[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] WMF Board of Trustees: minutes of Hong Kong meeting

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Geoff Brigham, 15/09/2013 08:01:
> At the request of the Chair of the WMF Board of Trustees, I am posting
> the minutes of the Hong Kong Board meeting, which you may find here:
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-08-07

Thanks, I was wondering just yesterday about them.
Also forwarding the press release on the new board chair, which was not 
notified on this mailing list.

Nemo



-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: 	[PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation 2013-14 Board of Trustees
announcement



(This press release is also available online:
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/WMF_Board_Election_August_2013>)

Wikimedia Foundation announces 2013-14 Board of Trustees and elected
officers at Wikimania in Hong Kong

Hong Kong -- August 8, 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation today announced
recent additions and elected officers for the 2013-14 Board of Trustees.
Every year at Wikimania, the annual gathering of Wikimedia contributors
from around the world, the Wikimedia Foundation Board appoints its
officers for the coming year. This year's appointments were announced in
Hong Kong, where more than 1000 conference attendees came from nearly 90
countries.

This year, Jan-Bart de Vreede was appointed Chair of the Board and
Phoebe Ayers was appointed Vice Chair. De Vreede works at Kennisnet, the
Dutch public educational organization that supports primary, secondary
and vocational institutions in the effective use of IT in education.

"I am honored to have been chosen to chair the Board in the coming year"
said de Vreede. "I want to thank Kat Walsh for her service on the Board
and for the year she served as Chair during a critical stage of the
organization's development. We look forward to hearing her wise voice as
she continues to engage with our projects, community and mission."

"This is an exciting year and I look forward to using my energy to
ensure a successful transition of our Executive Director and to helping
our newer board members to be able to contribute in the best possible
ways to our mission," de Vreede said. "The next twelve months promise to
be significant for the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia movement
and I'm excited to have the opportunity to lead the Board."

There are 10 seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board and according to
its bylaws, three members are elected by the Wikimedia community, two
are selected by the Wikimedia chapters, the Founder seat is held by
Jimmy Wales, and four members are appointed by the Board itself to
provide additional, specific expertise.

The Board expressed its great thanks to former Board Chair Kat Walsh.
Walsh, a long-term participant in the Wikimedia projects, has been a
member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board since June 2007. Her leadership
has strengthened and nurtured the growth of the worldwide Wikimedia
movement.

"It's been a pleasure to serve on the Wikimedia Board for nearly 7 years
and as Chair over the past 12 months," said Kat Walsh. "During my time
as Chair, the Wikimedia Foundation has worked with the global Wikimedia
community to introduce the simplified editing interface, VisualEditor,
and to support the growth of the Wikipedia Zero program to give free
access to our sites on mobile, helping us reach our goals of increased
reach and participation worldwide. We've also begun an innovative,
volunteer-led grantmaking program to ensure sustainability for our
movement and our projects. Our Board has diversified and strengthened
over the past years, reflecting the diversity and strength of our
community and enabling our colleagues to accomplish remarkable things; I
am proud of what we have been able to do."

The Wikimedia Foundation is happy to welcome its newest member of the
Board, Maria Sefidari, a Computer Science Ph.D candidate at Universidad
Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain. She has been an active Wikimedian
since March, 2006 and is a founding member and former Vice President of
Wikimedia Espana, the Wikimedia chapter in the country. She has served
as a member of the Affiliations Committee and the Individual Engagement
Grants committee. She lives and works in Madrid, Spain.

The Wikimedia Foundation is also happy to welcome Phoebe Ayers and
Samuel Klein back to the Board as the other two members elected by the
volunteer Wikimedia community. Ayers is a reference, instruction and
collections librarian at the University of California, Davis,
specializing in computer science, physics and engineering information
resources. Klein is a long-time Wikipedian and a fellow at the Berkman
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Every two years the worldwide contributor community elects Board members
from among its peers to participate on the Board and help steer the
Wikimedia Foundation as it fulfills its mission to "empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop educational content under
a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it
effectively and globally."

In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Wikimedia Foundation
provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other
endeavors that serve the mission. The Wikimedia Foundation will make and
keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free
of charge, in perpetuity.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees for 2013-2014:
*Jan-Bart de Vreede, Board Chair
*Phoebe Ayers, Vice Chair
*Jimmy Wales, Founder
*Maria Sefidari
*Samuel Klein
*Alice Wiegand
*Patricio Lorente
*Bishakha Datta
*Ana Toni
*Stu West

About Wikimania
http://wikimania.org

Wikimania 2013 is being held in Hong Kong, where more than 1000
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia advocates, researchers and educators
from roughly 90 countries are in attendance. The previous Wikimanias
were held in Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Cambridge, USA (2006), Taipei,
Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009),
Gdańsk, Poland (2010), Haifa, Israel (2011), and Washington DC (2012).

About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.org
http://blog.wikimedia.org

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the
fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, June 2013).
Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 28 million
articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000
people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is
an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations
and grants.

Press contact
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel. +1 415-860-8166
jwalsh at wikimedia.org <mailto:jwalsh at wikimedia.org>

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