Crossposting to wikitech. Welcome Danese! Sue Gardner wrote: > Hi folks, > > I'm delighted to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's new Chief > Technical Officer is Danese Cooper, an experienced technology manager > and open-source evangelist. Danese will start with Wikimedia on > February 4, 2010. > > As you know, we've been searching for a CTO since last fall, when > Brion announced his decision to leave Wikimedia for StatusNet. We were > looking for someone with plenty of leadership experience and a deep > understanding of open source technology, who could lead our technical > staff, evangelize on behalf of Mediawiki, and set up systems and > processes to help our staff and Wikimedia technology volunteers work > successfully together. Danese fits the bill on all counts: I'm very > happy she'll be joining us. > > Danese has a wealth of experience in open source technology. Most > recently, she developed open source strategy for the tech start-up > REvolution Computing. Prior to that, she was Senior Director of Open > Source Strategies at Intel from 2005 until 2009, and Chief Open Source > Evangelist at Sun Microsystems from 1999 to 2005. In those roles, she > led or supported major open source initiatives, including Sun's > OpenOffice.org application suite, the Java platform, JXTA, NetBeans, > GridEngine, OpenSolaris and Intel's Channel Software Operations and > Moblin platform initiatives. Prior to working at Sun, she managed > technology teams at Symantec and at Apple Computing for a total of > nine years. > > Danese is a Board member at the Open Source Initiative, the non-profit > organization that maintains the Open Source Definition and approves > open source software licenses. She is also a member of the Apache > Software Foundation, and serves on a Special Advisory Board for > Mozilla. Danese has lived and traveled internationally, particularly > in developing countries, and speaks several languages, including > French and Moroccan Arabic. > > As CTO, Danese will be responsible for ensuring Wikipedia and the > other Wikimedia projects run reliably and perform well from a > technical standpoint. She will also be responsible for supporting the > development of Wikimedia's open source software stack including > MediaWiki, and for creating technical strategy and technical projects > to drive increases in Wikimedia projects' reach, quality and > participation. Her background as an evangelist will be particularly > important, because the health of the Wikimedia volunteer developer > community is critical to Wikimedia's ability to successfully serve > people in multiple geographies and languages. > > All technical staff and contractors will report to Danese. Initially, > Danese will focus on filling some key staffing gaps, and on leading > the stabilization of Wikimedia's technology infrastructure: ensuring > predictable and secure operations and backups, improving monitoring, > APIs and database dumps, and establishing an additional US-based data > centre to give us safe fail-over capability. She has an important job > and lots to do: I ask you all to join me in welcoming and supporting > her. > > Danese will begin her work February 3. Until June 30, Danese has a > standing one day/week commitment to support the code review process of > the SETI Institute. > > Finally, I want to thank the Walker Talent Group > (www.walkertalentgroup.com) for its pro bono work helping recruit > Danese, as well as Advisory Board member Roger McNamee for introducing > Wikimedia to Walker. Their help is much appreciated. > > Sue Gardner > Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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