I’m delighted to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has hired a new Chief Technical Officer, Danese Cooper. Danese is an experienced technology manager and open-source evangelist. Danese will start with Wikimedia on February 4, 2010.  You can read more about this great news in the Foundation press release that went out today.

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.

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 and developing Wikimedia’s open source software stack including MediaWiki, and for creating technical strategy and technical projects to support 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.

We’d also like to thank the Walker Talent Group 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

On this day in 2001, Wikipedia, a small, experimental project with a big mission was introduced to the world by Founder Jimmy Wales. Nine years later, growing at unprecedented speed, due to the dedicated and enthusiastic support of volunteers and contributors, Wikipedia has evolved into one of the most important sources of free information and knowledge in the world.  Happy birthday, Wikipedia!

In 2002, only celebrating one year of existence, Wikipedia grew to over 20,000 articles– and in its second year,  130,000 articles in 28 languages. To wax nostalgic, you can turn back the hands of time and rummage through “vintage” Wikipedia here. Since then, over 14 million articles in 270 languages have been created.  For millions of people everywhere, Wikipedia has become an indispensable part of their daily lives– a resource relied on by hundreds of millions of  visitors a month — and growing.

In celebration of this milestone, Wikipedians in Bangalore, India and New York City have planned events.  If you’re celebrating with us, post a comment and tell us how, or even better, add photos to Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks, Wikipedia! Here’s to another year wiser!

Moka Pantages, Communications

Clocking in at 52 million words today, Hebrew Wikipedia announced they’ve reached 100,000 articles.  At 16:54 UTC, user: Brookli submitted an article about Seaton Delaval Hall, a 16th century English country home. The largest encyclopedia written in the Hebrew language got its start six and half years ago, July 9, 2003, with an article on Mathematics by user: Rotem Dan.

Hebrew Wikipedia is among the top 30 language Wikipedias of 270 languages worldwide.  To commemorate the event, on Friday, January 15th, the community will hold a meeting in Israel at Tel Aviv University where 100 Wikipedia contributors will discuss the state of Wikipedia today and in the future. This event will be streamed live beginning at 07:30 UTC on Friday:  http://www.livestream.com/wikipediaisrael.

Congratulations to all of those who helped Hebrew Wikipedia reach such an important milestone.

Mazal Tov!

Moka Pantages, Communications

Wow!  We’ve just closed the most successful fundraiser in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation thanks to our  amazing donors. Over 230,000 people came together and showed their support for our project and mission: to provide free and open knowledge to everyone around the world. Thank you!

Again, we’re ending our annual fundraiser early due to the overwhelming and rapid support from everyone.   We’ve hit and surpassed our fundraising goal of $7.5 million, raising over $8 million in just two months.

Even more, we’re humbled by the fact that during serious global economic stress, folks were still willing to help out and contribute.  More than 230,000 donors have shown that they want Wikipedia to continue to be a place for free and open information.  More than 230,000 have joined together to keep Wikipedia free of ads.  We are extremely grateful for your generosity.

I cannot say enough about how amazing the steadfast support from everyone has been: our donors, our contributors, our chapters; everyone involved directly influenced the immense success of this year’s effort. Again, a huge thank you from me and everyone from the Wikimedia Foundation.  We look forward to sharing some more detailed findings about this year’s fundraiser in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year,

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

We’re excited to report that this weekend, the German language edition of Wikipedia reached an exciting milestone: one million articles! The article was created by user: JFKCom at 11:33am UTC, December 27, 2009, covering the living biography of American horticulturist and author, Ernie Wasson. The new article has already been edited over 200 times by scores of contributors within the first few days of its existence. JFKCom, first name Jürgen, lives in Coburg, a town in Bavaria, and has a deep interest in botany which inspired him to create the article.

German language Wikipedia, the second largest Wikipedia in the world, debuted eight years ago with the inaugural entry created on May 12, 2001. Since then, German speaking contributors hit 500,000 entries in 2006 and 750,000 in 2008. With more than 1.4 billion page views a month, German language Wikipedia is also the second most viewed language edition. Wikipedians created a virtual quilt to celebrate the event.

Congratulations to all volunteers; your work and dedication has resulted in one of the most revered collections of knowledge on the Web. We thank you for your contributions!

Moka Pantages, Communications
Wikimedia Foundation

Over the last few weeks Huffington Post readers have been asked to select a variety of ‘game changers of the year’ in categories ranging from entertainment, philanthropy, eco, and media.  We were very pleased to see our own Executive Director Sue Gardner nominated as one of the Post’s ‘game changers’ of the year – and as of today we’ve learned that Sue came out on top – she is the chosen game changer of the year in media!  Way to go, Sue!

How Sue is changing the game, according to the Huffington Post:

Taking the people’s online encyclopedia to the next level. Drawing on the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission of bringing free knowledge to everybody, executive director Gardner is overseeing a strategic plan to broaden access to Wikipedia’s vast storehouse of information. Her battle plan: making Wikipedia easier to use and available to more people worldwide. Expansion takes money, but it helps to be one of the Web’s five most-trafficked sites. In the depths of the recession, the foundation raised $3 million in ten days, completely covering its 2009 operating budget.

We couldn’t agree more! Thanks to the poll voters and Huffington Post readers for putting our Foundation’s leader at the top of the game. And voters, take your love for Wikipedia and make a donation to Wikipedia and the Foundation during our annual campaign!

Jay Walsh, Communications

We’re excited to learn today that the Webby Awards have chosen Wikipedia as one of the ten most influential “Internet moments of the decade.” The timing is excellent as we’re now well-underway with our 6th annual fundraising drive.  It’s a great time to think about the extraordinary efforts of thousands of volunteers to make Wikipedia and its sister projects, and to make a donation to help ensure Wikipedia forever.

Alongside the other major hallmarks of a decade of the web, including protests in Iran, the 2008 presidential election, the expansion of craigslist, and the debut of the iPhone, Wikipedia is profiled – highlighting early beginnings in 2001 with 20,000 articles and 18 languages to its status today as a top-five web property used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Thanks to the Webby’s for such esteemed recognition, and congrats to the other big projects and story-makers of the year. Here’s to another big decade of influencing the web and promoting free knowledge!

Jay Walsh, Head of communications

Today, I’m excited to announce the kick-off of Wikimedia’s annual fundraising campaign.

Lots of people love Wikipedia, but surprisingly few know it’s run by a non-profit, the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation has just one purpose: to support the free and open sharing of knowledge. We don’t sell information and we don’t accept advertising.  Your donation is what makes Wikipedia possible.

When Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001, it was just an experiment. Nobody imagined Wikipedia would really succeed — least of all, probably, Jimmy.  He just thought it would be interesting to try.

But now, fewer than 10 years later, the number of people who use Wikipedia has grown to 330 million.  Students, teachers, tourists, entrepreneurs, parents, job-hunters, retired people, doctors, artists, engineers — everywhere around the world.  We use Wikipedia because it’s free, it’s convenient, and it gives us the information we’re looking for.  It’s always there when we want it.

This fundraising campaign offers Wikipedia readers the opportunity to celebrate Wikipedia and protect it for the future — for yourself, and for everyone else.

I’m aiming this year to raise 7.5 million dollars, up from five million last year.  That money will go towards technology and people — the servers and bandwidth required to operate the site, and the staff of 30 people who keep it running. You can find more information about how the money is spent, here.

There are some changes in the campaign this year.

• For the first time, you can give through your cellphone.  Just text WIKI to 25383 to make a ten dollar donation that’ll be charged to your phone bill. Currently this will only work for US cellphones, but in future we’ll expand it beyond the US.
• There are also buttons and badges you can put on your own site to encourage your friends to donate.
• Now you can donate via credit card, without having to enter the PayPal site. (For some people, the PayPal branding has been a deterrent — they thought they might need to join PayPal to donate.) To give easily without joining PayPal, using your VISA, Mastercard, American Express or Discover card, go here.

You can stay up-to-date on the campaign by checking back here at the Wikimedia Foundation blog, where Wikimedia’s Head of Community Gifts Rand Montoya will be giving regular updates.  On Identi.ca and Twitter, you can look for, and use yourself, @wikipedia and @wikimedia.

Thank you so much for using Wikipedia.

Since 2001, people around the world have joined together to create the greatest collection of shared knowledge in human history.  We are united by our love of knowledge, by our sense of curiosity and discovery, and by the understanding that we know more together than any one of us could possibly know alone.  Please donate to support Wikipedia, and everything it stands for.

Sue Gardner
Executive Director

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
Communications

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.

Five years ago, Wikipedia celebrated its third anniversary by reaching one million total articles across 105 different languages. The Wikimedia Foundation was barely a year old and had a grand total of two employees.

Can you remember what it was like five years ago?

Would you have imagined that, five years later, English Wikipedia would have over three million articles?

Would you have imagined that Wikimedia sites would be the fifth most visited on the Internet?

Would you have imagined that there would be 10 different Wikimedia projects (including Wikipedia) in over 270 languages?

Would you have imagined that about 30 employees would be working at the Wikimedia Foundation, with 24 independent chapters all over the world?

Think about all of the amazing things we’ve accomplished in the last five years alone. Now imagine where we might be five years from now. Where should we go? How much closer can we get to our vision of the sum of all knowledge freely shareable by all people? And how can we get there?

These aren’t just interesting questions. They’re critical. If everyone who cares about Wikimedia — from the casual reader to active volunteers — could come to a shared understanding of where we want to go, we would have a much better chance of actually getting there.

Over the next year, we’ll be exploring these questions, and in true Wikimedia spirit, we are going to Be Bold in how we do it. Simply put, we are embarking on the biggest, most inclusive open strategic planning process ever.

We are asking everyone and anyone who cares about the future of Wikimedia to help collaboratively develop and write a five year strategic plan for the entire movement.

As you would expect, we have a wiki where this work will happen. But that won’t be the only way to participate. Blog your ideas. Share them on Identi.ca, Facebook, and Twitter. Host meetups, and share what happened. Or volunteer to get more deeply involved.

Because of the scope and ambition of this process, it will be a long, messy, thrilling journey. The process itself should be a fascinating story, and I and others will be telling that story regularly here on this blog.

One way or another, please participate! I’ll see many of you on the wiki!

Eugene Eric Kim,
Program Manager, Wikimedia Strategic Planning