[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

[Erik Zachte]

Brion:
> "Who actually would go to this main office, and what would they do there?"

Good question. I suppose there are administrative tasks that will grow as
the organisation gets bigger (like sending more and more donators a Xmas
card, oops bad example ;)

Mav:
> "Cost of rent is nothing compared to the synergies that would develop my
being
> where all the action is."

Well one major task that might benefit from close contact would be
organising a printed Wikipedia for every school in Africa, if it will ever
happen. (I can't believe the $100 notebook project is a panacea). I hope and
suppose printing would be done somewhere on that continent as well, so this
puts a different light on Mavs 'where all the action is'.

Mav what kind of (financial?) action are you referring too anyway? Stock
exchange, investment banks? Guess not, forgive my irony. What kind of major
deals would you (?) strike then in NY and not anywhere else?

Wikimedia made a difference because it dared to do things in a novel way,
not copying the ways of the old establishment.

Jimmy is travelling all over the world all the time. I guess his work is not
very dependant on where a main office resides, of course he can answer that
better.

Presence of Mav or his successor (not sure which time frame we are talking)
in New York or D.C. might be beneficial, although I don't see yet how. I
would think a main office is less for policy makers and deal strikers, but
rather for dealing with administrative chores.

In the old ways a main office was also very much needed for representational
needs. Big hallway, etc. I'm sure everyone agrees we don't need that. People
know how to find us, they're willing to come to Frankfurt to meet us, so why
not to Bangalore, San Jose or any place else?

Erik Moeller:
> "We also need to take into account laws that might be relevant to our
website operations.
> This is esp. true, unfortunately, in developing countries.
> There may also be critical variations across US states."

This would indeed be a complicating factor, if the web server would fall
under the jurisdiction of the country that hosts the main office. Not sure
if that would necessarily be the case. Maybe depends on which country we
choose?

Erik Zachte