Wikimedia fellow, Liam Wyatt

Following in quick succession from the recent announcements of fellowships for both Achal Prabhala and Lennart Guldbransson I am pleased to announce our sixth fellow, Liam Wyatt, based in Sydney. During this one year project Liam will be working to build the capacity of the Wikimedia community to undertake partnerships with cultural institutions – known as GLAMs [Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums] a term he popularized.

Liam has been a board member of the Australian Wikimedia chapter and was a longtime panelist on the Wikipedia Weekly podcast. He is a Wikipedia historian, having won the university medal for his 2008 thesis ‘the academic lineage of Wikipedia.’ The focus of his Wikipedia work for the last two years has been the GLAM sector – he was the convener of the GLAM-WIKI conferences in Canberra and London and last July became the world’s first “Wikipedian in Residence” at the British Museum (previous blog entry).

Several different types of collaboration with the cultural sector have been successfully run with institutions across the world over the last few years – including multimedia content donations, “backstage pass” tours, residencies, and editing and photography events. These collaborations increase the quality and reliability of Wikipedia and also meet the goals of the GLAM institutions: to share their expertise with a wide audience – especially for those that do not have a web presences of their own.

The priorities for Liam’s fellowship include building communication channels so the existing community of Wikimedians working with GLAMs can better share their knowledge; applying learnings from the university “campus ambassador” system to create a global network of Wikimedia GLAM ambassadors; creating clear how-to documentation for common GLAM project with real-world case studies to match; and improving the metrics tools available to measure the usage of GLAM content.

If you would like to join in any aspect of the cultural partnerships initiative please visit the project pages at glamwiki.org. If you represent a cultural institution and want to engage in a project please write to glam@wikimedia.org.

Daniel Phelps, Human Resources

I’m pleased to announce Achal Prabhala as our latest Wikimedia Foundation fellow.

Achal is a writer and researcher in Bangalore who has participated as a volunteer in the Wikimedia movement in India and globally for years, and as a member of the Foundation’s advisory board.

Achal will be conducting field research in rural South Africa and India with Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians across three languages to explore ways to compensate for the gap in published/printed sources in many local languages.

From Achal:

Even if every single person in the south with Internet access wanted to become an active editor on Wikipedia, there is still a problem that we are going to run up against. It’s a problem that bedevils everyone working in local languages in Asia and Africa, and it’s something we have no control over: the lack of published scholarly resources in these languages.

For Wikipedias in languages of the south, citations are not difficult to find when the articles being added are translations. However, since we all want the sphere of knowledge to be universally expanded – and not merely transferred from the north to the south – we are forced to confront two specific problems with finding citations for important local subject matter: (i) Published resources may simply not exist. (ii) Even when published scholarly resources exist, they may be limited or inaccessible and thus effectively rendered invisible to Wikipedians.

To put it another way, it’s possible that the sum of published scholarly work from Europe is somewhat close to the sum of ‘European’ knowledge, and that the sum of accessible, published scholarly work in many Asian and African languages is nowhere close to the corresponding body of knowledge that circulates among speakers of those languages.

Despite these problems, Tamil Wikipedia has about 25,000 articles, Malayalam Wikipedia has about 15,000, and Northern Sotho Wikipedia has about 600. In all these language Wikipedias, there are articles – especially when concerning subjects that are specific to a particular people or place where the language is spoken – which lack citations, because there are simply no or not enough published resources to refer to.

The scope of the project is to investigate how one might compensate for the lack of traditional citations; how an alternative means of citation may be constructed; and how this may be feasibly and easily deployed – and improved – by Wikipedians in the future.

I’m looking forward to seeing fascinating and useful results from Achal’s project.

– Zack Exley, Chief Community Officer

Lennart Guldbrandsson with Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Outreach Frank Schulenburg

Today it is my pleasure to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new fellow, Lennart Guldbrandsson. He is the fourth fellow, after Steven Walling, Victoria Doronina and Maryana Pinchuk. During his fellowship, Lennart will work on two projects: the Bookshelf Project and the Account Creation Improvement Project.

A long-time Wikipedian from Sweden, Lennart has been on our radar for some time now. He founded and became the first chair of the second largest Wikimedia chapters, Wikimedia Sverige, wrote one of the first books about Wikipedia, and has written several of the Wikipedia instructional videos. Lately, we hired him to work with the Bookshelf Project, as he has many years of experience as a writer and writing teacher. After studies at Uppsala and Gothenburg, where he now lives, he has his own writing company. He is active on several wikis under the user name Hannibal.

Lennart’s work with the Bookshelf Project will focus on getting the educational materials translated into many more languages as well as helping chapters and individuals dissemination the materials effectively on a global scale. See some examples of the Bookshelf materials here.

The other part of the fellowship is to make it easier for newcomers to create their accounts on Wikipedia – and facilitate their first steps after they have created the account. A short explanation for why that’s important is here.

The idea is that both these projects should be as engaging and transparent as possible. Lennart will post reports regularly, and try to get your feedback from time to time, and generally be reminding you of the existence of these projects.

For both of these projects, Lennart wants you to know that he will need help. You are welcome to sign up here for the Bookshelf Project or here for Account Creation. Or you can send an email to lennart@wikimedia.org.

- Zack Exley, Community Department

Today I am pleased to announce the Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellows program, a project of the Foundation’s Community Department. This program is partly something the Foundation has been considering for a long time and partly an outgrowth of the recent Community Department open hiring call. In reading through the nearly 2,000 submissions to the open call, we realized that there are far more qualified members of the Wikimedia community than we can ever hire at one time. We also realized that the most promising submissions came from people who were interested in working on specific problems or opportunities in the movement rather than looking for permanent staff positions.

Therefore, the Fellows program is intended to create an environment where individuals and teams can concentrate full-time on important problems and opportunities in Wikimedia projects and the movement as a whole. Fellows will lead intensive, time-limited projects focused on key areas of risk and opportunity — projects that require the support of the Foundation to succeed.

We are currently looking for Fellows among those who have already answered the open hiring call and we will also be posting a form for submitting new Fellowship applications soon. In addition to Wikimedia volunteers, we would like to engage outside academics and professionals who have expertise that could benefit our projects.

Each Fellowship will have its own objectives that require a unique skill set. The length of the Fellowships at the Wikimedia Foundation will vary from weeks to as long as a year, depending on the requirements of the project. A handful of Fellows may eventually join the Foundation staff permanently. However, the purpose of the program is to take charge of vital work that may not require a long-term position but which volunteers have not previously dealt with successfully.

Along with introducing what will be a continuing Wikimedia Foundation program, we’d like to welcome the first Fellow in the Community Department: Steven Walling. Steven represents exactly what we’d hoped to attract through this process: talented Wikimedians who have a knack for crafting clear theories about how Wikimedia communities operate and how they can be supported. Steven’s previous experience as a freelance writer, blogger, and community manager make him an excellent choice to pilot this program. Steven is beginning a year-long Fellowship, during which he will work on multiple projects. He will be blogging about his projects as he continues.

We are deeply excited about the possibilities for the Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship program. Bringing in talented individuals who have specific projects in mind will allow us all to ask questions and solve problems that were previously out of reach for either volunteers or staff. I hope you’ll join us in welcoming Steven and more new Wikimedia Foundation Fellows as they are announced.

Zack Exley,
Chief Community Officer

Please join me in congratulating Mark Bergsma on his promotion last week to Operations Engineering Programs Manager.

Mark has been a volunteer since 2004, and a paid Network Engineer on our team since August 2006. He’s been helping us with our extreme scaling issues (by debugging and tuning our Squid setup, creating our Netherlands caching center, and generally developing our network strategy) since the very beginning. For some time now Mark has been unofficially in charge of managing the entire Ops Team’s deliverables including designing and implementing our new Primary Data Center in Ashburn, Virginia, and the other Ops activities mentioned here.

Mark has expressed an interest in gaining some experience with people management skills as a logical next step in his career, and to that end we will gradually add direct reports under Mark over the next year, starting with the Data Center Ops crew. He will continue to report to me until we hire a Director of Technical Operations.

I know you will do all you can to support Mark in his new role.

Danese Cooper
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation

At Wikimedia we are always looking to innovate – to try new things and see how they work. For instance, right now we’re re-thinking how we fill open positions in our newly formed Community Department. Rather than focus on traditional resources for hiring new talent, we have decided to put out a call to the broad, global audience that visits our projects. We’re focused on casting our net widely – in many languages and countries. Our goal is to find interesting people; people who have unique experience and skills and are interested in working with us.

In order to do this we’re going to try out a few different things, including the addition of a banner to our projects inviting people to Work at Wikimedia/Wikipedia. Keep an eye out for the banners.  If you’d prefer to not see them, just click “hide” and it will disappear into the background. If you’re interested though, click through and you’ll find a form with the opportunity to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Here is some information from the Community Department outlining what they are looking to do with this call for submissions:

This year, the Community Department will be hiring for a series of important senior and entry level positions. All positions will involve collaborating and communicating with Wikimedia project contributors and users intensively and publicly, grappling with problems that no one has ever solved before, navigating technological and social challenges and opportunities, and dealing with a high level of complexity and uncertainty. Candidates should have extremely high levels of skill and comfort in communication (especially writing), qualitative and quantitative analysis, management and self-management. Candidates who are not already deeply immersed in online collaborative communities will have to show an aptitude for quickly gaining a deep understanding of our communities’ technologies, practices, traditions and culture — and to become trusted and productive members of the Wikimedia community and movement.

We are especially looking for:

Current Wikimedia community contributors, readers and leaders,

Insightful observers of Wikimedia and other collaborative communities,

People with specialty skill sets (e.g. statistics, ethnography, and probably a lot other things we’ve never thought of),

People belonging to language communities of new and growing Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects,

People with insight into reaching groups currently underrepresented in Wikimedia contributor communities.

Ideal candidates for positions at Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Department:

Have a passion for online communities, self-organizing systems, open and collaborative enterprises, democratic and consensus based societies, and emergent and participatory governance structures — and desperately want to see them succeed and prove the cynics wrong.

Have thought enough about this stuff to have their own opinions and theories on various problems and opportunities facing Wikimedia and other online communities.

Are equally strong dealing with qualitative and quantitative knowledge and research.

Are self-directed, self-motivated, efficient, upbeat, optimistic, and extremely good with people. Wikimedia Foundation staff face intense pressures in highly-demanding roles. While the Wikimedia Foundation team strives to be mutually supportive, it only works when each individual is self-driven to overcome the challenges they face.

Are knowledgeable about software development processes and with database and web technologies.

Are creative non-linear thinkers who will sometimes fight for seemingly crazy ideas by backing them up with logical argument and data.

Are systems-thinkers who love to think about workflow and technology systems inside organizations.

Are multilingual, especially in major world languages and languages with large or growing Wikipedias.

Have insights and experience reaching groups currently underrepresented in Wikimedia communities.

If you are interested in submitting your information for consideration for our Community Department please visit this page and fill out the form.

Thanks for your interest!

-Daniel Phelps, Human Resources & Philippe Beaudette, Community Department

Earlier today we announced two important new Chief Executive roles at the Wikimedia Foundation – our new Chief Community Officer (CCO) Zack Exley and our new Chief Global Development Officer (CGDO) Barry Newstead.

These are two brand new roles for the Wikimedia Foundation.  The CCO will oversee and lead the development of our relationships with key stakeholders of the Foundation and our global projects: donors, readers, and volunteer editor/contributors. The CGDO’s work will focus on leading the Foundation projects’ reach and growth globally, but with a particular focus on the Global South, a key goal of the Foundation’s upcoming five-year business plan.

We’re thrilled to welcome Barry and Zack to the Foundation – two highly experienced leaders and advocates who bring new capacity and energy to our movement.

Jay Walsh, Communications

With more than 100,000 active contributors globally, Wikipedia is one of the world’s most successful experiments in peer production. Volunteers have always made a collective effort to recruit new contributors, by welcoming new users, developing tutorials and help pages, creating promotional materials, meeting face-to-face, and so on. The Public Outreach department of the Wikimedia Foundation works in collaboration with volunteers and with the Foundation’s 20+ worldwide chapters to determine and foster the most effective approaches to public outreach.

With our recently announced Public Policy Initiative, we are developing a flexible model for reaching out to one specific target group: subject matter experts. Professors and students of U.S. public policy will be solicited to participate in writing and improving articles on the English language Wikipedia, and actively supported in their efforts throughout the the 2010–2011 academic year. We will thoroughly evaluate and document the initiative, providing a template for our volunteers to replicate its approach in other disciplines and other geographic areas.

Please visit the job openings page to read more about these and other employment opportunities at Wikimedia today.

Daniel Phelps, Human Resources

We’re currently looking for a Head of Office Administration.

The Wikimedia Foundation has experienced, and will continue to experience, growth and organizational change over the next several years.  The Head of Office Administration will be a senior administrative position based at our headquarters in San Francisco and will play a key role during this exciting period of change.  This position will be responsible for managing, planning, and coordinating various administrative business operations geared toward achieving internal operational excellence in support of the organization’s staff allowing them in return to focus on the success of our projects.

This is your chance to play a central role in the success of one of the most important knowledge projects in history.

Please visit the job openings page to read more about this opportunity and learn what it takes to be considered!

Daniel Phelps, Human Resources