Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-07-27/Board elections/Brady Brim-DeForest

How did you become involved with the Wikimedia community? What contributions are you most proud of?

My interest in the Wikimedia community was sparked in late 2004 when I noticed university policy being created to address the use of Wikipedia citations in research papers and thesis. I started editing casually and then found myself captivated by the vision of a set of tools and resources created to collect all of the world's information. My proudest contribution has been the hundreds of individual researches, authors, and journalists that I have hand recruited to contribute their expertise to the Wikimedia Projects.

What do you see as the role of the Board of Trustees?

The Board of Trustees has the ultimate obligation to be the voice of the community, to safeguard the incredible resource of knowledge that has been collected, and to ensure its solvency and sustainability for future generations.

If elected, what would you bring to the board that it currently lacks?

What specific goals would you have as a trustee?

As a Trustee, I will be an advocate of open, transparent dialogue with the community and will strive to serve as both its voice and its messenger. Specifically, I will:

Plan for the long-term viability of the Wikimedia projects through establishment of an endowment that doesn't compromise the independence of the organization.
Encourage Wikimedia's adoption of open standards for interoperability, ensuring its continued role as the hub of the open knowledge ecosystem.
Fight to protect the neutrality of the internet to ensure that the efforts of the Wikimedia community pay long-term dividends and are preserved for future generations.

The Wikimedia Foundation is beginning an organized effort at strategic planning, in which the board will play a major role. What are the key elements you would like to see prioritized in Wikimedia's strategy for the coming years?

What do you think the Wikimedia Foundation isn't doing that it should be? What is it doing that it shouldn't be?

The English Wikipedia community is increasingly concerned with questions of project governance: who has authority to set and reshape policy, and who should?; how can a project so large, with so diverse a community, make collective decisions?; does consensus scale, or will some form of democracy be necessary to address the project's problems?; and many others. What role, if any, do you think the Board of Trustees can or should play in addressing governance and policy problems on individual projects?

Wikimedia's partnerships with outside organizations--including for-profit companies like Kaltura and Orange as well as non-profits and public institutions like Mozilla Foundation and various archives and museums--have becoming increasingly prominent. What sorts of partnerships should and shouldn't the Foundation pursue?

Over the last three years, the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation has expanded rapidly, with a budget growing from $3.0 million in fiscal year 2007-2008 to a planned $9.4 million in 2009-2010. What strategy should the Board of Trustees pursue in planning for future financial growth? What is your view of the current financial plan?

I believe that it is imperative that a robust, long-term financial plan be implemented for the Foundation, one that underscores the importance of the sustainability and longevity of the project's efforts. To this end, I believe that a sizable endowment, on scale with that of a mid-tier private university, should be raised.

What role would you like the board to play in fostering the initiation, growth and viability of local Wikimedia Chapters? What role do chapters play in your strategic vision for Wikimedia?

How does the Wikimedia Advisory Board fit into your strategic vision for Wikimedia? Are there any specific tasks you would ask of them as a trustee? Are there critical areas of expertise that are not represented on the Advisory Board and you think should be?