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

[Samuel J Klein]

These reports remain some of my favorite reading.  Thank you, Sue!

You can also read, wikify, and comment on these reports on Meta:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports#The_Gardner_Report

SJ

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:10 PM, James Owen <jowen at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 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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> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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>



-- 
Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj