My sister Mona and I trying desperately to keep up with my father-in-law Jack at 12,300 feet atop Flattop Mountain on the continental divide in Colorado.
Assisi from above
Here’s a picture of Assisi, Italy, from the VIP team helicopter ride. Now that’s a team meetup activity!
My 5k welcome to Automattic
My first day as an Automattic employee was last Monday, April 23rd. I had heard how welcoming the team at Automattic could be, so I wasn’t surprised they put on a special running event just to make me feel at home — the Automattic Worldwide WP 5K. I had mentioned in one of my interviews that I was a runner, so this was a considerate way to help me celebrate my first week on the team. đ
Here’s a bit of background on my running setup to help set the stage:
Gadgets. I don’t do much without electronic gadgets, and running is no exception. My iPhone 4S provides the soundtrack (Mumford & Sons). RunKeeper satisfies my nerdy obsession with data (see stats for my wwwp5k or join my street team!). Wahoo Fitness’s cool new BlueHR heart rate monitor uses Bluetooth Low Energy to tell RunKeeper just how out of shape I am. And the Skype app lets me keep in touch with the many exploding tickets from my Happiness engineer rotation.- Food. My two daughters baked some excellent blueberry muffins yesterday. I had a few right out of the oven, one for a snack in the afternoon, and a few more this morning. That seemed like just the right amount of carbo-loading.
Shoes. My current pair is the New Balance MT20 Trail Minimus shoe. I got into minimalist running about a year ago in an effort to improve my running form (which is about as lithe and relaxed as a drunken elephant walking backward on a balance beam). I’m not sure my form has improved, but I discovered a hidden masochistic side during six months of non-stop calf pain. These days they feel pretty good and I tend to wear them all the time. My wife sometimes asks if I’ll be wearing them to bed.- Outfit. When I first started using WordPress.org, I liked it so much that I wanted to pay something. So I found my way to the Indigo Clothing WordPress shop and “contributed” $17 by ordering a stylish red t-shirt. It seemed the perfect thing to wear for my run.
I headed out this afternoon. It was hot, about 80 degrees, as I left from home south of San Francisco on one my usual routes that happens to be almost exactly 5k. Things were pretty normal, until a few yards before the finish line when my three-year old daughter started pacing me. Her older sister and friend even held up a streamer for me so I could finish in style! Thanks to my wife for capturing the moment in the photo above.
And thanks to all my fellow Automatticians for a fun, running, start!
Board decisions on fundraising and funds dissemination
After a long and public discussion period, the Board has passed resolutions on two important topics for our movement: fundraising and funds dissemination. Ting just emailed them around to a few lists, and below is the text.
Continue reading “Board decisions on fundraising and funds dissemination”
Improved comment format?
This blog has never gotten so many comments as my recent post on Wikimedia fundraising. Turns out the comment format in the “Twenty Eleven” theme doesn’t particularly scale when hit with Wikipedians and their passion for commentary. Trying a new theme now.
Why I supported the Board letter on fundraising
The Wikimedia Board just published a letter to the community following-up on our ongoing discussion around fundraising and funds dissemination. As the Wikimedia Foundation Boardâs Treasurer, its Audit Committee Chair, and its Trustee most responsible for oversight of financial matters, I think itâs appropriate that I share some of my personal views which led me to support the letter.
This is a difficult, complicated issue. But, how our movement focuses volunteer time and donor dollars is incredibly important. To help form my views on the issue, I’ve read hundreds of pages on meta, closely followed the statements made by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia UK, Amical Viquipèdia, Continue reading “Why I supported the Board letter on fundraising”
Visitors at WMF Audit Committee meetings
One idea we’ve had on the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee is to put in place a visitor program. Â We think it could be a good way to drive additional transparency, and also to help share some useful practices with other movement organizations.
Our next meeting is scheduled for 14 February from 1:30-3:00 pacific time.  The primary agenda item is the review a draft of our annual public disclosure filing with U.S. tax authorities.  If that sort of thing interests you, Continue reading “Visitors at WMF Audit Committee meetings”
Stronger than ever
Today, together, the Wikimedia community did a really powerful thing. We raised an incredible amount of awareness about an issue critical to achieving our vision.
More importantly, we demonstrated once again the power of our community model. The thousands of you who participated in the community RfC. The volunteer administrators who Continue reading “Stronger than ever”
How many will be affected by #WikipediaBlackout? 100+ million.
The #WikipediaBlackout just started. One question that keeps coming up is, “How many people will it affect?” Let’s put on our stat-nerd hat and build a reasonable estimate.
First off, if we want to put this in human terms, we need to think about people and not Page Views or one of the other metrics out there. One source for that is comScore, which has released fairly recent global data for November 2011 based on its panel of 2 million internet users.
Since the blackout itself is only on English Wikipedia, let’s start there. comScore estimates that each month 236 million people (or “Unique Visitors”) come to the English Wikipedia globally from a browser on a computer. Continue reading “How many will be affected by #WikipediaBlackout? 100+ million.”
Notes on future of fundraising
For those who are not following it, there is an incredibly interesting, incredibly important, and incredibly long discussion page in response to Sue’s notes on the future of fundraising and funds dissemination. It’s worth a read. To keep track of my own thoughts, and to draw in blog readers who don’t normally visit gargantuan talk pages, I’ll post large comments I make. Here’s one from tonight.
-
- …the issue as I see it is a fundamental tension between our decentralized culture and the challenges of our newfound wealth. Together, over the past few years, we have all built some extraordinary capabilities in raising funds to pursue our vision. That has given us tremendous resources to pursue free knowledge. But if we want to continue to have access to resources at that scale, we have to accept the responsibility to our donors to ensure every contribution is spent wisely and with the greatest impact. That requires Continue reading “Notes on future of fundraising”
stu.blog 
