Congratulations to Kelly and Arnon in joining the wikiverse at this crucial time in our movement's existence. I hope their expertise - respectively in Finance and HR - will be able to be put to good use!
However, I do have a concern about diversity... Both of these appointees are white Americans from Iowa/Kansas with top-pedigree Silicon Valley resumes. I note that one of the other appointed WMF-board seats is currently also occupied by Guy, also Silicon Valley, and one of the recently elected community seats is occupied by Denny, who is a manager at Google. They all live and work in the same field and within commuting distance to the WMF office. I've always believed that Wikimedia is an education charity that happens to exist exists in a technology field. I often note in presentations that I give that the Wikimedia vision statement does NOT use the words, Internet, or Wiki, or Encyclopedia. But these appointments indicate the Board and WMF Executive believe Wikimedia is a technology charity that happens to exists in the education field. These appointments will make a crucial difference to how the new WMF strategic direction will go - and clearly the leadership is wanting to make us act more like a Californian dot-com and less like a global education charity. Less "community consensus building" and more "move fast and break things" - is the message I am reading here. Can the board please address how it accounts for the geographical proximity and professional-background similarity between three of the four Board-appointed seats? And, whether you would define the WMF as a "tech organisation"? - Liam / Wittylama -- wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
