Communication is key

News and notes

Communication is key

Communications appointments

Heather Walls, new Chief Creative Officer

The Wikimedia Foundation has made two new leadership appointments in its Communications department. Heather Walls, interim Chief of Communications, will become the Chief Creative Officer, a newly created position.

[Walls will have] responsibility for the Communications department operations, and a mandate that focuses on helping people better understand our values and mission through our brand. She will oversee the organization and movement’s voice, tone, and visual assets, and how they are incorporated into everything from our recent awareness videos to our press statements.
— Executive Director Katherine Maher

Kui Kinyanjui will take on the position of Vice President of Communications, in charge of both traditional and digital communications, and will report directly to the Chief Creative Officer. Kinyanjui will take up her new position in early March, working remotely from Nairobi, Kenya.

Further information is available in Executive Director Katherine Maher's post on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.

Mapping community capacity

The WMF's Community Resources team has started an experimental Community Capacity Map (CCM). The page presents self-assessments of capacities of Wikimedia communities in a variety of fields, such as communications and media relations, community health, and technical skills.

How many Wikimedia communities have embraced advanced Wikidata use? How many have active social media accounts? Which groups have a written, current strategy? What are the most common gaps in capacity in Latin America? or in Eastern Europe? What kind of investment in capacity building would be likely to bring the most value?
— Meta:Community Capacity Map/About

The CCM aims to track these capacities over time, and help identify areas that need improvements – not only for the community groups themselves, but also independent experts, volunteers, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Further information is available on Meta.

Brief notes

New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this week's newest Wikimedia movement affiliate, the Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana.
New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, Joe Roe and Muboshgu.
Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones recently: Marathi Wikipedia: 50,000 articles (22 December); Serbian Wikipedia: 500,000 articles (14 January).
Reports: The MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group's 2017 Annual Report and the 2017 WikidataCon Report have been published.

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16 January 2018 (all comments)

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We have a brand? Ouch. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 22:03, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of course first I read our article Chief creative officer. The list of examples there is heavy on entertainment, whereas I'd expect a more typical corporate title to be Chief communications officer. So this sends a subtle message; is it intentional? Is WP an entertainment company? But this also stood out: the people in the CCO role are known heavyweights and even figureheads for a particular set of intellectual property – for example John Lasseter for Pixar and Joe Quesada for Marvel. In these two examples they are creators of a great deal of the company's property in their own right. The recent appointee at WMF is an unknown to me and I spend, ahem, a lot of time here. So I'd like to know more about what that's all about. I'd also like to hear where the WP content contributors stand in their vision of stakeholder groups. Is the chief creative officer interested in hearing from the creators? I'm here. Hello? ☆ Bri (talk) 03:23, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's been my experience that tech-centric nonprofits like this tend to let people create their own job titles; it's one of the perqs, or rather one of the bits of leeway for doing nonprofit work at nonprofit salaries when people could be making more money in the commercial sector. As long as the job title makes some kind of sense, no one should get too bent out of shape about it. "Chief communications office" is a corporate title, and not all that often found in nonprofits. ("Communications director" is the more frequent NGO equivalent; I've had both titles in my time, for the same work, and the only real difference was that one of the nonprofits I worked for was led by someone who really liked corporate-ish titles and the other by someone who let us design our own business cards, as long as the work got done.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What's the over–under on this CCO surviving the ExecDir's tenure? Chris Troutman (talk) 04:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ms. Walls, who designed the early zen-inspired look and feel of the WP:TEAHOUSE back in 2012 (and who bears striking resemblance to actress Nicole Kidman) seems to have an infinite capacity for expressing calmness while within storms, and should easily survive that tenure. Spintendo 17:33, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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