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

[Anthere]

Fred Bauder wrote:
> 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

I might be interested in the guy name ;-)

Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I 
am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum 
(http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of 
question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.

I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a 
framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners 
input will be essential to define which content should be included or 
not included, and what the audience would be.

However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set, 
with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed 
to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the 
limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with 
deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.

Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that 
it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step 
that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a 
problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant 
amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.

Ant