[Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website

[Samuel J Klein]

Veronique, thank you for publishing the plan, and for your work on it.

Phoebe writes:
> I would like to encourage everyone to be sure and actually read this
> plan closely; "continued growth" turns out to mean nearly doubling the
> staff next year, and doubling the budget -- rather surprisingly dramatic
> growth. There is a lot of change that is planned for here, and many of
> these changes relate to areas that community members do work in.
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> Personally, I would love to see some serious community discussion of
> this plan both here and at Wikimania next week.

Yes, next year's planned growth is dramatic.  I wish that this were
being done more slowly, though I understand the desire to move
decisively and effectively.

I also hope we have good public discussions, and have heard it
suggested that we make time at Wikimania for large-group discussion
and feedback about this and the strategy.

I do think there are more risks inherent in this sort of growth than
are listed in the 'potential risks' section -- for instance,
"inability to acculturate new staff due to aggressive growth" -- and
we should be alert to these risks to avoid them.

The most dramatic change proposed may be the addition of many
community-focused staff roles, including 3 proposed hires focused on
chapter relations and development, 5 focused on community development,
and 1 focused on translation coordination...  I believe that these are
meant to aid and facilitate the work being done in the community
rather than replacing it, but preparing for this sort of change will
involve a level of active collaboration between staff and community.

There are also tantalizing comments in the plan about such new initiatives in
- 'staff and volunteer development'
- 'awards and grants'
- 'community outreach and volunteer convenings'
- a 'stakeholder database'

which I expect people would like to hear more about.  (will this
database let me find community members in Portugal interested in
wikisource and library outreach?)


Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> writes:
> Milos and myself will talk in Gdansk
> about the need to improve technical support for our smallest projects (think
> Hindi, Malayalam... hundreds of million people will benefit..).

I hope that many of us will take part in such discussions!  This is
one of our greatest opportunities for improvement.

> What I am also looking for is improved support for projects like the recent
> Indonesian contest. They have set the standard for a competition involving
> universities. They doubled the number of active editors and 60% of them is
> female.

Yes.  See above re: awards and grants.   The Swahili contest was
similarly successful (though not in terms of gender ratio; lessons to
be shared!)


> If there is one thing that I find problematic, it is that the WMF office can
> be observed to operate a dual role; it is the world wide office for the
> Wikimedia Foundation and it behaves very much like a chapter. If there is
> one thing I would appreciate it would be if these two activities are
> separated. This would imho be best realised with the creation of an USA
> chapter.

I agree.  I know that Wikimedia NY has had some success, but would
like to see a national chapter form.

SJ