hi,
I'm just writing to give you a short report on how the Board is working on improving its governance and communication.
In March http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-03[1], Kelly and I conducted an internal survey about our governance, preferences, vision on how it can be improved. Geoff and Stephen (from our legal team) have prepared a number of recommendations, based on the governance best practices.
Currently, Maria and I are working on a proposal to the Board, that will be discussed on Monday[ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_agenda_2016-052], and that will address many of the issues that have been raised recently about timely communication, the level of detail in reporting, as well as transparency.
Following our discussions in Berlin, we're going to expand our onboarding process for external/expert Board members. Apart from our regular onboarding (which includes legal training, mentoring from senior Board members, and for expert members - talking to people from the community, as well as selected readings about wiki-culture), we are going to introduce a short workshop, focusing on the most important things a person coming from the outside should know.
I ran a short poll/discussion with the community https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Committee/Wikimania_2016_training[3] on meta, to decide about the most important topics. "Copyright, copyleft and everything in between" as well as "Values and community dynamics of a global movement" have been selected.
Guy and Kelly are really interested and looking forward to participating in the workshop at Wikimania, which will be also open to staff members. I've been in touch with Ginevra and Lorenzo, who have graciously volunteered to run the workshop https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_sessions/Proposals/Wikimedia_Movement_Culture_workshop[4], possibly with some help from Asaf.
We are working quite hard on many fronts: the new ED search, the vacant seats' fulfilment, internal governance improvements, communication, onboarding processes, apart from our usual load. We still can do better, and I hope we are on a right path.
best,
Dariusz Jemielniak, "pundit" (a current WMF Trustee)
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2016-03 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_agenda_2016-05 [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Governance_Commit... [4] https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training_sessions/Proposals/Wikimed...