[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

[Fred Bauder]

On Jun 19, 2006, at 5:07 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
>
> The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
> core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
> what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
> might want to approach.
>
> Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
>
> Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF,  
> and
> extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
> Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
> community model)
>
> Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
>
> Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
>
> Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
>

I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper  
encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in  
connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a  
series of documents which focus on public health which would prove  
useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be  
worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign.  
There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of  
the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of  
situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as  
to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease  
and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a  
project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first  
see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects  
regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on,  
computer literate guy with experience in give and take.

Fred


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