 He's joining us to this SIP Snack and Chat with the board. We'll just let everybody join our session and then we'll kick things off. I hope you're all having a wonderful Wikimedia day, weekend, wherever you are in the world. So we'll just give another minute or two to let people in. Brilliant, we'll welcome everyone to this SIP Snack and Chat session with the board here at Wikimedia 2022. I hope you've all been having a wonderful weekend and enjoying the session so far. I want to thank you for joining us today here. Part of one of the themes of Wikimedia this year is to welcome newcomers. So we want to make this session about that as well, making it a place where newcomers to the movement, to Wikipedia, to Wikimedia can find out more about what the Board of Trustees do, what the Foundation does and their role within the movement. So we're going to start with a bit of an icebreaker chat and hopefully today's session will be informal and a bit of fun. We have some questions that may be beforehand and we may not get a chance to get to all of them. So if not, we'll be putting them on our Medi-Page so we can have a look and we'll also be having a look on the ether pads. So feel free to add anything you want to there as well. So I'm not going to hand it over to Nat. She's the chair of the board just to start things off and do some introductions over to you, Nat. Thank you. Hello, everyone. So my name is Natalia and I am a chair of the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. I have been on the board since 2016 and I come from Ukraine. Currently I'm at a refugee in Israel and I favorite snack are the things that you can easily eat and I don't know watching TV or something would be condensed milk, but it's not very local. So I guess my choice for this would be syrnicum which really goes well with condensed milk and a cup of water. Unfortunately there is not a English Wikipedia article so it is Spanish. And Lorenzo. Hello, I'm Lorenzo from Italy. I have been in the Wikimedia community for a long time, over 15 years, but I've been on the board just for one year now. And I live in Italy and I'm now in Ezinoladiot, a place which hosted Wikimedia six years ago into 2016. My favorite drink of snack is difficult to pick one because there are many things I like, but for that today I will show the Wikimedia, Wikimedia biscuits that were made six years ago and they made a new edition for the anniversary of the year. Thank you. Who wants to connect? Rosie? Hi everyone, I'm Rosie Stevenson, good night. I live in California, but today I'm coming to you from a hotel in Brooklyn, New York City where I'm drinking my favorite drink, coffee. As for a favorite snack, it's got to be chocolate with nuts. I don't have any here with me, but that's what I like best. I've been on the board for almost a year now and I've been a Wikimedia for just over 15 years. Over to you, Victoria. Hello, my name is Victoria. I am originally from Belarus, which is between Ukraine and Lithuania, but now I live in the UK. I've been in the world for 15 years as well and I was elected in 2021 alongside with Lorenzo and Rosie. My favorite drink is Kifir. This is the Polish version, which I buy in the shop in the UK called Lankan. And my favorite snack is chocolate as well. Thank you. Lots of chocolate fans. Shani? Yeah, it's a good company of people who are liking chocolate. Hi, everyone. My name is Shani Evgenstein-Sigalov. I'm also in Israel and I've been on the board for three years now. I like Rosie. I'm with my coffee and some owls. And I would say my favorite snack is salted caramel, which is similar to the condensed milk, but better, much better. Lovely, we've got some sweet tooth here. Daria's? Daria Shimelnik, I'm originally from Poland. Currently, I'm in Moros in Spain. Apologies, my connection drops so fast. I'm connected to my mobile. My favorite snack since we came in here in Mexico is Mexican food. I love everything spicy, but I also drink Kifir every day, so we're great minds think alike. Fantastic. Ezra? Hey, everyone. My name is Ezra. I'm from Bahrain. Been on the board for five years since 2017, shortly after Wikimania Montreal. And my favorite snack is marmol. And these are semolina flour cookies filled with date paste in the center. And you can add nuts. Usually people add pistachio or walnuts are popular options. And you typically enjoy any sweets with very strong Arabic coffee, as you call it. All signs delicious. I think that's all the board members we have. I hope that's making you all hungry, thirsty, nice to get to know what people enjoy just to keep going. Let us know in the chat where you're from, what your favorite snack from your local culture or just what your favorite snack and drink are. And in the meantime, while you're doing that, we're going to play you a short video just showcasing a bit about who the board are and what they do. When I see this formal question, what is the ontological meaning of board? And how does it fit with the existential meaning of life? But how does it work? The main role of the board is to guide the organization. Directs the foundation, hires the CEO. Figure out people issues, to make sure the foundation stays on the foundation. To hold its management accountable. The financials that support it are sound and are sustainable. Board is not the management of the foundation. The typical approach is, our noses are in, our fingers are out. As the CEO, I work very clearly with the board of trustees that helps us ensure that we fulfill the mission and the mission of Wikimedia. I was asked by the community to represent it on the board. I always say yes when people ask me to do something. To me, it's the highest way of serving a community in an organization that I align with so much. Learning from professionals, to professionals in the world. Say it again, with the same energy. It was inspiring, but slower. Everyone that I've met, all the relationships I've built, community with many different aspects and facets. The people that I get the opportunity to work alongside with, literally in every corner of the world. I wanted to be a part of the board because I felt it is important to bring in human rights expertise and the challenges that come with making knowledge accessible in countries where censorship is the norm. Oh, look at that! We have the good guys and the good gals. Wikimedia today, it really is part of the infrastructure of the world. We need talent. We need people who spread ideas. We need community members from underrepresented populations. So if there are people who are willing to put forth their talent, then they are welcome. Thank you for that. And if anybody wants to speak again, I've just put a link in the chat. So now I'm going to hand it back to Nat. Bo is busy, so she's going to recap a bit of what they've been up to over the past year for you. Thank you. So as you've seen from the video, the board is actually responsible for the bigger strategic staff and also for some bigger issues, kind of like a framework. Not really some management day-to-day operational things, which are usually the things that our community members are also interested in. So out of the things that we did this year, our crowning achievement was improving the annual plan of Wikimedia Foundation for this fiscal year. And you can look at it in the chat, I think that somebody is going to drop a line to the meta page. And I would say that that would be the biggest achievement this year. We are going to, and also if it was the first time I met in person after like two years meeting each other online or not meeting at all this March in New York, which was like kickoff or other in-person events happening in the mood as well. And then we're going to have our next board meeting for the PBS Summit, which happens in the room this year, in September. And we are going to talk about universal code conduct, specialty language changes that were requested by the community members. I would say that that would be the biggest response. Thank you, Nat. And I'm sure people are wondering, who's your lovely little friend on your shoulder with us today? Yeah, I forgot to introduce him. So Wikimedia movement is not only about fighting wars and editing and serious endeavour strength to stay very neutral in very, I would say, challenging times. It's also about cuteness. So this is Konkunchik, the representative from the Canadian Fitness Association, and he's travelling with me since 2015, Wikimedia in Mexico, as Dario has brought up a topic about spicy food. Konkunchik was my travel companion since that Wikimedia ever after. And yeah, so he's also trying to cutify the movement just as well as his brothers and sisters. Amazing. Thank you for introducing us. So we're going to move on now just to some questions and answers. We've had some that have been submitted before. And like I mentioned earlier, we're trying to keep a focus on how to link because there's a bit more about what the board does, a bit more about them. And any questions that we don't get to, we will either have a look in the ether pad or over on meta as well. So time to get in and get to know people a bit more. And I'm going to start with Rosie. So Rosie, tell us what skill or talent or area of expertise you think you bring to your role that you had no idea would actually be a useful thing as part of your work here. Well, thanks for the question, Lisa. I think I'm going to talk about this. In the last 15 years or so of a very long career, my work focused on what we would call talent and culture. To be successful in that field requires education and experience, for example, to develop an ethics perspective unique to this kind of work. But it also requires a combination of abilities and skills and knowledge, things like empathy on one hand and confidence on the other, networking and multitasking, good listening skills, good communication skills, good relationship building skills, critical thinking, big picture thinking. Now that I sit on the board, faculty's background is especially useful during conversations related to human resources broadly construed. When I first joined the board, I thought that the most important background I brought with me was the perspective of being a veteran with comedian. And also my deep commitment to the 2030 movement strategy that I've been pleasantly surprised to find that this professional background that I have is also quite useful in my service on the board. Thank you, Rosie. So next, I'm going to call upon Darius. And a question for you is, how can the foundation go about building a diverse board, both in terms of experience, but also background? This question we're asking ourselves all the time. First of all, we need to understand what we understand by diversity. And I think personally, I think there is a pitfall to avoid it. And the pitfall to avoid is just following the cultural standards both by the US. For instance, the notions of race in the United States are very different from elsewhere. And just to use an example that I'm more familiar with, Untermensch was a very important race category in Europe with ramifications even for the current day, while the skin color less so around here. And there are many other examples from other countries. So I think the United States approach is very useful, but there are no notions of case. The social classes are interpreted differently, considered less important, and so on and so forth. So especially if we look at the experience we're looking for as well, we need to be very specific about knowing what do we want? Is experience from other boards with budgets over $10 billion crucial or is it just important? Is understanding open source, open knowledge crucial or just useful? Are we seeking experts, world-class experts even, whatever field they're working? Are we willing to compromise this skill if other important books are thick like community experience or the diversity we're looking for? We have to put a lot of emphasis on, we have historically put a lot of emphasis on gender, but I think the truth is that so far the WMF Board has been luckily exemplary in terms of gender balance for the years, but much less so, for example, in terms of age balance. So we need to be very careful about this. We need to think how should we treat geographical diversity as a region or should we consider socioeconomic status so we should get set there. Let's give you an example, should the jet center from Singapore be considered by default a better sitting country than a minor from Moldova because we prioritize Asia and the private race Europe. It's a very tough approach. I think there are many approaches to this, but luckily enough we're working hard to make it sensible. These are the questions that are really intensely debated within the governance committee. We're hoping to have some knowledge driven conversations in the future, maybe incorporating some existing indexes, measures, and we also hope of course to bring these conversations back to the community to have something sensible and stable to work on. Thank you, that was a really interesting answer. I'm just gonna remind everyone speaking today we've got some amazing translators listening to us all. So we all just need to remember to speak slowly for them, they're doing a great job for everybody listening in different languages. Lorenzo, I'm sure there's lots of surprises being part of the board. Anything weird or wonderful or very interesting topics you've come across that you were surprised as you ended up kind of dealing with? Yeah, many of the things I've seen what I expected, but one thing that pops to my mind that was totally unexpected came from my first board meeting in September, 2021. Actually at the time I was not even appointed as a board member, I was just an observer. And there was a presentation about the human light impact assessment which was recently completed. And there were general presentation, introduction and other general stuff, but also some few specific cases. And one of the first slide talked about something like the impact of the Taliban taking Kabul on Wikipedia and Wikimedia. And yeah, I can't go into the detail of the issue here because there's a bit of a sense, but the point is I'm not used to thinking that the Taliban's taking Kabul is my problem. I know that it is a problem. I know that it's a very important issue globally, but I'm not used to think that this is something I need to take into consideration in what I do. But it actually turns out that there are consequences for the Wikimedia Foundation. And it's when doing that board meeting that was one definitely unexpected thing that made me a bit confused, let's say, on how to proceed. Thank you, Lorenzo. I'm going to read one to Ezra. Obviously it's been a great couple of days listening to loads of different thematic topics, loads of different things, loads of issues. Ezra, what would you say is one of the most pressing kind of issues or things for the movement at the moment that the board should be thinking about? Thanks for that question. For me, the most pressing issue is the constantly changing and sometimes worsening political climates around the world. We have an ongoing battle with censorship, threats to members of our movement, state-sponsored surveillance that's often enabled and normalized by corporate greed. We have massive human rights abuses taking place in countries that we have solid memberships in and contributions from or places that we'd really love to grow. The amount of funding that is going towards propaganda and disinformation campaigns that unfortunately cannot be tackled with mere technology, climate change that would impact the way we approach things like data centers and just overall concern about the state of the world. These are external things and factors that we can't always foresee or control or effectively prepare for in advance, but it does force us to keep our heads on the ground and constantly iterate our path to either bypass or address these major political, social and environmental concerns. Thank you, Ezra. I'm going to hand over now to Shani. So the question for you is when you joined the board, what was the thing you were most looking forward to doing when you first joined? Oh, that's actually an easy one. Some people got a tough one. So mine is easy because for me it was about serving the movement. It's as easy as that, right? I have been in the movement since 2011, so I actually joined in Wikimania Haifa. That was my first Wikimania and first encounter with the whole movement. And during these three days, I got completely hooked. I joined that day Wikimedia Israel and I started to learn how to edit. And I can literally say that it has changed my life, right? It has infiltrated every aspect of it. It's just there are no bounds. It's part of what I do now academically as well. It's part of my research and I've been involved in so much outreach work. And as a volunteer, I felt that there are some things that were bothering me that were not getting fixed. So I was really looking forward to being on the board so I can be in a position to actually do something about it and try to hopefully change things for the better. And I think one of the key areas that have been on my mind a lot is that I felt this type of divide between the volunteers doing the grass root work on doing editing, doing projects, et cetera, and the foundation. And I really wanted to, and affiliates of course. So like three different, almost detached entities in the movement not really working together. So I was looking forward to doing things to improve that. And I'm happy that I was able to be supported by the rest of the board. And we formed a community affairs committee and that became something that we invest in. Just improving the relationships between the different entities, the different stakeholders has been very important to me. And also technological work that is key to what we do and in order to serve humanity. So just being on the board has allowed me to collaborate to the highest level and just do that work and serve the movement that I love so much. So that's been a privilege. Thank you for allowing me to do that. Thank you, Shani. Natty's our chair of the board. Nat, I'm gonna ask you maybe just to explain, especially for newcomers, what the role of the chair is just in kind of day-to-day terms and the areas of things that you might look after. Thank you. So, first of all, it's really a lot of boring stuff, like approving expense reports of the trustees, signing some contracts and the chair of the board is also a budget holder and so forth and so on and so forth. The chair also builds a draft of the agenda and that's basically the only real superpower that the chair has that's building the agenda inviting people to meetings and steering the work of the board overall, trying to create conditions for the board to be able to work productively. And so it also involves some bits of logistics and some ceremonial stuff. I can say that the things that I enjoy most about the chair is actually being able to support people in their personal roles. I would be like one of the first points, contacts, or at least at the point of approving things for people to be able to become better at what they do. So the board work better and expertise and these don't also stick to the privatization of the board. Thank you Nat. So last but not least, I think we have Victoria. Would you be able to tell us what a day in the life of a board member looks like or maybe a day in the life of your life as a board member? A day in my life. First of all, we are all volunteers we're not paid to do the board work. So whatever is left of the board member is I need to fit it around my work. Therefore, when I come to work in the morning I check my work email and then if I don't have anything pressing I check the board email. I'm in New York and most of the stuff in the US. So sometimes I have several emails that came while I was sleeping. Then when I have lunchtime I reply to emails. Sometimes there are documents to edit. Sometimes we have online meetings during the day but it's relatively unfrequently. So the board is divided into committees which work on various aspects of the Ritminya Foundation and movement. Shanee already mentioned the community affairs committee. I am on that committee and several others. So sometimes we have a committee meeting and for me it would be in the evening. And then also a lot of things trying to organize because we're in different time zones, a lot of polls when I will be available when everybody will be available and things like that. So in general it's like a life of any Wikimedian. You feed it around your normal life and sometimes nothing happens and sometimes something suddenly happens and you are required to reply. So we also have several messengers and I always check what's happening in the board chat. That's the life of a trustee. Great, thank you so much. So we have a little bit of time left and I'm wondering if there's anybody within just the audience here, if they've got any questions that they'd like to put out there and then some of the trustees can pick them up and we can take a look at the etherpad as well but anybody from the audience here today that wants to add anything in the chat, newcomers especially. Dig around, find out a bit more, what else you want to find out about what the board does and maybe while we're looking at that, Mayor would you be able to post in the chat just the etherpad question so that the board members can have a look and then have a look at answering that and anybody else if you walk away from this later on and think, oh, I have a question, why did I not think about that at the time? Please ask in the etherpad or you can put it on the meta page. So Mayor is saying there's a question in the chat about a specific edit on one of our projects. Let's go back and see if we can find it. Mayor, can you repost it, let's have a look or has anybody else spotted it? Sorry, I think that actually has a direct response to it. It's just a specific edit. Go for it, Nat. Yeah, actually, it's not about that question, it's about the questions overall in the chat. The board is a collective body, so we all individually as not even board members but individuals can have thoughts or can have positions on some issues, but before the board actually has a position. We need to convene, we need to discuss and we need to come to a position. That's why these kind of questions which are not directed at the board actually does or what the board as a collective body has already discussed and decided on a position it stands on, we can't answer. I mean, as individually you can ask us somewhere, I don't know, doing some events, what is the other thoughts on this or that on everything, but as regarding those questions that we haven't discussed or we don't know and if there are any positions then they would be listed publicly and shared. That is actually a question in the chat about the board's elections, whether we like them and whether it is stressful for candidates. I've been a candidate twice and I can tell you that the candidate is really stressful. It is also stressful a bit for the board because governance committees take part in the organizing and then manage different kind of parts before handing in all of the elections to actually run the kind of operational part of the elections. And just like running any event or any thing that is happening, it's difficult. Blushes are happening. So yeah, I'm not going to take any questions. It kind of wants to chime in and add. So there's another question. I think elections, sorry, just wanted to add to what Nat said that the elections are definitely a very exhaustive and stressful process but people who cannot stand the stress will come for a great surprise if they are elected because being on the board is much more stressful on occasion. So there's that. But of course, we need to make the process better to get better candidates. This is the goal, not necessarily making it nicest for people who are running but selecting people who will serve best. Hopefully also making it a little nicer. For sure, thank you, Tarius. There's a question that says, how can we as a movement do better about creating leadership opportunities in affiliates or other organizations to build better skill sets of working mediums so that I suppose then it's like a stepping stone that they can then be more prepared to become a member of the board. So how do we kind of encourage people to move their way up through different organizations? Maybe Tarius would like to answer that as a chair of the governance committee. Sure, I mean, we're working on a couple of fronts. First of all, we want to increase diversity. We need to increase the, well, maybe not increase the quality of the candidates but try to make the process such that the quality is a priority. We need to reach out to the affiliates. So we're trying to handle quite a number of things. And I'm not sure if we can do it all together at the same time, but if you look at the past elections I think there's already progress towards the goal of being a little more inclusive, more meritocratic and also to be reaching out to people who are not necessarily, we used not to be necessarily in the typical pool of candidates. We are increasing diversity in this sense at the very least. So I think we'll work on it but the only thing I can say is that it's a process. It's a journey we're doing our best we're meeting regularly every couple of weeks trying to discuss this and we're bringing it back to the community as well. So the only thing I can say is bear with us if you have any ideas, please come forward. We love to hear from you and we love good ideas of how things should be run. We cannot make promises to accept all of it but we definitely will consider an essential proposal that is sent. Thank you Darius. And just to touch on something that Nat said earlier she has run twice now. She obviously loves being part of it so much. Maybe some of the other board members could just tell us just even in a simple sentence what actually made you run for election. So Rosie I'm going to pick on you first. The short answer is I thought it was my turn. I thought it was my turn to try to be appointed to the board and make a difference. I felt like I had so many years within this movement where I got to enjoy being a comedian and see things in different perspectives, different communities that I'm a part of and I felt like like I said it was just my turn to try to sit on the board offer my perspective and try to make a difference. Thank you Rosie. Ezra what was the drive factor for you? For me I gave a keynote with Mania and after that I was approached by the chair at the time asking if there would be interest and of course I was very concerned as somebody who was not traditionally would be considered a Wikimedian. So that was one thing that gave me pause. I was wondering if I would be the right fit but the idea was that somebody like myself with human rights expertise who may not already be part of the movement what would make me join is the values that I shared with the foundation in terms of access to information, access to knowledge as a human right. And that's what made me want to join and help build the movement from within and understand it was definitely a huge learning curve for me but it also made me understand how somebody who may not be a part of this movement already become a part of it and how easy it is actually to be a part of it even though from the outside you may look very intimidating considering the many people that we have in the movement with 15 years plus expertise as a community but for us to reach our goals towards diversity and genuine representation as a global community this is really what sparked my interest in coming a part of the board. Thank you and it's great to hear the different ways that people have kind of accessed it. Shani, what about you? What was your one thing that said I have to do this now? I've actually mentioned that before but I can say that being asked by my community to run has been really important. In the first time that I ran in 2019 it was a different election process it was through affiliates and we had quite a change back then of allowing user groups all affiliates actually to vote for the first time. So that was a really huge change that the previous board brought about and that is how I got to be there. I've been heavily involved in all types of affiliates and from chapters to user groups to a thorgs and involved in governance. So that kind of made sense for me this election is very different and it's an iterative process. Let's just say it like this and we keep working on changing and finding the right way to do it. It's not a perfect bulletproof process just yet. Thanks Shani. Lorenzo, what about yourself? What made you get up and join? At that specific point of time it was the most useful thing I could do for the Wikimedia movement. It was not like that before. I mean it's specific of the time but that was the overall thought. Great, thanks Lorenzo. And Victoria, what about yourself? As I said in this video it was asked by Russian Wikipedia community where I'm from but I also want to answer to the question which was asked in chat and it's connected to it. If the elections, board elections are like and admin elections. I would say that it's a bit like that because people ask questions of you but if I compare it with elections in Russian Wikipedia then there is a procedure which was hardly changed from 2006 and people can look at past answers and see what will be happening. Here with the board election, it's a mess. I will not deny that it's a mess and it was a mess in 2021. And it happens because there is no body, there is not one body responsible for the election but there are at least three bodies. The first one is the board. On the board we have election task force of which I remember, so I'm responsible for that as well. And the movement changes and the movement even in 2014 is not the same as it's now. So we try and again it was a question in the chat. We try to find people that needed on the board right now diversity in everything and that's why the procedure changed and probably too much. So this is one group, the board that will have election committee who are re-comedians selected by the board to run the election itself and make tactical decisions. And again, they're all volunteers and they're spread around the time zones and there are consequences of COVID and whatever. And then we have staff that is again spread all around the world which is working on the election and there is technical staff and in different departments and they interact with us, the board and with the community election. And at the end of it, you don't have one single person that is responsible for everything, different people responsible for different projects. And that's why you have what we have. Things change at the last moment and not all people know about the changes and the poor candidates are at the end of it. I'm very sorry for them because it's a difficult process. It's not like one community is asking you questions and lots of communities. And many of them, it's not the first language. For me, for example, it's not the first language but it's a cognitive weight. So the short answer would be it's much more difficult than an admin election. But if you come through it, then you're prepared for the board that does a lot of work. Thank you, Victoria. Well, it's really good to hear the different diverse backgrounds you're all from, the different kinds of points of entry, ways that you come in, different encouragements. So I think that gives a really good flavor of how diverse the board is and all your different backgrounds and hopefully encourages people to think more about getting involved with the board in the future perhaps as well. We're going to wrap things up now. So I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who joined us today. If you have further questions, please do put them on the ether pads and we'll be getting ready to answer them in the next few days. This session will also be on YouTube and Commons in the next week or so, so feel free to share and watch back. And I'm just going to hand over to Nat just to say goodbye to you all. And here I'm practically illustrating how one of the chair's responsibilities is being done, ceremonial staff are thanking you all for attending and spending some time with us and for your questions and see you around. Thank you everyone. Bye.