[Wikimedia-l] FDC recommendations on funds allocation, Round 1, 2012-13

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

thanks, Osmar.

I don't have to state the obvious, that over the last couple of weeks we've
been putting several hours per day into the FDC process, besides our real
jobs, and besides the 4-day session we held. This is what needed to be done
and we have no complaints and Thomas is right that being a volunteer is no
excuse. It actually means that we participate voluntary, by free will, and
without lowering any of the professional standards we bring from our real
life.

Also, the fact that we're not native speakers is irrelevant - all of us
have experience in writing longer pieces, most of us have experience with
NGO evaluation, finance, or management, and handling documents related to
it. What takes much more time that actual writing down is agreeing on the
message to the letter.

One thing that I'm really proud of is that we have been able to work
relying on the consensus principle, and many varied perspectives and
different angles of analysis (including e.g. areas where we sought
alternatives to  the analyses provided by FDC staff and created our own
models and simulations) came down to a recommendation we all agreed that we
are fine with.

I don't think it is realistic now to expect that we will be able to provide
detailed feedback for each of the entities, also because of the fact that
we treat reaching a consensus very seriously. We have been writing and
rewriting the recommendation you have seen for quite a while, to make sure
that it reflects our consensus fully, and it takes time.

However, I hear your feedback and all of us at the FDC will think how to
make sure that the whole process, and the amount of work and discussions,
is more reflected in the final outcome of a recommendation. We definitely
do not want to be a professional blackbox, and we've been really making
efforts to make the application and project discussion transparent and
collaborative (and we do hope it will be even more so, also from the
chapters' side).

best,

Dariusz




On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Osmar Valdebenito
<osmar at wikimediachile.cl>wrote:

> I agree that better and much more detailed reports would be great. I would
> love to read what projects the FDC agrees with, which should change and so
> on. But guys, the FDC is a group of volunteers with not enough time and
> where few are native English speakers able to write long pages. I even
> consider that the report is long enough, probably not about each chapter,
> but about the process as a whole.
>
> Yes, it would be great to have a lot of details and I haven't seen any
> problems by the FDC to provide them as long as you ask them but you can't
> expect them to do all that extra work 'for free'.
>
> Osmar Valdebenito G.
>
>
> 2012/11/16 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
>
> > I was also expecting a much more detailed report. I remember having a
> > discussion with Anasuya about the timetable and I pointed out that she
> > hadn't scheduled enough time for writing up the report. If she was
> > thinking of a report like this one, then I can see why we disagreed. I
> > thought a lot more time was needed because I was expecting a much more
> > detailed report (about one side of A4 per application, perhaps).
> >
> > Report writing is something we are, as a movement, very bad at. A well
> > written report can be read in isolation (with references to other
> > documents for more detail if it is desired, but essential details
> > should be in the report itself). It takes longer to write, certainly,
> > but it takes a lot less time to read and digest, so overall a lot of
> > time is saved by writing good reports.
> >
> > It's something that comes up annually with regards to Wikimania - we
> > never get a decent report from the organisers. I also see it on a
> > regular basis with Wikimedia UK - someone brings a subject to a board
> > meeting for discussion without having produced a proper report on it,
> > so the discussion is uninformed, unstructured and nobody knows what it
> > is actually meant to achieve.
> >
> > Perhaps we could organise some reporting writing training for people,
> > although I think the real problem is convincing people that it is
> > worth doing properly.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
>


-- 

__________________________
dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
profesor zarządzania
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl