[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia (Foundation) endowment

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

hi Fae,

I share your commitment to avoiding a bureaucratic monster. However, I have
to practically point out, that in our case any vision and strategy of a
long time horizon is a grave mistake. We can't predict technologies and
Internet trends 10 years in the future, so even vision creation beyond this
point is a dangerously blinding and binding exercise. Strategy creation and
its time horizon have to be based on the stability of the environment. The
only business I know of that relies on something close to 100 years of time
horizon for strategy is forestry. We, on the other hand, are in the
Internet business, and going beyond 5 years in terms of strategic plans,
and beyond 10 years in terms of long-term powerful visions is more likely
to lull us to sleep, rather than help.

best,

dariusz ("pundit")


On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:

> I enjoyed Ting's perception, he always seems to have a viewpoint
> reliably in the center of the Wikimedia movement.
>
> I previously pushed for a commitment to perpetuity, including a 100
> year plan for basic backup. The operational side of our movement
> failed to either understand why this is important, or properly to
> respond to a relatively simple proposal for a better strategy.
>
> Should an endowment run the risk of establishing a century spanning
> immovable bureaucracy, then our shared open knowledge vision, must be
> far greater than the English Wikipedia, bigger than Wikipedia, span
> wider than any Wikimedia project. These projects have a natural
> lifespan of less than a decade, not generations.
>
> Until the movement is ready to lay out a serious vision and strategy
> that covers the next 100 years, we are not ready to justify asking
> donors for hundreds of millions of dollars to stick in a WMF managed
> investment account. This alone would create a potential for
> reputational risk so great, it could wipe out the Wikimedia brand, and
> our stake in the open knowledge movement, permanently.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
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-- 

__________________________
dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
profesor zarządzania
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl