Ray Saintonge wrote:
Robert Horning wrote:
I guess I just don't see the point to all of this anyway or why this thread has brought out the attitudes that this has. We are a very diverse group of people all working together, where I, as an American living in rural America in the heart of the Rocky Mountains have nearly daily conversations with people from Poland, the UK, and South Africa on collaborative writing projects. Often I don't even know the nationality of the people that I am working with, or even what continent of the world they are really at when I am having these discussions. I fail to see why this particular position as a Volunteer Coordinator would have to be any different in this regard.
Sure. Why would it not then be acceptable that the volunteer co-ordinator from any of these countries? If the person is unable to secure the needed visas to work at the U.S. headquarters that should not be an impediment to getting the job.
Ec
Besides the rest of this reply being part of a flame war (I apologize having started that), I think the above part is a very valid question that does need to be answered. I don't see any really strong reason why this position has to be an American any more than anything else, although there may be a perception of having to be somebody at the "headquarters" of the WMF, where ever that might be.
Part of this is more what the job duties of this position is going to be. The extent that a position like this could be done through telecommuting is something that perhaps ought to be discussed, although as originally envisioned there was to be somebody who could "answer the phones" for the WMF in regards to this being a "staff" member in the office. But at the same time there are several Wikimedia users who are very tech savvy and might even be able to have even conventional land-line telephone calls re-routed to practically anywhere in the world that has a reasonably high speed network link. The normal concept of a traditional office is really something that would at best be an interface to those older more established bureaucracies who can't conceive of anything different.
There are problems with telecommuting, but from my experience in being involved with telecommuting employees is that the "remote" employee only gets into trouble when a new boss takes over that simply doesn't understand the idea in the first place. I spent nearly four years working with a software development team that was located across 3 different states simultaneously working on the very same software application. It is something that can be done and is done quite successfully.
There is no reason for the Wikimedia Foundation, which already is noted for pushing "leading edge" software technologies and being a very visible with new ways of working with content creation, to have to stick with the traditional view of a business office and "headquarters". This sort of telecommuting shouldn't be necessarily more expensive than having an employee in St. Petersburg, Florida, otherwise it isn't worth doing. But even trying to establish a position like this even in a formal business office is still going to require some substantial overhead above and beyond the salary of this individual.
-- Robert Horning