Wikimedia finds a new home!

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It’s not far from the old home, but it’s almost three times as big and can very comfortably hold the 28 (and growing!) local Wikimedia Foundation staff. Our new offices at 149 New Montgomery, just south of Market street in San Francisco have very quickly become the new home base for the small group that keeps the Wikimedia Foundation alive and kicking.
Our new offices span the entire third floor of this grand old office building on the little New Montgomery street, immediately across from the impressive (though currently completely abandoned) Pacific Bell headquarters.  With exposed brick, funky (and practical!) earthquake reinforcement bracing, exposed duct work and miles of ethernet cables, and the biggest, brightest windows you could possible ask for – it now feels like Wikimedia has found a true home – and there’s still some room to expand!
We’ll spend the first few months feeling out the space, moving furniture around and figuring out the best way to arrange work groups.  For now our tech and usability team sits on the west side of the space while fundraising, strategy, legal, communications, and administration rest on the east side. We also have an unusually large rack-space room in the back of the office, which for the time being will host our email and file-servers… but who knows what the future will bring.
The show-stopper in our new space is a custom-built Wikipedia globe sign by our friends at Because We Can, a custom build shop in Oakland, CA.  They’re also building us some economical and high quality rolling white boards that we’ll roll around the space to dry-erase collaborate ourselves into oblivion.  We’ll have more to say about this stunning sign latter on this week, including some secret features.
Right now almost all Wikimedia staff have converged on this location, including our previously displaced usability team.  Several staff still work remotely, but everyone was in town last week for our recent all-staff meeting.
We hope to have some guests come by the office soon, and we’ll look forward to Wikipedians passing through who can sign our guest list and see how things work from the inside out.  For more photos check out the category on the Wikimedia Commons.  If you pass through, be sure to tag and add your own shots.
Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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«exposed brick […] the biggest, brightest windows you could possible ask for […]»: what about heat loss? Looks like it needs reversed roof insulation and double- or triple-glazed windows. What’s your “Home energy rating” (or equivalent)?

Good really good for wikimedia I´m really happy for you guys and I hope than every time you for better !

Yay, it really look like a nice place 🙂

Hah, Nemo, you realize it is San Francisco, right?

@Domas: then? Heating and air conditioning are not needed there? Southern Italy is more hot, but there are old buildings which require much energy.

[…] y ambientes alucinantemente perfectos. El globo fue fabricado para colocarlo en la entrada de la Fundación Wikimedia en sus oficinas centrales en San […]

[…] y ambientes alucinantemente perfectos. El globo fue fabricado para colocarlo en la entrada de la Fundación Wikimedia en sus oficinas centrales en San […]

[…] très belle globe en puzzle de Wikipedia avec des pièces amovibles, le projet est fait pour le siège de la Fondation Wikimedia à San Francisco .. Eh oui! ils ont du talent, et de la créativité […]

Wow! Big, bright windows are always good. They will help you guys to come to new ideas and no location could be better than the Bay Area. Hope there are no roaches 🙂

congrats on moving to new place…. it looks great..

Nice! Back in ’06-07 there was a startup video game company on the two floors above that one, fun place to work!

Congratulations on the new home!
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Wow, just reading and looking at the pictures of the new place. Very nice and congradulations.

Congrats to Wikimedia team 🙂
The new home really looks cool.

Congratulations on your new home 🙂
Hope you keep growing and sharing knowledge with the world !