 Hello, everyone, and welcome to our session on packing the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees past, present and future. We're very excited to be here in this virtual Wikimedia this year and happy to be joined by people from all over the world. So exciting times. The session today will be divided into three parts. The first one, different board members who are present today will unpack the Foundation Board. This is going to be focused mostly on the past efforts of the board and will be linking to what we're doing today. Then we're going to have an interactive part where we will ask for your help in imagining the future of the Wikimedia Foundation Board post 2030. So this is going to be the future part of it. And finally, we're going to have a Q&A with board members. So this will bring us back to the present. Following the session, we will also have you will also have the opportunity to meet one on one or one with many with specific trustees in the coming few days. So if we ran out of time, or if people want to ask specific questions or simply meet trustees in a more laid back way, there will be a space for that as well. The exact time slots in which trustees will be available is linked now in the chat. A moment before we actually meet the trustees and begin the session, we would like to recognize that we're now. Celebrating not only 20 years of Wikimedia of Wikipedia this year, but also 18 years for the foundation and for the board of trustees. We would like to take this moment to thank all previous trustees who have been part of the board along the years and have helped us get where we are today. You can follow the timeline more closely in the link shared now in the chat of all the different trustees over the years. Last but not least, let us meet the board members joining us today. I will call each trustee to introduce themselves with their name and specific areas of focus as trustees, and we will begin with Nat, our acting chair. Hello, my name is Talia, thank you. I'm a Wikipedian from Ukraine, and I'm currently serve as an acting chair of the Wikimedia Foundation. Hi, everyone. I'm Israel Shafi, and I'm the current acting vice chair and also the chair of the product committee. Hi, I'm Darryl Simeonek. I currently chair the HR committee. Hi, everyone. Raju Narisetti, my second term on the board. I'm on the HR committee and the audit committee, and I'm also leading the transition efforts to find our new CEO for Wikimedia. Thank you. James. James is not on, but James is hopefully going to join us as well. He is the chair of the special projects committee and is currently on an ER. He's a doctor, so he'll be trying to join us as much as he can. And finally, my name is Shanee Evanstein-Sigalov. I am the vice chair of the board and the chair of the community affairs committee, also involved in the board governance committee, the transition committee, the special projects committee and the product committee. And I will be hosting this session today. Delving into the first part of the session, which deals with the past, we will be starting with some lightning talks from different trustees, which will give you some context as to what it means to be a trustee and what the board actually do throughout the year. We will begin with Nat. Hello again. So the Wikimedia foundation was created to serve and act as a steward and integrate part of the movement. So it's just a part of the broader Wikimedia movement. The board of the Wikimedia foundation is to guide the organization and to hold the management accountable for the results of the organization's work without being directly involved in day-to-day operations. So basically we are trying to stay strategic. Trustees basically have two duties, legally mandated duties, duty of care and duty of loyalty. That means basically that we need to act in the best interest of the Wikimedia foundation when making decisions and even ahead of our own. A day-to-day work of a trustee would be to stay as informed as he or she can with all the materials, prepare to attend meetings, board meetings and committee meetings, review all the documents, vote and make a decision to the best of his or her knowledge. And that's it. Thank you Nat. The second to speak will be Isra. Thank you. So I'd like to describe the current makeup of the board and upcoming changes to the structure, most notably the expansion of the board. So the board of trustees is made up of community selected and board appointed individuals. We each bring unique skills to our roles as trustees, but we all share a belief in our mission, values as well as the desire to guide the future of the movement. The board is currently expanding its size, so there can be up to 16 trustees on the board, eight community and affiliate selected seats, seven board selected seats and one founder seat. Each trustee serves a three-year term and participates on at least one of the board's committees. We are also expanding our committee structure to better facilitate our work. The new structure is aimed to ensure that the experience of the board service is rewarding by making use of all the wisdom and expertise that trustees have to offer in service of the Wikimedia foundation's mission and vision. It's also designed to make board service and support as sustainable as possible for trustees and staff. At the moment, the committees include board governance, audit, human resources, product, special projects and community affairs. And now I'll hand it over to Derish. Thanks. I want to talk briefly about the Universal Code of Conduct. I want to start with just stating that bringing people together to resolve hard questions collectively is super tough in any system. As a social scientist studying this information, I can tell you that it's even worse now when information is politicized and it makes the stakes for Wikimedia movement even higher. This is particularly true as we are growing globally, we are creating cross-project systems, allowing discussions across languages, across cultural barriers. So over the years preceding the adoption of the Universal Code of Conduct, we saw more and more situations where lack of clarity around expected behavior or around norms enforcement, caused problems within and across projects and left users feeling frustrated, unsafe or even unfairly judged without ways to appeal. Also, sometimes the procedures on projects were manipulated for a particular political aim or simply basically to exclude people or individuals from participation. So the idea for a Universal Code of Conduct showed in the movement strategy, working groups, but bringing people together to resolve hard questions is just super challenging. When working to create some third code of conduct expectations, when setting content disputes, it's just very tough. So we, as the board, knew when we directed the Foundation staff to draft such a document that it would be difficult to immediately reach an approach that would be satisfying to everyone, everywhere. And we knew that it would not be possible to create a document that would be absolutely perfect from the start, stapler for eternity, be read in stone and whatnot. So we set out with a hope that we could collectively create something that would be a solid foundation to evolve and grow. And with the participation and hard work of hundreds of community members already across multiple languages, we believe that this is what we've achieved. We have enormous gratitude to the volunteers and staff who took part in the drafting committees and hope that a second phase, which is, by the way, ongoing now, will bring us to a point where we can meaningfully implement this code. And we think it's an important step to creating an environment that is as safe and as fair for all as we can. Back to you, Shani. Thanks so much, Darius. So now that you basically have heard just a bit about how what the board does and what the how the board is constructed. And you've heard the one example of a difficult decision that the board made with Darius. I want to give you another example of a difficult decision that the board took. And that is with brand. So as some of you remember, back in September 2020, the board has made a resolution to basically pause anything related to brand work. We have been taking quite seriously different feedbacks that we've received from the community. And the board resolved to create an ad hoc committee in order to help prepare next steps and rethink how we approach brand. During this pause since September 2020, we've actually made considerable progress quietly, right off record, just board staff and working closely with nine community advisors. The ad hoc committee was convened and working with three trustees, James, Raju and myself as the chair. And during these past months, as I said, we've worked closely with Wikimedia Foundation brand team and with these nine wonderful community advisors for over six months now. We're incredibly grateful for all the time and advice of these community advisors. They basically reflect many of the perspectives and many of the concerns that have been floating around in the movement, including chapter leaders, authors of the community open letter on renaming, which helped lead to the September resolution. And of course, leaders from different communities in emerging countries, emerging communities, etc. There will be soon, we will be presenting to the full board a resolution that we're hoping to be approved in September 2021. And hopefully that means that brand work will be resumed. Of course, in sync with the rest of movement strategy efforts, all of the efforts that will be done will be done in collaboration with and consultation with the community. And you will be able to find more details in the community calendar that we've recently shared. That is it with brand and I'm hoping that if people have some questions, we will be able to answer them later on. I want to invite Raju to speak a bit about the transition committee. Hi everyone. One of the most enduring responsibilities of a board like ours is to provide guidance, but also evaluate and measure the performance of the media CEO. As most of you know, we are in a bit of a transition there. And while transitions are always challenging, the board, this time around has done it differently. And this is an illustration of how boards tend to evolve and learn from the past. In 2019, we set up a succession planning process that has then prepared us to kind of deal with the eventuality that a CEO might move on. And we activated that plan earlier this year and set out a timetable that said that we will try to find the new CEO over a six month period, some hopefully before October, and then formed for the first time from the transition committee, which I chair, which also includes our current chair, Nat includes the heads of the HR committee, Darius, the audit committee, Tanya and Shani, our vice chair. And we provide you're doing two things. One is to engage an outside partner to look for the best CEO candidate and we are well along the way and we've provided lots of updates to the community. The second part, especially during the transition is to provide guidance and be available to the the executive team of the committee. So we meet a lot. We meet practically every week. And so those are the dual functions. And the reason it's different is because of the succession planning that has gone in. And again, it's a sign of how boards kind of learn from every experience and say what is the best way to do our role and support the organization. So I thought it's a good illustration of that. And with that, why don't I turn it over to James. And thank you, Raju. And finally, I'm just going to I just want to encourage everyone here to vote in the upcoming election. We have 20 incredible Wikipedians running for to fill four positions within this board. We are going to be running from August 18 until August 31. Please take some time, read about the candidates, read their answers to the questions that the community proposed, watch the videos they have prepared to introduce themselves. Check to see if you're eligible to vote. There's there's a page that will run you through that on meta. We're moving to a new voting mechanism this year in that we're going to the single transferable voting mechanism. And what this means is, you know, you won't just say you want a candidate or you don't want to candidate. You're going to rank the candidates with numbers from one to 20 based on, you know, who you want to see most elected to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is the same voting process that countries like New Zealand are using, and has, you know, we're hoping it will work well for us here as well. The results of this election will be announced in September, and then hopefully we'll get the these four new individuals into position shortly after that. And that will be my last bit of time on the board. Back to you, Shani. Thanks so much, James. And thank you to all the trustees for this initial first part. We're moving to the second part, which is going to be an interactive exercise, hopefully with all of you. So I will hand it over to Isra to lead this first portion of it. Great. So now we'd like to do something fun and interactive. And we'd like to ask you all to cast your minds ahead into the future. So imagine the year is 2030. Big Tech has failed to deliver the promise of the internet. Regulators around the world caught up with their monopolization and broke them apart. In an exercise, we'd like for you to guess why and how the regulators did this and feel free to answer either in the chat or on the whiteboard. We'd really love your participation and feel free to make some wild thoughts or guesses. We will have some support for the whiteboard so that we can capture all of your ideas and we'll copy across the chat to an etherpad as well. Can we just have confirmation from tech that everyone can see the whiteboard and can participate? Yes. So I'm just going to repeat the question. So imagine the year is 2030. Big Tech has failed to deliver the promise of the internet. Regulators around the world caught up with their monopolization and broke them apart. So in this exercise, we'd like for you to guess why and how the regulators did this. We will give it a couple more minutes. Thanks everyone for your thoughts. You're welcome to continue adding them. And we're moving to Darius to ask you yet another question. Thanks everyone for your thoughts. You're welcome to continue adding them. And we're moving to Darius to ask you yet another question. I want you to imagine what if the internet went from being primarily in English, and especially in English text, to now existing across media, different languages, baby fish exist, translations go on the fly. So guess what the internet now looks and feels like and try to answer this in the chat or on whiteboard. To anyone joining us now, Darius, can you please repeat the question that we've asked participants to give us feedback on in the etherpad or whiteboard? Absolutely. I put the question in the etherpad already. Imagine the world in which essentially from being primarily in English text, we transition to a world in which we have translations on the fly, baby fish exist. What does it feel like? What does the internet look and feel like? Please answer on the whiteboard or in the etherpad. Thanks Darius. We'll give people two more minutes to reply. I see people are still writing so we will give it one more minute. And of course you're free to go back to question one and two. As you pleased, I'll give people a chance to finish their sentences and we'll move to the third question by James. Great. So the third and final question. Imagine free knowledge and the promise of the Wikimedia movement has survived the downfall of these big tech conglomerates. And our movement is now greater than ever. We delivered all we created together with movement strategy. It is of course 2030. The world has changed a great deal but boards still require nonprofits to govern them. What do folks think a future board for the Wikimedia Foundation would look like in 2030? Thank you James. We'll be posting the question in the etherpad shortly. And you can continue to answer. We'll give it five minutes. We see some lively activity in the etherpad. To anyone joining us now, you're welcome to join the etherpad in thinking about the board of the future. This is a nice exercise, sort of a time capsule that will take with us and in the future we'll be able to look back at this. And see what actually happened. Did we imagine correctly? Two more minutes to put in your thoughts about the 2030 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Thank you for everyone who has shared their thoughts about the future of the board. You're welcome of course to continue putting your thoughts into the etherpad. And we are moving to the third part which I know some of you are waiting for which is an open Q&A with trustees. So we will begin with some questions that were already shared in the chat. The first one is about the universal code of conduct. And is it already affecting community? Nat, would you like to take this one? Yeah, so universal code of conduct is already on but there is still conversations about the enforcement. So join the conversations and attend the round table we are going to have on Monday if you are interested. Yes, we're sharing hopefully the link to that round table again in the chat now. And there is another question Raju, I think you should take this one about an update on the ED appointment. Sure, the link is also posted there so it gives the most recent update. As I mentioned earlier, there was a lot of interest from the beginning of the search given the role and responsibilities that the CEO of Wikimedia has. We began with the help of our outside Bucharest advisors which has worked with the foundation for and as a history of finding talent for us. We began with about 400 applicants and continue to win over town. A lot of global non-US based candidates which we deliberately wanted to also very much encourage. The original timetable we set out in April was that we will hope to wrap it up by September, October and the transition committee and the board feels very comfortable that we are going to meet that timetable. So stay tuned. Thank you. Thanks Raju. I wish I saw that there was a chat about the promise of the internet and that you already started to answer that. So do you want to maybe say it out loud? Sure, that's an easy one. The promise of the internet, what could be smaller? Well, I think the promise that we all somehow subscribe to was that it would make knowledge and information free for everybody, equal for everybody. Obviously the platforms, the corpse are sort of appropriating it. This is one of the things I study so it won't even get me started. But there's an appropriation of open source strategy done by corporations. So I think over the next couple of years, over the next decade, we're going to see where we're going to land. But I think Wikimedia is a beacon of hope. So here we are. Indeed. James, anything you want to add? Yeah, you know, the internet has delivered on some of its promises, such as, you know, in certain parts of the world anyway, you know, many of us now have much of the world that are fingertips. And, you know, of course, we're, we're all here involved as we want to make sure that this, you know, library of human knowledge extends to everybody. Thanks so much. There's an additional section to this question about abstract Wikipedia. Anyone here wants to take it? Well, I cannot. I think, you know, it is not just about abstract Wikipedia. It's about accessibility. It's about addressing the needs of projects which are specific needs rather than the needs that all Wikiprojects share. And I think basically Ashwin was making a point that we're still noted there and I agree there is a scope for improvement. I think we need to fill it. Yeah, we're certainly not there. But I think, you know, abstract Wikipedia is just another example to how we're striving to develop for the future. Right. This is part of our efforts and no one knows what will happen exactly in five, in five years in ten years. There are additional efforts as many people know in natural language processing and AI and in machine learning. So all these things will hopefully converge to help users on the Internet get access better. But the promise of projects like Wikidata and abstract Wikipedia are a good step in the right direction in helping us get there or at least start imagining how that might look like and actually creating a platform, a global opportunity, a global community for people to join and contribute to that. So I think that's exciting in itself. I want to move to another question coming from the audience. Let me just see if I'm not losing anyone in the middle. The question from Ashwin, is there any initiative to engage and provide solutions for how Internet services are so unequal in the world? Who wants to take this one? It is partly the same question, partly not. So just an opportunity to comment on that portion. We of course have a number of groups within our movement who are trying to address those for access or intermittent access to the Internet. We have Kiwis out of Switzerland who are busy working on offline solutions, offline apps. We have Internet in the Box that's providing hardware and all of the community that has grown around that project, which ships little devices that generate WiFi signals and bringing partial access to a static version of Wikipedia to areas where there are no Internet. So it's a difficult problem to solve and there's a bunch of people working on partial solutions. Thanks, James. Ashwin and the rest of the people contributing to these questions in the chat, if something is still unclear, please ping us and we'll ask a follow-up question. There's another question from Anas about, has the board had a communications plan with the community in the future? I can start that and others can help. So there are two different things that we're doing already at the moment. The first was to create this year the Community Affairs Committee. This is a new board committee that did not exist before and its sole aim is to help the communications between the board, the Wikimedia Foundation staff and the community just be better and more effective. We are very happy to be working closely with a new team that is focused now on movement communications. So there's an actual strategy, there are actual staff members working on it. It is led by Mayor that some of you have already been able to meet and will continue to meet in the coming months. And we've just recently shared one of the new things, which is the calendar, the community calendar that was requested to a tool for the community to follow up on the different initiatives that are going around, especially the consultations, the different, you know, there's a lot going on, especially as we're in the process of implementing movement strategy. So that is a way to follow up on all the different moving parts. And I wish Mayor was here, you will have a chance probably to meet him, but I will speak for him and his team saying that they're very excited as the board is for the existence of this new team. And there are actually various efforts to create a really strong and consistent strategy of how we communicate with the community. Answering questions like what is a consultation? Who do you talk to when you need to find out something? Making sure that we use language that people that is not too high and people can understand wherever they are, making sure that content is translated to different languages with whatever we communicate. And just making sure we're more accountable and more diverse in the way that we approach communications with our very white community, making sure it's not just English centric, etc. So there are lots of issues and we're trying to deal with this new team at the foundation and with the Community Affairs Committee. And you're welcome to join us again in the one-on-ones in the coming days to learn more. Anyone has something to share or add to that? Okay, so we can move to the next question and that is does the board have a plan for future release of its minutes so that they are released after meeting directly? Nat, do you want to take it? Yeah, so the meeting goes, everybody speaks and the result of the meeting should be minutes. Minutes are a little document, so they need some time to be prepared then brought by the board members, whether the minutes do convey what has happened at the meeting. And then they approved usually at the next board meeting, so they can't be released immediately. There was a follow-up question whether we can release the draft of the minutes or something like that. And I don't know, I don't think so. But we referred the question to our general counsel result of the board secretary who had to, I don't know, look at it or answer it more expertly. Thanks Nat. I want to move to another question asked by Kludi and excuse me if I'm not pronouncing your names correctly. Will there be a more focus on possible conflict of interest in the current board and the next one? And I see that some trustees have already answered but Rajid, do you want to take that directly? Sure. I just wrote on the chat as well. Given several board members typically come from wiki communities, as a board we make sure that they recuse themselves if there's a clear conflict of interest on a matter that the board has to vote on. And this we take very seriously on any given board meeting one or two members could often find themselves saying that we need to recuse ourselves. And sometimes it's really a conflict in mindset. By that I mean the board is really a board for the foundation and not necessarily for the various communities that one might have come to the board from. And so this is where we spend a fair amount of energy, especially in onboarding and we'll do that obviously with the next set of board members to make sure that they understand it's a subtle but very clear fundamental distinction. And so I think we, we owe it to new board members to make that very clear. And Darius, I think you had an additional amplification as well. Well, I mean, I mean, obviously in any organization like ours, they already perceive COI and the real COI sometimes as well and both need to be addressed very seriously. Even perceived COI, there's no COI, but people perceive this one. We need to avoid the situation because it takes out air. So the BGC has procedures for this. Whenever there is a situation, we will be learning from it and there will be of course situations when we need to learn and create procedures. Sure. Thanks. I can add to that just one more thing. And that is that the board is making an effort to kind of learn from its own mistakes. None of us is perfect. And despite our best efforts, we might make, you know, different errors along the way. The most important thing for us is to own it and to update the way that we're working and to update our procedures. And I can share that after some things that happened recently, we are going to at least focus in the coming year on making sure that whatever procedures we have and the decisions that we base our, we are basing our decisions on certain policies and perceptions, just making sure that we're aligned with the rest of the movement. So there are no double standards that we're all sharing in the same. We're all sharing similar procedures as much as possible. Yeah, I hope that's clear. And moving on to the next question. There is a follow up on question four about the promise of the Internet. Those platforms that appeared in 2005 or so, what do they have to do with the whole of the Internet? I'm not sure I understand this question and maybe other board members here do. It would be good to have clarifications of what that means. Anyone from the board understanding this and wanting to answer? No, so whoever wrote that questions were inviting you to explain what you meant by that. And do we have any other questions that I've missed in the Etherpad? We will give it a minute for people to ask additional questions if they have them. So there's an additional follow up on setting uniform standards across the movement. Could you reflect on the way that the Wikimedia Foundation gets community input and reviews of its annual budget compared to the public scrutiny that the affiliates tend to go through? Who wants to take this one? I feel like I've touched it a bit. Israel, maybe you want to share some thoughts? If you're speaking, we can't hear you. Oh, Israel is having some technical issues, so Darius, please go ahead. Sure. The mechanisms of the FDC that we used to work eventually included the evaluation of the WMF budget and plan by the community. For now, as you know, the FDC is on hiatus and being remodeled. We'll need to see. Possibly we'll have regional hubs and then the point will be sort of definitely different. But I think there's, at no point so far, the board was rejecting the idea of some form of community feedback and oversight. We've been following, we've been pioneers of this approach worldwide. So I think it is very clear there will be some form of it. We do not know what we're still figuring it out. Thanks, Darius. I can add that the Community Affairs Committee will be working with staff about finalizing some thoughts about the FDC in the coming few months and making some decisions about new structures regarding the annual plan. I think this question actually is a combination of two. So there's one aspect of it is the annual budget. It is very, very complicated. I'll say that not many people know, but creating the annual budget for the foundation is a tedious, quite complex process. It involves a lot of staff members who are working diligently for months. It's taking input from different departments and trying to create something that is coherent and that is also connected to our midterm plan. This is a five-year plan that was created and also considering movement strategy. So there is an effort to be as transparent as possible, but it is very complex to actually have a community consultation on that. I don't see how that is happening. Other than that, other than the annual plan, there's the issue of how do we as a board and how does the Wikimedia Foundation receive input from the community? And that has been a very challenging... It's been a challenge, especially because it is very clear that just requesting people to, let's say, comment on meta is not enough anymore. This is not for everyone. Not everyone speaks English. Not everyone is feeling comfortable sharing or reading huge amounts of texts that are usually part of a request for comments that are happening on meta, for instance. So we are experimenting. We have already been starting to experiment with additional channels of receiving feedback from people, but this is something that both the board and especially the movement communications team at the foundation will continue to think about and to reflect on and to find solutions to. So hang in there with us as we try new things and see what works for the whole movement, not just parts of it that are feeling confident to participate in discussions on meta. So just wanted to note that. There is a follow-up, another follow-up. We often talk about the Wikimedia Foundation, about what the Wikimedia Foundation can do for the community. What can the community do in giving better feedback to make it easier, more tempting to ask for it? Oh, that's a big question. Darius, I see that you're starting to answer. Do you want to begin, maybe? This is my pet peeve. I love the idea of thinking of the community as a source of expertise, skills, professional oversight. The FDC has proven it multiple times. We have people there with skills with national oversight. We had a person who was an oversightor of the national banking system, for example. So we have really high-level people there. Another thing is that we need to get to the system where we can train people, when we can help them get the expertise, and when we can attract those experts. But I think the community definitely is the super useful resource, and I probably will tell a heresy here, but I think maybe at some point maybe the Board of Trustees should be made mostly of the community members if they're qualified enough. But we're not there yet, I guess. Thank you, Darius. When Drew, I see that you are typing something. Do you want to share some more thoughts? Sure. As a board member, not from the community, I'm one of the external, I guess, appointed board members. My observation is that it would be good in the interest of having dialogue to start by giving the WMF staff and the board the benefit of doubt in the sense that it will be good to start with the assumption that all of us are mission-aligned and wanting to do the right thing for our global communities. I sometimes find that the act of giving feedback begins by questioning the motives, which as you can imagine as normal human beings, then raises the bar on kind of being receptive to that. So I would just urge people to kind of assume, because it's true. In my four years, I've never doubted that, that everybody is trying to do the right thing, staff, the CEO, the board. And if you begin with that assumption of giving benefit of doubt, I think the feedback would be a lot more appreciated. Thanks, Raju. I think what you're referring to is actually the assumed good faith, which has been part of our... It's been at core value, but it has been grinded a bit, or trust has been an issue in recent years, but we're really hoping that this trust is possible to rebuild it. And we have been making an effort to do that in the past few years, listening better. But I agree that it starts with just assuming good faith. I know it sounds simple, but sometimes it's not. So that could be helpful. Another channel that I can add to that is that we do have the Community Affairs Committee, and we are having bi-monthly meetings. The next one is going to be, I think, in October. And this is a good place for the community to come by, meet the board, meet actually also additional staff members that we're working closely with, asking questions, just having a dialogue. And so that is another avenue. Another one that I want to mention is the Ask CAC. So let's say it's a month without a meeting, and you want to ask something or give us some feedback, you can use that email. It's askcacatwikimedia.org, and you're welcome to use it at any moment in your throughout the year, and we will try to help find answers. Moving to the next question, there's a question from Ed. Will any board member join the Movement Charter Drafting Committee? Nat, would you like to take this one? Yes. So in a way, yes, board members will join the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, but not as voting members as liaisons, in order to provide input and support the work of the Drafting Committee at every step in the process. This information input support. Yeah, I'll add to that, that both the board and the foundation staff are important components in our movement and have to be... We must be involved in the process. How exactly is what we were thinking about lately? And we came to the conclusion, as Nat said, that the board should be involved in the process throughout. We will probably have two liaisons, and those people will be simply watching the process answering, advising, giving input when needed, et cetera, but not directly. Another question is, is the board the ultimate decision maker in questions about the hubs? Anyone here wants to take that one? If not, I can only share that to my understanding, the hubs is something that will be defined through the Movement Charter. So this is ultimately not the board's decision, but rather the board is supposed to facilitate and help the whole process of the Movement Charter work and happen, with support from staff, of course. And so together we hope that we can define the Charter and hubs will be parts of it. But then that would be a decision of the whole community, not just the board. The board will give, again, its two cents, or will share its perspective, but it's not necessarily making the final decision about hubs. James, anything you want to add? No, I was just adding your comment to the Etherpad. I agree, yes. Hopefully this will come out of the Movement Charter, and it's not going to be, yes. We're not planning for it to be a board decision. There's another question here about, is there a plan to change the percentage of representation in the board? For example, by having more community-chosen members versus less nominated, I'm not sure what less nominated, but I'm assuming the idea is, how many community-elected trustees there are and how many appointed seats there are, how can this be discussed slash done? Darius, I see that you already added something. Yeah, I mean, this is the sentiment that I understand. Having more high-level experts that are sourced from the community is sort of a unicorn. It's a holy grail, right? I mean, somebody who is already competent, but also understands the community. So this is a very nice thought, but I think in the long run, we can train people and prepare them for the task. But I think the follow-up question here was, where could this question even be asked or discussed? And I think it's very clear that with the new institutions of the Community Council, with the Movement Charter, these would be the avenues where we can discuss this. But I also agree that we do not really have good technologies for participative, massive feedback-gathering or massive decision-making. So there is a gap there. Thanks, Darius. Anyone wants to add anything to that? Okay. Moving on then to the next question. There's a request here from someone who missed the beginning and asking if we could say what our responsibilities are as trustees, sorry for repeating it. I think so many people don't necessarily remember that, so that would be a good time to maybe re-mention that. Nat, since you gave that explanation at the beginning, would you like to...? Yeah, sure. So there are legally mentioned duties, usually duties of care and loyalty, and that basically means to act having the interest of your organization ahead of your own, your organization, your family, whatever you are doing. And it's also to comply with your charities, governance documents and laws. So again, it's like legal responsibilities, not to harm your decisions or by your decisions, the organization you are responsible for. And basically act with reasonable care and skill. That's if talking broadly. One of the most significant responsibilities of a trustee in my mind and the current undergoing this process, key responsibilities is holding the CEO responsible, evaluating and basically managing the only employee that the board has directly. And we are in the process of finding the right person now. Thank you, Nat. Anyone wants to add anything to that? Okay. Then there's another question about whether we can give some clarity about our expectations for movement brand improvements. I can take that one as the chair of the ad hoc committee and James can join me, maybe. I will say that the biggest improvement I want to see personally is I want to see excitement around brand. The whole idea of tackling brand work came from movement strategy from our joint understanding as a movement that we have a really unique brand and that we need to make an effort to utilize it to the best of our ability in order to achieve our goals. And that is to reach every person in their own language and share knowledge across the world. And so I would say there are two challenges, maybe big challenges, right? One is that there is a difference, quite a difference between people who are already involved in our movement, volunteers who are already doing the work and staff and the board, you know, people already part of the movement and contributing right now to this knowledge that is available to people. And there is a second portion of the world that is still not connected to the internet. That is actually 50% of the world's population. So first of all, how do we get to this 50%? How do we help them? And we also know that, you know, with technological advancement, these people will come online in the coming few years, right? And every month that goes by, more and more people join the internet. And so how do we make sure that these people find what they need in our projects? And how do we engage them so they also become not only consumers, but also contributors? So different groups, different needs. How do we use brand to make sure to reach these people and these communities and how do we use brand to make up for all the different gaps of knowledge that we have in our projects? How do we make sure that the voices that are still not really heard in our projects are heard? You know, our vision is for the sum of all human knowledge. That includes everyone. So that's indigenous communities, the less developed world, et cetera, et cetera. So we want to reach all these people. And brand is one of the ways to achieve that. So to make a really long story short, I want to see excitement around brand. And I'm hoping that the next steps that will hopefully be approved next month by the board and then deployed throughout the coming years, we will be introducing different pilots and working with the community with whatever decisions that we're making and hopefully empowering people to do more. For instance, how do we make sure that we give credit to the work people do with some, let's say, an audio brand, which we still don't have? So there are really interesting questions around brand and I'm hoping to see some excitement in deploying it. I hope that's clear and I want to move to the next question. Let me just find it in the dock. I kind of lost track with the etherpads while answering this question. So give me just one sec to find it. Sorry, just catching up. Do all board members comply to the American law even if they live in another country? Is there a plan to decentralize in the future and be less dependent on American law? Darius, do you want to take it? Sure, I'm acutely aware of the shortcomings and the laws that American law comes with. There are advantages and disadvantages. My understanding now, and I'm not a lawyer, my understanding now is the regular assessment of where we should be incorporated. And the assessment is that currently the US law provides us with the best shields under the freedom of speech. And we need this because we do not want some government to shut us down. So even if it's flawed, it's the best we can get for now for various reasons. Yeah, to compliment what Darius said, we have to comply by American law simply because the foundation is in the US. But making sure that the board itself is quite diverse is the way to go, I think in all other aspects besides the legal obligations of filing the different documents and et cetera. A really diverse board, which is what we have been really trying to get to, especially in these recent elections, is making sure that there are different voices representing the whole world in everything that we do. So even if we have to abide by American laws in certain things, there is a real desire for the board and for the foundation to really be global in our approach to everything we do. Question about AFCOM. Does the AFCOM report to the board in case someone wants to report the AFCOM? Who should she or she contact? James, do you want to take this one or not? All three of us are the AFCOM liaisons. So James, do you want to begin? Yeah, so the Affiliation Committee is a committee of the board at this point in time. They do report to the board, but they're also supported by staff, specifically they're supported by the legal department of the Wikimedia Foundation. And the members of AFCOM are also Wikipedians, as are we. So I guess it depends on the nature of the concern that someone is wishing to report would be where that concern would go to. But Jacob Roberts within legal is the point person at this point in time. Thank you, James. Oh, sorry. Next question. Can the board make the foundation move somewhere outside the US or decentralized? I think it's the same question that we've already touched, but if there are any additional comments from board members, that's the time to make them. I mean, it's clear we can. We don't want to for now. But even outsourcing stuff like Wikidata is sort of decentralizing the tasks of the organization itself. And as we bring on more chapters, as we bring on more affiliates, we are becoming a more decentralized movement. I personally would like to see us put more effort into growing the aspects of the movement that exists outside of North America and decentralize the movement as a whole with the Wikimedia Foundation just being one aspect of this movement. Yeah, to expand on what Darius and James are saying, part of the fact that the foundation lives officially under US law doesn't really matter. We have, as Darius commenting in chat, we have over 200 staff members at the Wikimedia Foundation that are from outside of the US. We are making an effort that our senior management is from different places in the world. But to me, the Wikimedia Foundation is just a small part of it. As James mentioned, we are a global movement. So I think the more exciting part is what we've been discussed as a movement as part of the movement strategy. And that is the missing piece sort of, and that is the Global Council. The movement charter that we're working on now will be a stepping stone in getting there. But to me, that would be a way to make sure that as a movement, we're more decentralized and more inclusive with the Wikimedia Foundation and its board only being part of the picture, not the whole picture. Raju, do you want to add something else? No, I think you've already said what I typed. Okay, Darius? I see you typing. Didn't have time to read, but I see you typing. Anything you want to comment? Thanks. Okay, next question. Have the board earlier refused to accept a new linguistic version of Wikipedia because it is the board that agrees on them before they leave the incubator? Okay, James, do you want to take this one? Yes, certainly. We have a committee called the Language Committee, and they are the ones who are making decisions on which new language versions are accepted for a specific sister project versus which ones are not. They are the ones who reach out to experts in the language. They're the ones who verify the language in question. These questions don't come to the board. Has the board refused to accept a new linguistic version of Wikipedia? No, they have not. Those decisions have been dealt with by the Language Committee. With the exception of Kling and Wikipedia, just as Darius is commenting. Rightly so, I would say. Okay, next question. What is the board plan to help fund communities in countries such as Russia and Iran? I'm not sure why the focus is on Russia and Iran, but I will say that we have just recently, the foundation has recently announced a new system for grants, and this is using regional committees to determine the exact budget of specific affiliates, specific regions. So it's not really the board. The board oversees, like overall, the board doesn't interfere as we mentioned before with the exact operational aspects of the foundation. But we have approved that new system, that the advancement and grants team have been working on. And so we'll see how it goes. It's a work in progress. It's something new that we're trying out. It's not perfect yet. We're working on the system. It's quite complex, actually, to have these committees and to define who is in these committees and how exactly the decisions are made. I can share that staff had gone out of their way to make sure to really make sure that these committees are getting different types of trainings. So a lot is going on into training the committee members who are making these decisions. And we'll see how that goes. And if there are any comments or questions, you can also simply direct them to the grants team and to the specific regional, there's a regional liaison per committee from the foundation staff. So there are people to talk to if there are any questions about that. Any other comments on that from other trustees? Okay. I see here another question. Regarding did the board advance on finding a new CEO? I think we've answered that already. Have the regional grants committees been appointed? Yes, I think they have. And there's probably a meta link that someone can share for all the different committees, or it will be shared in the coming days if it hasn't already. I think it has been, though. Any other comments on that from other trustees? Okay. So another question that just popped up. The board decided that the foundation remains in the U.S. therefore volunteers in countries such as Iran and Russia cannot be funded by the foundation. What do you think? I'm not sure that is true. We are, as far as I know, to the best of my knowledge, we are supporting communities all over the world regarding not just in the U.S. So I'm not sure what this question is based on and we will be happy to answer anything additional if you give us a more context. So we are now 10 minutes before the time for this session. If there are no other questions in chat, I would encourage everyone again, just a reminder that if you would like to speak one-on-one or a group of people with a trustee in the coming days, there are roundtables where trustees have made themselves available. I'm hoping someone can reshare the link to the different time slots in the chat right now. And while we do that, I see that Darius is adding some comments. Previous questions, Darius, do you want to simply share them live? Sure. The question is about funding from an American organization in difficult to reach countries like Russia or Iran. In Russia, for example, there is explicitly a ban on funds coming from the American organizations or an implicit ban basically making difficult to receive funding from certain organizations. So I can tell that we do not really have a specific plan for this particular problem, but we do have experience. The WMF has dealt with difficult funding situations. Our priority, obviously, is the safety of volunteers in place. So it's not just about getting the money there. This is the easiest part. We have a large network of affiliates. It's not a problem. The problem is to making it safe so that people can use it without getting in trouble. And I'm confident the WMF funding team will work around this, maybe. However, for now, I don't think we have any specific procedure for this particular country. Thanks, Darius. I know Nat has some comments as well. Do you want to share something? Okay. There's another question now popping. Why did many of the C-level executives leave the foundation at the same time? Can you clarify the problem? Raju, as the chair of the transition committee, do you want to add something to that? Hi. A slight pushback on the framing of the question. A few executives have left this year, which is not uncommon in a transition year. Across the U.S., it's not uncommon in companies after the COVID year. There's a bit more mobility in it. None of it was unplanned. In some cases, the conversations have been going on for a while internally. And some of the timing, which feels like it's all happening at the same time, was deliberate in the sense that rather than drip it out over X period, why don't we just announce the timing? And the reasons have been kind of all over the place. A couple of our execs have gone on to much bigger jobs as CEOs. And so that's pretty normal as well. None of the departures should happen in a perfect world, but organizations have to cope with it. We are generally feeling very good about the pen strength in particular, the VP level strengths as well. So it has not had a significant operational impact. Obviously, there's an emotional impact. And when somebody who's been there for a long time leaves, there's a lot of institutional knowledge that walks out of the door. So the onus is on the C team and the board and the transition committee to make sure that we are managing any interim gaps, but also making sure that we continue to hire very well. The roles, for example, the C, the tech role, for example, the CTO role has always been a bit of a challenge for our organizations simply because the kind of skills you need in that role and the kind of compensation that outside tech firms offer makes it a bit challenging. So we've had a little bit more turnover there than we would like, but it's also been a fact of life that CTOs tend to kind of change quite a bit in all organizations. So that's kind of how the transition board committee is viewing what's happening. Thank you, Raju. There's a question here about do you expect the numbers of or kinds of chapters or user groups to change with the new hubs to expect that chapters will get funded from hubs instead of the Wikimedia Foundation directly? And I see Darius just popped something in the chat there. Darius, do you want to please comment? Sure, I mean, it's a little premature to say the movement charter will decide a lot about the specifics. So hypothesizing, theorizing, sure, it is conceivable there will be regional FDC-like entities that will be distributing funds. It is conceivable that the chapters, the number of affiliates of chapters will change. It could be more, it could be less, but I think it's very early on. We do not know exactly the specifics of funds distribution. In a perfect world, I think it would be good if decisions about funding are made locally, closer to where the context is, because it's very difficult to make such decisions outside of this context. Thanks, Darius. I will add to what you said that we have seen a rise in the number of affiliates in the past couple of years at least. We're close now to 150 affiliates, I think, and there are new requests from AFCOM all the time. As Darius said, it's quite premature to answer this question because the movement charter and the Global Council once set will probably change the picture in ways that we cannot foresee now. I hope that answers. There was a question about us having partnerships with Creative Commons and I said, yes, there are different community members who are contributing to both. There are different projects that are working in alignment. Some of our community members, including myself, for instance, have been involved in the Creative Commons program committee for the coming. They're also celebrating 20 years now, so they have been one of the organizations that we have been working with for a long time now. They're also, as for more official relationships between the foundation itself, I don't know, actually. If someone from staff wants to add some comments, please do. Okay, another question. Does the board have any relations or contact with the American government in the sense that it manages as American-based foundation? And Isra is commenting here. She's not, she is falling from the chat here, but she's commenting in the etherpad that outside of reporting to the IRS, no. And there is no US government funding towards Wikimedia. Any other comments from other trustees on that? Okay. We have partnerships with various aspects of the US government. For example, we have worked with the National Institutes of Health with respect to developing medical content on Wikipedia. And we've had some efforts with NIOSH as well. They had a Wikipedia in residence at NIOSH, which is a subdivision of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC in the United States. But community aspect rather than from a Wikimedia foundation aspect. Yeah, this is also a question to our staff rather than the board itself. So I'm encouraging staff. I know that Legal has some connections to the government as well and is following what's happened with legislations as it affects our project. So Legal can probably add some comments in the chat, in the etherpad as well. Last question, as we are one minute before, how can Wikimedia Foundation create more transparency around Wikimedia Foundation-funded partnerships supported through GLAM and partnership teams? Anyone wants to take it in less than a minute? I think that's a big question and we might answer it later on in the etherpad, but I want to pause here and we will take this question either to the one-on-ones and to the roundtables and we'll probably comment on this later on. I want to thank everyone. We are at the time for this session. Thank you so much for joining us for this virtual conference and even this new format of us trying to answer questions. I hope it was informative and we look forward to meeting you individually throughout the coming few days. A big shout out to all the volunteers and to staff who have made this Wikimedia possible. Thank you, everyone.