[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia CH staff changes in 2013

Wed Apr 10 07:10:55 UTC 2013

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for asking!

In fact, it was as easy as said :-)  Ilario has just never been involved in the recruitment process. In WMCH we believe that the conflict of interest is not solved with the resignation, but giving the whole process in the hands of a committee.

The use of the committees are usual in Wikimedia (i.e the FDC) exactly to avoid this kind of problems.

To make a long story short, the recruitment process was not a Board process. Chantal was involved from the start, the job descriptions have been realized by French-speakers  (Chantal , me and Yann, a professional community manager). The interviews have been conducted by a committee of four people: Chantal, Yann, Patrick (Board member and active in both languages) and Manuel (our CIO).

The board continued to work normally side by side with the selection committee without any interference or pressure. The same communication was split in different channels.

The selection committee provided a report to the Board (less Ilario) and we just validated their conclusions.

Please have in mind that the meaning of "Board member" is not the same in all countries. In Switzerland all Board members are elected for one year only, with no appointed member, and we try to split as much as possible executive duties and board duties. For some countries it can seem hard to avoid a COI, for others its easier.

Cheers

Charles
___________________________________________________________
I use this email for mailing list only.

Charles ANDRES, Chairman
"Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
www.wikimedia.ch
Skype: charles.andres.wmch
IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch

Le 9 avr. 2013 à 20:55, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Charles,
> 
> Thank you for sharing this information. Can you elaborate on how the
> conflict of interest of hiring a current board member was managed?
> 
> You say Ilario wasn't involved in the hiring process, but appropriately
> managing such a conflict is more difficult than that. Did Ilario recuse
> from all discussions and decisions about the job from the early planning
> stages (ie. well before the job was advertised)? Did you seek professional
> advise on how to manage the conflict?
> 
> In the UK, I think it is normal for a trustee to resign at least before
> they apply for the job, ideally sooner.
> On 9 Apr 2013 18:08, "Charles Andrès" <charles.andres.wmch at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Dear all,
>> We have the pleasure to announce the hiring of 2 new employees and one
>> long-term contractor in 2013. On the other hand, Chantal Ebongué, our Chief
>> Administrative Officer, will leave her job at the end of July.
>> The three hiring are:
>> - Manuel Schneider, as Chief Information Officer and Event Manager, who
>> has started on 1st January 2013 (so this announcement is long overdue !)
>> - Muriel Staub, as German-speaking Community manager, who will start on
>> 1st May 2013
>> - Ilario Valdelli, Italian-speaking Community and GLAM manager, who will
>> start on 1st may 2013.
>> Muriel Staub will be our new German-speaking Community manager a 50%
>> position. Muriel is preparing a Master in Management, Organization Studies
>> and Cultural Theory at the University of Sankt Gallen. The subject of her
>> Master Thesis is "How does the use of Wikipedia affect the production and
>> sourcing of knowledge at Swiss Universities". She has a strong experience
>> as community manager for Apple, as well as having managed academic events
>> as a personal assistant of the Chancellor and Vice President of the
>> Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany.
>> Ilario Valdelli is hired as our Italian-speaking Community and GLAM
>> manager, also a 50% position. Ilario has a Master in Arts and worked for
>> many years in the IT field. He is a well-known member of the Wikimedia
>> community; he is founding member of Wikimedia CH as well as a current Board
>> member (he was of course not involved in the hiring process, and will not
>> remain on the board when his new job starts). He knows very well the
>> Ticinese community and has already developed strong partnerships with GLAMs
>> in this area.
>> The Community managers will work actively with the German or
>> Italian-speaking community to support them in accomplishing projects and
>> get in touch with Wikimedia entities and officials. They help the community
>> by gathering requests and ideas, communicating them to all relevant parties
>> and translating information wherever needed. This includes support to bring
>> formal requests and motions to WMCH by helping to prepare them, translate
>> them and present them to the Board. It's their responsibility to make sure
>> the community voices are heard inside the association and that activities
>> and communications of Wikimedia movement entities are also replicated into
>> the communities. As a GLAM Manager, Ilario will continue to contact GLAMs
>> in Ticino and create various partnerships aiming to develop GLAM
>> collaborations in Switzerland.
>> Manuel Schneider, another well-known member of the community, has been
>> hired in January 2013 as a long-term part-time contractor to support
>> Wikimedia CH with its technical infrastructure, help with technical
>> questions in our projects and manage events. Manuel has been a Wikipedian
>> since 2004. A co-founder of Wikimedia CH, he has technically supported both
>> our chapter and the wider community for many years, helping in particular
>> to organize several Wikimanias. Currently, Manuel has a lot to do working
>> on our internal infrastructure (servers, backups, donation process, etc),
>> but he should soon be able to spend more time supporting our actual
>> projects, something that will benefit the wider community.
>> Chantal Ebongué is WMCH’s CAO since July 2012. She was hired as our first
>> employee to make the step for professionalization and gave a more solid
>> administrative basis to our association. Thanks to her, after almost one
>> year, the results are positive : WMCH has 4 staff members, an office in
>> Lausanne, the 2012-2013 fundraiser was a success, new projects have started
>> or are in the, and reporting and communication have been improved even if
>> it’s not perfect yet.
>> Chantal decided to resign from her position on July 31 2013, after having
>> completed the transition phase. The success of Chantal's work can be seen
>> by the increasing number of appeals we receive from cultural or education
>> institution; the dark side of the success is that she has no time left for
>> her for doing actual work on cultural or educational content, which was her
>> initial motivation when joining WM CH. She will move to a new job where she
>> will be able to create original work.
>> Chantal will support us in the hiring strategy for the next step and we
>> wish her the best for the future.
>> As an important lesson, we are more than ever convinced that the
>> professionalization of a chapter must go by leaps and bounds, and should
>> involve several hirings at the same time. It is impossible for a single
>> employee to handle the management of projects and the  administrative
>> overheads, especially during the setup phase. We also believe that we need
>> a good balance between members of the community and "external" people: it
>> is likely a good thing to have administrative staff who is not from the
>> community, but he/she needs to be able to rely on a day-to-day basis on
>> someone who knows the community, something impossible to achieve when
>> hiring only one person at a time.
>> As such, while the limitation of growth for established chapters is
>> certainly a good thing, chapters that hires their first employees should be
>> allowed to increase their budget drastically at once (with appropriate
>> oversignt, of course).
>> Charles
>> ___________________________________________________________
>> Charles ANDRES, Chairman
>> "Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge –
>> www.wikimedia.ch
>> Skype: charles.andres.wmch
>> IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
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