[Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

[Cormac Lawler]

On 6/5/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> This is a semi-digression, but one thing that would also be nice to know
> is how to get on those (new or old) committees, and what sorts of time
> and expertise they require.  I know I'd be willing to devote some time
> to a committee if it aligned with my interests and expertise, but the
> process is currently a bit murky to me.
>


Hi Mark,
you can find all existing committees listed at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_committees

Not all committees have their details or procedures outlined yet (I'm
not sure if some of them are operational), but the following committee
pages detail how their membership is managed:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee/Rules_of_procedure
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee

With regards to time, I can only speak for the committee that I'm
involved with (the special projects committee), and even still, it
really depends on the kind of work that you're interested in doing.
Some work is constant (ie evaluating and responding to requests for
collaboration, requests to use our content in some way etc.), some
work is occasional, like writing grant proposals, but, overall, it's
an hour or two per day along with a three hour or so meeting more or
less every two weeks. Again, different committees will have different
workloads, methods, so it's difficult to say exactly what and how much
is involved.

With regards to expertise, that's something that I'd like to get a
much better picture of, as we sometimes get proposals for things that
we are just not currently equipped to deal with, and it would be good
to know who in the community to turn to at times like those. I think I
can speak for the whole SPC that we'd love to hear ideas on how to
improve this process, get more people involved, and generally get
through our burgeoning workload that bit faster and more efficiently.

Cormac