[Wikimedia-l] Resignation announcement, and a parting remark to everyone

[Christophe Henner]

Hi David,

I changed the topic to not flood Deryck parting email. Though the
topics are related, I'd rather not flood his thread.

Yes, the process is flawed, and everyone recognise it, even FDC staff
and FDC members in their comments do.
Yes, the process is a heavy burden to all the organisations
Yes, we're still missing some steps

Now, I believe because of the situation in which the FDC was created,
a lot of chapters thought that the FDC would become their way to get
funds and so made a proposal.
But the FDC is not the "normal" way to get fund, GAC should be. FDC is
like a EU grant system, where you ask for a lot of money, explaining
the main reasons you need the money (money is not earmarked for a
specific project) and you report back on the use of the money on a
regular basis.

This is not a "light" process.

I am sorry to hear of deeply commited people leaving because of the
FDC toll. And to be quiet honest, even within WMFr the FDC was not a
painless process... and we went through it twice already. I can
totally relate to their feelings and exhaustion. But I believe the FDC
role is, and there's much way of improvement on that, to help
Wikimedia organisations get to the next stage regarding
personification, goals definition, metrics, etc.. In fact we're at
that moment when a start-up starts *really* thinking about ROI. Though
in our case the ROI is not money but in furthering our goals,
fostering Wikimedia community.

And when I say Wikimedia organisations, I include WMF, because all of
our standards are rather low. When I look at the proposals with an
outside perspective, or with the level of quality I ask to my team,
we're all far from the quality I could expect. If I was to judge those
demands only on my professional criteria, no one would have 100% of
the allocation. But we have

And that change in perspective, from start-up to "company" always
comes with its toll. You always see founders stepping back or even
leaving, you see employees leaving too.
I lived the exact same thing in a company I joined at founding 4 years
ago and left last December.

That is a normal step in the life of any organisation. It is a painful
one, but a needed one I believe.

Do we really believe it was better the way it was? Everybody doing
pretty much what they want with the movement funds and little
reporting? I do not.

Now, I don't believe anyone is hiding. Everyone acknowledges the
process is far from perfect. In The initial timeline there was meant
to be a review period after the first rounds (the second just ended).
I believe this period's goals are to on one hand improve the process
in itself and on the other hand make it clearer how heavy a process
the FDC is.

As I said in my previous email:
* Most of the chapters should go through the GAC first, to get used
with a formal process
* We need the first employee/office space budget being a specific GAC
or FDC process (there's pros and cons in having one or the other
handling it). Because let's be honest, the actual FDC process is way
to heavy for those needs and the GAC is not meant to handle such
requests

Best,
--
Christophe


On 29 April 2013 08:31, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29 April 2013 06:14, Christophe Henner <christophe.henner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As said during the feedback session, we still have to figure out how to fund the first employee.
>> The FDC process is a really heavy process that do take a huge amount of time and energy. This is a process everyone should want to avoid as much as possible.
>
>
> This sort of disastrous outcome seems, IIRC, precisely what chapters
> were expecting, and were up in arms about, when the WMF first asserted
> absolute control of the funding. These arguments being what WMF staff
> decided they weren't interested in listening to any more, leading to
> internal-l falling into disuse. Unfortunately, as Deryck notes,
> ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
>
>
> - d.