San Francisco for its twice- 
annual Tech Meeting, and discussed both plans and issues. The plan for  
Operations has been further developed in the Tech Strategy Work Group.

The Amsterdam network has been extended for the upcoming server  
capacity expansion. This new network equipment will also be used to  
migrate to a much more fault tolerant network topology.

Preparations were made for the caching servers expansion in Amsterdam,  
and new servers were ordered. The team expects to complete the  
expansion by the end of April.

External Storage (i.e. wiki revisions data) was re-compressed into a  
more efficient format: from 1.9 TB to about 140 GB, a saving of 93% on  
our storage servers.

Rob Halsell made progress on research and experimentation with Ubuntu  
Cloud for the development server cluster.

Mobile
The technology team released a new version of the Wikimedia Mobile App  
to the iTunes store which is awaiting Apple acceptance. The team is  
also on the verge of deploying a new version of the Mobile Server and  
migrating m.stats to stats.wikimedia.

Analytics
A planning group on analytics begun assessing different options for  
web analytics and other analytics requirements across the whole  
Wikimedia Foundation. Privacy issues were a key part of the discussion  
to-date, and both open source and proprietary solutions have been  
considered. The group expects to reach a better sense of decision  
tradeoffs (features/cost/privacy/timing/risks etc.) by May.

TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY
The usability beta was updated on March 17, to decouple the HTML  
iFrame, which introduces considerable additional complexity, from the  
features for inserting links, tables and, search & replace. Dialog  
features were enabled for over 500,000 beta users.[1] The main  
features for Citron, such as template collapsing, inline expansion and  
the dialog for templates were enabled for the usability study. (Citron  
features are not available for wider audience due to iFrame  
dependency.) [1] Usability Update: Introducing Dialogs,
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/usability-update-introducing-dialogs/

The third round of the usability study was conducted in March in  
partnership with gotomedia[2]. Ten people participated at Fleischman  
Field Research in San Francisco and eight other participants were  
surveyed remotely using web conference technology. The objective of  
the study was to evaluate the new features such as template handling  
features (collapsing, inline expansion, and pop-up) and side-by-side  
preview tab and overall evaluation of the Stanton Wikipedia usability  
project. The findings from the study and videos will be published in  
early May. [2] gotomedia, http://www.gotomedia.com/

The usability team is preparing to offer the usability beta as default  
user interface and interaction to all Wikimedia projects. The beta has  
been tried out by over 600,000 users since August 2009, and an average  
of 80% of users continue using it. The plan is to roll out to Commons  
on April 5, and evaluate the responses and system capacity and  
continue on to Wikipedia and the rest of Wikimedia projects towards  
end of the month. The announcements were made though WMF blog and tech  
blogs. [3][4][5]
[3] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/
[4] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/
[5] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-power-of-translators/
March ended with a total of 635,942 users having tried the Beta. [6]
[6] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
Beta_Feedback_Survey#Update:_March_31.2C_2010

MULTIMEDIA USABILITY PROJECT
Development of the new upload interface continued and the prototype  
was staged in a lab environment. The two types of user flow are  
staged, 1) “my own work” and 2) “found on Internet.” The user  
flow which requires author's permission will be staged later time.  
Once the prototype is finalized, it will be used for the usability  
study and be opened up for the community for feedback.

Assets uploaded but missing mandatory information, such as author or  
copyright status, require flags or some protection, so that assets are  
not distributed without permission from authors or without confirming  
the appropriate copyright status. A feature for incomplete uploads  
that supports graceful handling of this interim status is under active  
discussion.[7]
[7] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Incomplete_uploads

The usability study was postponed from March 30 and 31 to early May,  
in order to incorporate feedback and avoid conflicting schedule with  
conferences in the second half of April. Ten study participants were  
recruited and screened for the usability study through the banner on  
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The usability study will be conducted  
in partnership with gotomedia.

OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During March, Rod Dunican, Pete Forsyth and Frank Schulenburg  
finalized the grant proposal for the second phase of the Public Policy  
Initiative. They started to outline a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador  
training and certification program as a key deliverable of the  
Initiative. Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors will serve as trainers,  
working directly with classroom instructors to teach the basics of  
Wikipedia editing. Furthermore, Campus Ambassadors will help to start  
Wikipedia student groups, facilitate the exchange of ideas regarding  
Wikipedia as a learning tool, and plan social events. The grant  
proposal outlines the establishment of this Campus Ambassador Program  
and includes a high-level program view of the Ambassador training  
sessions.

Frank Schulenburg also participated in a video conference with the  
winners of Google's Kiswahili Challenge in Nairobi/Kenya. The  
participants of the Challenge discussed with Frank, Erik Möller, Naoko  
Komuara and Samuel Klein Wikipedia's upcoming new usability features,  
Wikimedia's outreach resources and opportunities for the contest  
participants to get more involved in the Wikimedia movement.

As part of the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning process,  
Frank Schulenburg embarked on planning the outreach department's  
priorities for the fiscal year 2010/2011. Together with the members of  
the Program Team Workgroup, he worked on a mission statement for the  
Program Team, the Team's core processes, and the potential  
implications for the future structure and activities of the Program  
Team.

Rod Dunican, Wikimedia's new Education Program Manager, started to  
discuss a potential meeting – "Using Wikipedia as a Learning Tool in  
the Classroom" – with librarians and professors. He reached out to  
instructors who are currently using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and  
have first-hand knowledge of the pitfalls and successes that the  
Public Policy Initiative may experience. Rod investigated their  
interest in sharing their experiences with WMF and helping the  
Wikimedia Foundation to develop sample lesson plans and other  
instructional materials for universities.

Pete Forsyth continued his communication with schools who participated  
in phase one of the Public Policy Initiative. He secured verbal  
commitments from professors for the second phase of the Initiative.

Pete worked with contacts at Harvard's Taubman Center --who wish to  
dedicate 18 public policy case studies under a Creative Commons  
license for use in the Public Policy Initiative-- to clarify licensing  
issues and seek consensus on how to move forward. He also met with the  
Internet Archive, American Field Service, and BunchBall, and explored  
Yahoo Answers and the Open Directory Project, in ongoing efforts to  
stay abreast of current thinking about online communities and  
volunteerism, and to maintain a network in that arena.

Pete also began to coordinate the setup of a Contact Relationship  
Management database for the program team. Together with members of  
Wikimedia's tech team he set up a CiviCRM installation for testing  
purposes and started to get trained.
Furthermore, Pete started to plan a meeting with members of the German  
Mentoring Team, to be held in April in Berlin. The meeting will aim at  
sharing best practices and discussing the necessary steps for building  
sustainable Mentoring Programs in other Wikipedia language versions.

Cary Bass worked with the User Experience team to plan and develop the  
roll-out of Vector onto the Wikimedia projects; including advanced  
planning for the development of the Wikipedia 2.0 logo for extended  
languages. With Sara Crouse, he organized the Wikimania 2010  
scholarship team. In conjunction with Austin Hair, Cary updated 2009's  
scholarship application and database, submitted the call for  
applications and worked with making phase one application review work  
efficiently for scholarship team.

Cary coordinated the board certification of the results of the Steward  
election.

On March 26 and 27, Erik Zachte attended the Critical Point of View  
conference (CPOV) in Amsterdam. (Mark, Jose and Hay also attended one  
day.) The CPOV conference brings together researchers and Wikipedians  
from around the world to share and build insights into the complex and  
messy reality of Wikipedia: What are the new processes for determining  
the threshold of knowledge and how do they actually play out? What are  
the new relations that emerge between this knowledge reference and  
external institutions such as schools and governments? How is agency  
distributed within the Wikipedia platform? The conference was staged  
by the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures (INC) and the  
Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). It's the second  
event staged by those two organizations: the first was 'WikiWars,' in  
Bangalore, India in January 2010. In September 2010 there will be a  
third even in Leipzig, Germany. Erik reported back that the conference  
was very well organized, with pictures and talk summaries later put  
online at networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/. About 100 people attended.

COMMUNICATIONS
March was a quiet month for media coverage and communications  
operations. Major media interest focussed on Wikipedia downtime in  
late March. Jay Walsh spent much of March focussing on strategy/ 
business plan support, support and planning for vector roll-out, and  
design strategy planning.
* Blog posts
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/
(Blog traffic peaked later in March, on both techblog and Wikimedia  
blog with global interest in brief WP downtime.)
* Media contact
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#March_2010

* Major coverage through January
1. Suspected gunman had Wikipedia connections (March 5)
Some neutral-tone coverage through the US about a gunman who open- 
fired on the Pentagon in March, who allegedly had connections to  
Wikipedia, as well as many other online properties.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/gunman-outlined-theories-online/

2. Wikipedia as a trusted news source (March 15)
Moka Pantages garnered a few tech headlines and considerable micro- 
blogging mentions during a SXSW presentation in Austin focussing on  
digital journalism.  The claim that Wikipedia should be trusted as a  
news source was backed up by bloggers and supported by reporters  
attending the social media gathering.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_wikipedia_should_be_trusted_or_how_to_consume.php

3. "Get Video on Wikipedia!" (March 18)
The campaign to get video on Wikipedia, led by Kaltura and the HTML5  
open video alliance received headlines in mid-March.  The news  
focussed on major advances in open video and HTML5 and how these  
improvements stood to increase the quality and quantity of video on  
Wikipedia. Coverage was largely positive.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Wikipedia-Pushes-for-Users-to/22035/
http://mashable.com/2010/03/18/video-wikipedia/
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/18/open-source-video-company-kaltura-joins-with-wikimedia-to-promote-html5-video/

4. Wikipedia down (March 24)
A one-hour plus downtime for Foundation web properties in late-March  
resulted in a deluge of tech blogger and micro-blogger coverage. Most  
coverage was short and neutral in tone, and quickly updated once the  
site resumed service.  Major media combined the news with the  
similarly but unrelated timing of a youtube.com site outage.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7795&tag=content;col1
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361778,00.asp
http://mashable.com/2010/03/24/wikipedia-is-down/

5. Wikipedia readies for User Interface overhaul (March 26)
Largely positive coverage of the blog post from the Wikipedia  
Usability team announcing the details of the forthcoming vector roll- 
out on Wikimedia Foundation properties. Coverage on almost all major  
tech blogs, as well as main stream media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/new-wikipedia-layout-2010_n_517007.html
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_you_ready_for_the_new_easier_wikipedia.php
http://mashable.com/2010/03/26/wikipedias-redesign-is-coming-soon/
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/26/wikipedia-prepares-for-user-interface-lift/
Other worthwhile reads
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/03/23/urnidgns852573C400693880482576EF001C04F2.DTL
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/03/23/25575/
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/from_haiti_to_the_oscars_wikim.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants/8564348.stm
http://opensource.com/business/10/3/wikimedia-foundation-doing-strategic-planning-open-source-way
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100311/you-ask-jimmy-wales-answers-a-crowd-sourced-interview-with-mr-wikipedia/
http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=113390
During March, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews with  
the Wall Street Journal (New York, New York, USA); the Associated  
Press (San Francisco, California, USA); National Public Radio  
(Washington, District of Columbia, USA); PR Week (London, United  
Kingdom); the National Post (Toronto, Canada); ABC News (New York, New  
York, USA); CNBC (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA); Together  
Magazine (Brussels, Belgium); Daily Princetonian (Princeton, New  
Jersey, USA); Streaming Media (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA); Radio  
Netherlands (Hilversum, Netherlands).

* Communications campaign update
Fenton's communications work through March focussed on refining  
concepts for the executive presentation kit, as well as presenting  
refined concepts for an accompanying video. Wikimedia fundraiser  
research focussed on evaluating pre-existing donor research ideas and  
refining ideas for the upcoming donor survey.

FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 1,968 donations in March, totaling  
approximately USD 99,095. Year-to-date, the Foundation has raised USD  
11,358,323 in individual donations, 53% above its annual goal of USD  
7,500,000. Including revenue from restricted and unrestricted gifts  
the Wikimedia Foundation has raised USD 13,408,323, 45% above the goal  
of USD 9,297,000.

In March, the Community Gifts began planning for the 2010 Annual  
Fundraiser. The team began compiling reports of the make up on the  
Foundation's donors and the effects of various donor cultivation and  
stewardship efforts. The fundraising department plans to use the  
reports to fuel planning and upcoming budgets.

In addition, the Community gifts team continued working the 2010  
Fundraising Survey (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Survey 
) with intents to understand the Foundation's donors, how they  
perceive the foundation’s work, and what kinds of interactions would  
be most valuable in maintaining long-term philanthropic relationships.  
The survey will launch in May after translation efforts are completed.

With the assistance of the Technology team Community giving posted and  
boarded activity recruiting for two staff positions to support the  
2010 Fundraising efforts. These positions should mitigate peak demand  
for engineering to support Fundraising without diverting resources  
from other technology functions.

Major gifts activities in March including working with Bridgespan on  
the fundraising business plan, mapping out and event for the end of  
2010, developing fundraising communications for Jimmy Wales and  
preparing for April donor meetings in New York. In addition, Rebecca  
conducted prospect/donor meetings with over ten individuals.

LEGAL
The legal team began a pro-bono relationship with the Perkins Coie law  
firm, which may be able to provide significant litigation work for the  
Foundation.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Business Development focused its attention on mobile and offline areas  
and its development in the strategic plan. In March Kul and Tomasz  
attended Mobile World Congress and spoke at the event about user data,  
trust, and the worldwide growth of content on mobile devices. Kul is  
directing developments in mobile apps with existing partners Orange  
and Telefonica, and is working toward a system to engage with many  
more partners in geographic regions such as Eastern Europe, the Middle  
East, and throughout Asia. Kul is also working with various partners  
to test several initiatives to bring Wikipedia in offline forms/ 
devices in markets. Currently the focus on offline Wikipedia has been  
on market research and product development with market and  
distributions tests soon to come.

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION
In March Veronique and KPMG worked to finalize the 2008 Form 990 Tax  
Return. The return was approved by the Audit Committee on March 24.  
The Board of Trustees will be presented with the final Form 990 during  
their April meeting in Berlin, Germany.

To facilitate the rapid growth of Foundation staff as outlined in the  
preliminary version of the Strategy Plan, the administration team  
visited a vacant office space on the 6th floor of 149 New Montgomery  
Street, in San Francisco. After their visit the administrative team  
began negotiating a lease and hope to obtain the 6th floor to  
facilitate the Foundation's projected growth. With the current growth  
rates the Foundation will likely require the extra floor by early 2011.

Bill Gong, the Foundation's accountant, began working with vendors to  
find an updated accounting system for the Foundation. Currently the  
organization has been using Quickbooks, but with the rapid growth of  
the organization this software is no longer a practical solution. The  
accounting team hopes to find a system that will be compatible with  
the open-source fundraising software CiviCRM.

VISITORS AND GUESTS
In March, the following people visited the Wikimedia Foundation  
offices for meetings and talks: Jesse Ansubel of the Sloan Foundation;  
Melissa Hagemann, Advisory Board member and Senior Program Manager  
with the Open Society Institute; a delegation from the Chinese State  
Department; New York Times journalist Jenny 8 Lee; former IDEO  
engineer and founder of BunchBall, Rajat Paharia; User: Erdrokan from  
Switzerland; a delegation from intercultural learning and student  
exchange non-profit AFS Intecultural Programs; User:Elonka; Bishakha  
Datta; Meghan Murphy of the X Prize Foundation; Megan Smith of Google,  
and Thomas Dalton of Wikimedia UK.

STAFF ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES
No changes were made during March.

STAFF ACTIVITIES
The bi-annual All Staff meeting was held on March 4th and 5th. Sue  
opened this year with an overview of the goals and targets coming out  
of the Strategic Plan for the next 5 years including a focus in on the  
2010-2011 fiscal year. Bridgespan attended the meetings and helped  
facilitate as we broke into groups by department to determine the  
necessary positions and logistics that would get us from here to there  
with an emphasis on the next fiscal year.




James Owen
Executive Assistant & Board Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
Office +1.415.839.6885 x 604
Mobile +1.415.509.5444
Fax +1.415.882.0495
Email- jowen at wikimedia.org
Website- www.wikimediafoundation.org



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