[Wikimedia-l] About the concentration of resources in SF (itwas: "Communication plans for community engagement"

[Everton Zanella Alvarenga]

2013/8/24 Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki at yahoo.com>
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> It is possible to have one location where everything is organized and arranged, but WMF is an international organisation to support the world wide Wikimedia movement. I think it would be good to have WMF deeper inside the world wide community, both digital and physical. I think it is healthy not to focus on one location, but to have an office more inside the Wikimedia movement, at least one on each (largely populated) continent.
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> For local communities WMF is far far far away, while localizing WMF would bring WMF and communities more together.

Romaine, I think a lot of people would agree with you, but I insist
you to analyse the trial to create offices in India, Brazil and Middle
East. This plan has changed and here is the very short explanation:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus#We_plan_to_convert_the_catalyst_projects_into_grants.

I think a big mistake here was to try to make 3 offices, instead of
focusing in one and make it really well. Don't forget that WMF is a
small growing organization learning what to make with the lots of
money it can make through a very successful crowdfunding model. So I
strong believe we should focus on the learnings of these cases. But
with the conservative nature of the (always) active volunteers, I
think such trials generally will be condemned by the community as a
whole, hence by those in charge of taking decisions. Hence don't
expect too much innovation(*) with the actual state of the things.

Also this will depend a lot on who will be the next executive
director. If you have a person with a better work experience on the
global south, things can change. Otherwise it will continue in the
spirit "hey, we are cool, global and a charity organization, let's
make something for the poor".

If we divided WMF role in two aspects, a technological side and a
community one, and if would make sense to have a community support not
only through grants, maybe it could be a good idea to have this second
office focused in the community in another physical place. But I think
right the strategy of focusing now in the technology, otherwise the
*site* Wikipedia can die if it doesn't follow the web development
(which is really fast!), which we is clearly not happening.

We also have to be very clear on what we are thinking about a
community. Wikimedia has a huge online community and a smaller
involved in offline activities. Wikipedia is a site, and its
strategies should focus on the online community, which is what keeps
the site running. It doesn't make sense to spend so much resources
(people and money) with very qualified professionals (sometimes with
nothing to do with the offline community) from the Bay Area to go to
far distance places to "support" the community. The cost-benefit is
not justified for the goals the organization should achieve in the
short time to survice, as learned recently.

(*) This was also noticed in the narrowing focus "It [the WMF] needs
to reduce emphasis on experimentation and discovery, and increase
emphasis on execution and delivery; it needs to restrict itself to its
own core work rather than pinch-hitting for others, and it needs to
shift from a focus on developing movement structures, to encouraging
and supporting activities that directly advance the Wikimedia
Foundation's mission."

And this non-innovative nature of the organization can only hopefully
change depending on the profile of the next executive director. If it
is a business minded person, it'll continue as it is. But there are
other professional profiles which could change this scenario.

Tom

-- 
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org