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

[David Cuenca]

Erik, if the WMF is supposed to be a global organization there is no need
to concentrate all (physical) resources in SF, unless the WMF is acting as
the US chapter, then it could be understood that it has to restrict its
geographic presence. As I see it, for example there is no impedement to
have a WMF Asia in any chosen country of that region with an engineering
department dependent on the WMF.

I would like to hear from the legal team what are the challenges of having
a distributed presence. It is not a new problem, many international
organizations and companies have gone through the process, so there should
be no need to invent new solutions. As you say, there is international
staff already, the only thing missing would be a space to attract even more
talent while keeping the costs down. Not everyone wants to work from home.
Obviuously an external assessment would be necessary to establish what is
the size necessary for that to happen and if the benefits outweight the
costs.

As for chapters building engineering capacity I see it as something
positive, unfortunately only at the reach of the biggest chapters, and with
a very local (contry-level) organizational focus, which doesn't help in
creating an international work environement.

Micru


On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 12:30 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 6:44 AM, David Cuenca <dacuetu at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't agree with Romaine's view that it is a cultural problem, but it
> is
> > true that the WMF management seems to prefer to have all development
> > concentrated in SF.
>
> Hardly. About half of WMF's engineering staff is distributed (both
> inside and outside the US), and we've encouraged and supported
> software engineering efforts by chapters. I'd actually love to see
> much more of that happen, and see other chapters build engineering
> capacity over time. It's legally challenging for WMF to have office
> presence in multiple jurisdictions, but having independent orgs like
> Wikimedia chapters build out development teams doesn't suffer from
> that challenge.
>
> We're an open source project; being able to decentralize effort is our
> strength. The caveat I would add is that you actually need to ensure
> that complex projects are resourced sufficiently. Wikidata is a
> success in part because it's a well-resourced, well-managed team, and
> the partnership in areas where WMF does need to help was carefully
> negotiated.
>
> So, which other chapters are up for building out serious software
> engineering capacity?
>
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
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