[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Pedro Sanchez]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> As Wikimedia's paid staff continues to grow, the decision to move to San
>> Francisco (and its consequences) actually gets amplified, doesn't it? It
>> would only be offset by the benefits that Wikimedia gets for being in that
>> particular location (partnerships with other San Francisco-based companies,
>> presumably).
> Since I wasn't an employee when the Foundation made the move to San
> Francisco, I can't speak for all of the motivations.  From my
> perspective as an open source software developer working on such a novel
> project, there are a lot of advantages to being in the Bay Area - namely
> proximity to lots of other projects with similar values (for
> partnerships, support, networking, etc) as well as a large pool of
> excellent developer talent.  Of course, excellent developer talent is
> not unique to SF (evidenced by the fact that so many of our developers
> are remote), I believe it exists here in a much more concentrated
> fashion than elsewhere.  Also, the Bay Area has a ton of non-engineering
> talent with non-profit and community focused experience.  I can only
> speak from my own experience and anecdotal evidence, but I would argue
> that the Bay Area is a hub (at least in the US) for both engineering and
> community development/non-profit professionals.
>
Yes, that was what we were said several years ago

and I think now there's ample evidence to show it was true, look at
all the partnerships and support we got