[Wikimedia-l] Info: Recruitment process for Secretary General of the Wikimedia Chapters Association

[Fae]

On 11 October 2012 22:01, Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey at googlemail.com> wrote:
> This sets out that the organisation would incorporate first and then
> recruit the SG, which appears to be a more logical sequence of events.
> However, I notice that the incorporation step is not part of the process
> that the interim consultant will help with.
>
> Could you expand on the rationale for this please?

Hi Andrew,

Recruiting a Secretary General is likely to take more than 6 weeks and
we would all like to see this done by the end of this year.

Incorporation could be done in a few days in several alternative
countries as soon as one is chosen. Unfortunately, discussing where
might be the best location for WCA administration may take several
months due to the political, tax and financial implications that
everyone is keen to worry about. In fact there is no guarantee we
would ever reach a conclusion if only volunteers are available to do
this analysis in their spare time.

The city/country for incorporation has been a topic of hot debate as
many assume that this will also be where any administration for the
WCA is likely to be located (not necessarily true). By unlocking the
location for incorporation from getting the recruitment process
started, I hope to avoid us taking several more months debating
locations when it is not clear that this is necessary for an SG to be
appointed - the SG can be paid a "competitive market rate" for their
country of residence and their employment contract could either be
negotiated in their home country or a legal initial incorporation
(say, in London) for convenience later to be superseded by a location
that the SG can make proposals for.

The Council Members may well end up delaying the recruitment process
until 2013 while we continue the (mostly political) debate on WCA
office/administrative location if we insist on planning and doing
these things sequentially. This would mean that we would struggle to
appoint a SG before the Chapters Conference next year. However, a
legal or other firm argument as to why the initial stages of
recruitment cannot start in parallel has yet to be presented.

So that this is nominally on the recruitment schedule in the
resolution, I have added a footnote to step 4 and I suggest we plan to
incorporate a body that can employ the SG without that being a
commitment to have an office in that same country. Either London or
Berlin would be good choices considering we only need to know legal
and accounting firms that can help us sort this out and there are no
implications for any physical office.

PS I am not going to be available for the next few days due to the CEE
conference, so it may be an idea to continue this discussion on the
:meta talk page so that Ziko, Stefan and others might pick up and
discuss some alternative options.

Thanks,
Fae