First day in Buenos Aires

I arrived Buenos Aires at 19:00 local time at Saturnday evening. While the plane is landing, the city is already emerged into darkness. From the air the city doesn't look so bright as many other cities, especially the outskirt are quite dark.

Yesterday morning I had the chance to go arround a little near the hotel and take a first impression of the city. The buildings here in the downtown are all very tall, mostly over ten floors. They are either in a style of neo-classic or are totally undecorated and looks like buildings out of the 1950s or 1960s in Germany, but far more taller. Most of the streets are very narrow. At least in the part of the city where I was there are very very few modern architects. No business towers with steel and glass. There are one or two that are really broad.

I made the classic failure of a northerner and went in the direction of sun in the assumption that this is south. Naturally, in the southern hemisphere this is north.

We had our first board meeting day today. New board members are introduced. New members also mean new ideas and frish wind. Lively discussions about diverse topics, mostly organizational (protocal would be published on the Foundation-wiki, so I don't want to be too detailed here).

In the evening we went for dinner, and met other Wikimedians in the Restaurante. A lot of handshakes and discussions and hugs.

I am disappointed that from the downtown the city light is so strong that one cannot see any stars, one can only see the moon and one or two of the most bright stars.

Arne Klempert joined the Board of Trustees

Now also this is official: Arne Klempert joined the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation as a chapters nominated member. Welcome Arne.

Nun ist auch das offiziell: Arne Klempert wird als Chapters nominierten Mitglied zum Board of Trustees der Wikimedia Foundation hinzukommen. Willkommen Arne.

阿尔纳·克莱姆帕特作为分会推举的维基媒体理事会成员进入理事会。欢迎。

Letter of Support

Sue announced the Letter of Support yesterday. Volunteers of the Wikimedia movement can request Letter of Support from the Foundation if they need such support letters for their work in the community and public. This is a further step that the foundation is going to do, to actively support community members in their work.

This would not be the last step, and it is only a small step, but it shows the direction where we want to move to. And in my opinion it is absolutely the right thing to do and right direction to go.

Naturally there are a lot of things we can do. And we would not be able to do all these things and distribute the resources of the foundation in all directions equally. This is also the reason why the foundation would work on its strategy in the next time. To work out where we want to concentrate our energy in all those things what we want to do.

The work on this strategy would cost us resources and energy, but it is a thing that worth to do. It would give us a clear direction for the future years and we would be able to distribute our resources not aimlessly.

Third Day of the WMF Board Meeting

Today is the third and last day of the WMF Boardmeeting. The party in the evening before had the result that the people gathered later than planned. Quite some people left the location long after the midnight. I planned to leave at 22:00 but left far later.

The topic of today is mainly more elaborations about the strategic planning, develop a time plan, work out who would take part in which workgroup, etc.

At 11:00 we went up to join the chapters for the wrap up part. The developers presented their results. You see by the questions that the usability project get the most attention, followed by OpenMap collaboration. The end was so touching.

After lunch the board meeting went on. We had discussions about various topics and finished some of the loose ends of the meeting. At about 14:30 we were endly done.

I went to the WMDE office. It is in a beautiful restalled old building from the begin of the 20th century. There are more talks. Most of the people went after that to C-Base for party again. Elya, Raimond, Dror and I sat at a street corner near the WMDE office and talked about fund raising, tax deduction, history and people. It was really fun.

At 16:00 Dror started for C-Base, Elya and Raimond for the rail station. I went by foot to the rail station because I still have so much time. It took me a good hour of time to go. But it is good weather and most part of the way was Tiergarten and Spreeufer, so it was a beautiful walk.

Second Day of WMF April Board Meeting

Today was mostly dedicated to the issue of Biography of Living People (BLP): What's the problem, why the problem and what we as board and the foundation should do with this problem. This topic was discussed for quite long time because of its importancy, but also because it is not so easy as it may be seemed to be.

After that we built up different workshops to check different things. For example to work out a resolution about the BLP, or the trademark issue and some other topics.

At 17:00 we had a joint meeting with the attendees of the chapters meeting. That was a great meeting. Atop of Berlin we discussed about various topics such as strategic planning, relations between the foundation and the chapters, the relationship between the chapters, the diversity of culture and chapters and the respect of this diversity as a value of the Wikimedia movement, communication and transparency. It was such an exciting meeting. You can really feel the spirit in the air. I really love to see all those faces and eyes.

At the evening it was the party at C-Base, an amazing hacker bar in Kreuzberg, where we also meet the folks who took part to the developer meeting. It was a very nice party with lots of talks, games, hacking, photo sessions and nice food and drink. (Though I didn't try the CC-BY beer.) I planned to stay until 22:00 but stayed there far more later.