[Foundation-l] Report to the Board April 2009

[Sue Gardner]

(Adding to what Michael said.)

Yes, we're trying to catch up. May will be posted tomorrow, and June is being worked on right now.

These reports started off as simple staff activity reports (when I joined the Foundation two years ago), and when the staff was small they were fairly easy to put together quickly.  Over time, we've added in new structured info such as the comScore Media Metrix data, lists of media interviews, fundraising totals, etc. That takes a little longer to gather -- for example, we don't have finalized fundraising totals until 20 days following the close of month, and comScore data can take even longer.  Plus, growth in staff means it takes that much longer to collect and synthesize everyone's input.

Meantime, we've been working towards a parallel data-driven monthly report -- it would include comScore data, financial information, and metrics aimed at assessing participation and quality.  The financial information for that report is now regularly produced on a monthly basis, and we are pretty close to having good-enough reach, quality and participation metrics regularly produced as well, thanks to Erik Zachte and others.  The goal of the data-driven report is to focus less on staff activity, and more on a high-level assessment of the overall health of the Foundation and its projects.

Once we have the data-driven report in regular production, we can rethink reporting overall.  For example, we might decide to publish the monthly data report + a richer text-based staff activities report once a quarter. That would mean the activities report could be less focused on small incremental changes (the staff worked on X, the staff continued Y) and more focused on providing greater detail about a small number of high-priority initiatives, e.g., the strategy project, the usability project, the bookshelf project, etc.  Or, we could publish the data report, plus a lightweight, simple monthly activities report focused purely on staff work -- new hires and that kind of thing.

I definitely sympathize with people wanting to be connected and aware of what's going on with the staff. I'd be curious to know what kinds of information people find most useful of what we publish today, and what you'd like to see more of -- and also what you think of the other channels we publish through, e.g., the tech blog, the Foundation blog, press releases, etc.  And I do also appreciate your patience as we get caught up on this most recent backlog :-)

Thanks,
Sue



------Original Message------
From: Benjamin Lees
Sender: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
ReplyTo: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Sent: Aug 11, 2009 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board April 2009

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> Covering:               April 2009
> Prepared by:            Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia
> Foundation
> Prepared for:   Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>

I really like these reports, but they'd be more useful if they came sooner
after the events they describe.  Will you be able to catch up to a <1-month
delay in the near future? (I wouldn't mind if the reports for May, June, and
July were condensed, if that's what it took.)
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