[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees: October 2008

Sun Dec 14 22:17:56 UTC 2008

Hi Sue,

thanks for the report. I was already looking out for it! :) I'd like to join
in with Florences question.

But also have a small additional suggestion. Would it be nice to the
chapters to have somewhere a list of all major software WMF is using? As a
suggestion list? For example, GIMP for promotional images editing etc, so
that the chapters have an easier time looking for free software on
accounting etc. Would be great!

Thanks a lot,

Lodewijk

2008/12/14 Florence Devouard <Anthere9 op yahoo.com>

> Sue Gardner wrote:
> > Hey folks,
> >
> > Here is the RTTB for October. November will follow soon :-)
> >
> > Enjoy!
> > Sue
> >
> >
> > Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> >
> > Covering:          October 2008
> > Prepared by:    Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
> > Prepared for:   Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> >
> > MY CURRENT PRIORITIES
> >
> > 1. Planning for Bangalore and Davos trips
> > 2. Finalization of staff goals and performance check-ins
> > 3. Planning for development of the strategic plan
> > 4. Ongoing major donor solicitation and stewardship, foundation proposal
> > follow-up
> > 5. Bits and pieces (all-staff meeting, CPO recruitment, Wikimania 2008
> > postmortem, office space revamp, Board Nominating Committee, etc.)
> >
> > THIS PAST MONTH
> >
> > BOARD MEETING
> >
> > The Board met the first weekend of October at the WMF offices in San
> > Francisco, with all Board members in attendance.  During the meeting, the
> > Board reviewed and approved the Gift Policy and Privacy Policy. As
> always,
> > these are posted at:
> >
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Policies
> >
> > Treasurer Stuart West presented an update on the audit, informing the
> Board
> > that the audit is progressing much more quickly than last year, and that
> the
> > Board will receive the financial statements within a few weeks.
>  Vice-Chair
> > Jan-Bart de Vreede made a presentation on Open Standards and a discussion
> > was held about file formats.
> >
> > Discussions were also held about Advisory Board and Board development,
> and
> > the formation of sub-national chapters. Erik Moeller gave updates and
> > answered questions regarding Wikimedia's technology priorities, and the
> > online fundraiser.  Minutes from the July meeting were approved.
> >
> > The minutes of the October meeting will be approved and published
> following
> > the next board meeting, in January.
> >
> > FUNDRAISING AND GRANTS
> >
> > Extensive work was done by all departments on fine-tuning the various
> > components of the Annual Campaign in preparation for the  launch the
> first
> > week of November:
> >
> > * Further testing and development of the CiviCRM donor database,
> including
> > e-mail capabilities – for the first time, we've got automated e-mail
> thank
> > yous set up for all donors
> > * Development of campaign management tools for sitenotice deployment,
> such
> > as scheduling and weighting of different sitenotices
> > * Lining up external support by design and PR firms; producing the first
> > sitenotices; developing audio PSAs
> > * Identifying core messages that need to be translated and coordinating
> > volunteer translations
> > * Streamlining and documenting all fundraising related procedures, such
> as
> > donor thank-yous
> > * Developing a fundraising agreement between WMF and the chapters which
> want
> > to participate in the online fundraiser
> > * Investigating historical PayPal data that hasn't been imported into the
> > database
> > * Inviting past $1000+ donors to make leadership gifts prior to the
> > beginning of the 2008 fundraiser.
> >
> > For the first time, the online fundraiser is led and coordinated by a
> > dedicated staff member, Rand Montoya.
> >
> > We followed up on leads from the Funders' Briefings in September,
> including
> > people who could not attend the briefings.
> >
> > There were 935 donations made in the month of October for a total of USD
> > 65,503.32
> >
> > OUTREACH
> >
> > Frank Schulenburg worked with the Argentinian chapter to finalize plans
> for
> > the first Wikipedia Academy in Buenos Aires, to be held in early
> November.
> >  Frank also spoke at the FSCONS conference in Gothenburg, Sweden and
> > supported Wikimedia Germany's Zedler Medal article writing award as well
> as
> > the Quadriga Award ceremony.
> >
> > Frank also participated in a dedicated meeting/conference where the
> current
> > state of Wikimedia was discussed among Wikipedians and
> > academics:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Siggen
> >
> > Sue spoke at conferences in Florida and Germany, and met with the Knight
> > Foundation in Florida.
> >
> > SOS Children UK, in coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation, released
> a
> > complete 2008/9 revision of the Wikipedia Selection for Schools, which is
> > perhaps the most successful "checked content" project derived from the
> > English Wikipedia.
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/2008-9_Selection_for_Schools
> >
> > TECHNOLOGY
> >
> > We welcomed two additions to the technical staff: Trevor Parscal, who
> will
> > work as a software developer, and Ariel Glenn, who will do development
> work
> > but also help with technical support for the San Francisco office.
> >
> > Thanks to a volunteer, Robert Stojnic, and the deployment of new search
> > servers, we've enabled new search features, limited to the English
> Wikipedia
> > for now:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/040022.html
> >
> > We've also enabled the PediaPress technology on all Wikibooks wikis. It
> > allows wiki-to-PDF export, wiki-to-ODT export, and print-on-demand
> delivery
> > of collections of pages. Pending further review, usability and
> scalability
> > improvements, we hope to deploy it on Wikipedia and our other projects
> soon.
> > This work is funded in part by the Open Society Institute and the
> > Commonwealth of
> > Learning:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2008-October/001367.html
> >
> > Brion has led development of a code review tool, which was deployed and
> has
> > seen rapid adoption, localization and improvement. The tool allows
> MediaWiki
> > developers to add comments and tags to code changes through a web-based
> > interface: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki
> >
> > Thanks to new dedicated hardware, the database dumps were restarted for
> all
> > languages. The English Wikipedia full-history dump continues to be
> > prohibitively slow; we're exploring solutions for this. Dump status is
> > visible here: http://download.wikipedia.org/  Concise summary:
> > http://www.infodisiac.com/cgi-bin/WikimediaDownload.pl
> >
> > We continued consolidation of our infrastructure to Ubuntu, and this
> process
> > received some media attention, including a widely quoted Computer World
> > story:
> >
> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116787&
> >
> > Erik and Michael Dale attended the Open Media Conference at Yale
> > University:
> >
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-November/047009.html
> >
> > Rob has led the process of consolidating and tracking our domain name
> > registrations. We also continued our build-out of infrastructure in a new
> > data-center in Tampa, and we started to gradually phase in new Sun
> storage
> > equipment for media uploads.
> >
> > RESEARCH
> >
> > During the week of October 20, the first Wikimedia Foundation Reader &
> > Contributor Survey was launched in 20 languages. Its goal is to collect
> data
> > about the demographic make-up of the Wikipedia community and audience,
> its
> > motivations, interests, and beliefs. 4000 completed responses had already
> > been received by October 24.
> >
> > Erik Zachte's statistics server has been delivered and deployed, and Erik
> >  has started compiling some interesting reports for us. He has
> implemented
> > the first report on pageviews, based on Domas' pageview data:
> > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm Related blog
> entry:
> > http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/10/wikimedia-page-view-stats-i/
> >
> > Erik has also taken a first stab at quantifying volunteer contributions
> made
> > during the fiscal year 2007-2008:
> > http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/10/quantifying-volunteer-contribution/
> > This data is important to put organizational spending in relation to our
> > global ability to achieve impact together.
> >
> > COMMUNICATIONS
> >
> > The Wikimedia Foundation's first-ever Annual Report was finalized with
> the
> > audited financial information, published on the Wikimedia Foundation
> > website, and e-mailed to all past donors:
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report  The report is a
> summary
> > of key activities of WMF in the fiscal year 2007-2008, an explanation of
> our
> > projects (including a two-page
> > "anatomy of a Wikipedia article"), an overview of our spending and the
> > 2008-2009 budget, a brief look at the program activities of chapters
> around
> > the world, and a recognition of our supporters.
> >
> > In the month of October, we participated in media interviews with
> Computer
> > World, a website of news and product coverage for information technology
> > managers and The Republican, a website providing coverage of the Western
> > Maryland town of Oakland, as well as of Garrett County.
> >
> > GRANTS AND PARTNERSHIPS
> >
> > Work continues on several grant proposals, including a major grant
> proposal
> > related to usability improvements. Sara compiled a spreadsheet of our
> > foundation prospects and rated them according to various criteria. She
> has
> > also started to consolidate all reporting requirements attached to
> current
> > grants so we can keep full track of our obligations.
> >
> > Sara attended the Craigslist Non-Profit Bootcamp in San Mateo, where she
> > networked with individuals from other like-minded organizations.
> >
> > FINANCE AND ADMIN
> >
> > The audited financial statements for the fiscal year 2007-2008 were
> > finalized and approved by the Board. A summary was included in the Annual
> > Report, and the full statements will be posted in November.
> >
> > Work began on the 990 tax returns and continued on transitioning bank
> > accounts from Suntrust to Citibank.
> >
> > On October 20, we welcomed Daniel Phelps as the new Office Manager.
> >
> > LEGAL
> >
> > Policies and agreements were reviewed and an audit resolution was drafted
> in
> > preparation for the Board meeting.   Work was done to follow up on
> > state-by-state registrations.
> >
> > Negotiations continued with the Free Software Foundation regarding the
> > wording of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3.
> >
> > BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
> >
> > Work continued on two major leads and many smaller ones. In addition,
> some
> > older relationships were investigated or tied off. Some commercial
> trademark
> > uses were also investigated.
> >
> > Kul has started building a sponsorship platform for events such as
> Wikimania
> > and Wikipedia Academies.
> >
> > IN COMING WEEKS
> >
> > Sue attending Free Software, Free Society conference in India (Dec. 8 –
> 15)
> > Board Meeting, January 8 – 10, 2009
> > Sue attending World Affairs Conference in Davos (Jan. 28 – Feb. 1)
>
>
> Thank you Sue.
>
> A question. When the chapters and the Foundation held their meeting in
> netherlands in spring, there was an agreement from the WMF side that a
> practical proposition regarding business agreements made by chapters
> would be presented to chapters by WMF business development team.
>
> I am not aware we received anything practical which could clarify what
> chapters may or may not do, as well as clear procedures for future
> partnerships. Maybe I missed the email entirely. If not, can you update
> us on when we can expect clarification ? Could this happen before the
> next WMF-chapters meeting ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
>
>
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