[Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

Thu Jan 26 23:12:07 UTC 2006

Daniel Mayer:
> While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a
> post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of
> an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of
> non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think
> that is a critical thing for the board to consider. 

Hi Daniel,

one thing that would help me a great deal is something like "The typical 
day of the CEO". What is their interaction with the committees going to 
be like? When someone proposes "Let's have a cooperation with the 
European Union's environmental terminology community in order to get 
their databases licensed under the GFDL for Wiktionary", what are they 
going to say? In a stagnating project decision like Wikiversity or 
Chinese Wikinews, are they going to play a role, or will this fall back 
to the Board? What will their involvement be in pushing a project like 
"English Wikipedia DVD by 2007"?

Now, I realize that there are a lot of organizational issues to work 
out: hiring staff, making sure the budget is in order, dealing with 
legal problems, and so forth. But then again, we have qualified legal 
and financial committees to advise the CEO on those matters. We do have 
qualified committees as well to advise them on the other matters above, 
but will they be listening? Will they understand the nature of the wiki, 
and the importance of a particular project that is proposed to them? 
Will they be accepted by the community if they are essentially an 
outsider to it? Will they try to push things through when they should be 
consulting with the community?

My ideas may be very far off from what the Board is thinking about what 
the role of the CEO should be, and what you are thinking, so 
clarification would be helpful. This is what an open discussion is good 
at, bringing out different perceptions, and helping to arrive at useful 
definitions.

Oh, and please, can I have some brownie points for keeping the 
hypothetical CEO gender neutral? ;-)

Thanks,

Erik