Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Conversations/Topic panels/Topic panel: Skills for board work/Report

2021-03-12 Topic panel: Skills for board work on the Call for Feedback

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  • The conversation ran on Friday, March 12, 18:00 UTC to 19:30 UTC
  • Number of participants : 53

Summary

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Watch on Youtube the part 1
Recording of the panel portion of the topic panel.

The panel session covered many things that were mentioned before during the Call for Feedback:

  • Community experience is important.
  • Diversity is important.
  • Some skills may be needed to make sure the Board is functional and efficient.
  • The Evaluation form is still a point of curiosity - no one really knows how it will work in practice.
  • Not having skills may be a good thing too because an outside perspective can be helpful to identify missed items.
  • People from the community can vote and endorse the skills they see as important (sort of like the community wishlist)



Etherpad notes

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Watch on Youtube the part 2
Recording of the open mic portion of the topic panel.

Copy from https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work / Version 1466 Saved March 13, 2021


Skills for Board work Main meta page for the discussion: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/Topic_panels/Topic_panel:_Skills_for_board_work

Number of attendees: 53

Panel Mykola Kozlenko (Ukraine), Wikimedia Ukraine board vice-chair and member of Project Grants Committee Lisa Lewin (USA), a chair of the Board Governance Committee Bobby Shabangu (South Africa), Wikimedia South Africa Houcemeddine Turki (Tunisia), proponent of Specialization seats Natacha Rault (Switzerland) Wikimedia France and les sans pagEs

Mallikarjunasj: Mr H Turki said it best; field-knowledge trumps everything else, ...

Q from Mel: is there / can we create a summary of the skills and characteristics represented in our current board? Bigger Concept: Gap analysis between what characteristics are already represented and what are missing. Each board member can self assess on whichever list of charactertics are important. >> leads to global recruiting of people who could bring the missing pieces. Willing candidates can self assess using the same list and post that when they announce their interest in being a candidate. sports metaphor: who do we need on the 16-player team (a team working toward the future of all human knowledge). We need a balanced team, not 16 goalies.

Question for Lisa: I am curious if you are hearing anything new on board skills for the Foundation in the past month? Because I think that the goals that you state for the board (diversity on all levels, good team dynamics and base skillset for every board member) have been known for worked for in the past 15 years… but what are your thoughts on achieving these goals?

Mallikarjunasj: I heard tech/people/board skills will be needed for Board Position.... Any plans to put people from Languages/COmmunities which are on verge on extinction on the Board..?

Thank you Fae, This reply is very heartening, .. ==> Fae VH

12:12 AM Some affiliates have non-voting board members to fill skill gaps, such as legal or financial experience. The same could apply to benefit from input from various minority group representatives, even if not at every board meeting. This also addresses Lisa's point about balancing a board.

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approving_Trustee_Evaluation_Form

Are skills important or is having a fresh set of eyes to see things from a different perspective?

Evaluation of Board members - personal self-reflection done but is that transparent? Can the Board be reflective publicly about their own performance? Can people discuss the performance of Board members who are up for re-election? That would be awkward.

How can we use the evaluation form? It is useless because no one can have all these skills.

People from the community can vote and endorse the skills they see as important (sort of like the community tech wishlist)

Worry about unchecked “free speech” where harassment will continue. Community member is afraid of having “free speech” advocates fight it out, people leave, and the contributors leave. The people coming from underprivileged communities are suffering and experimenting harassment (LGBT+, women, afro descendant people, trans and non binary persons). We need people with a vision and a will to stop harassment and micro aggressions otherwise because of the hacking culture (cf book "Hacking diversity" states the Ann Rand libertarian philosophy of letting competition select the stronger, without taking into consideration that it eliminates all the weaker who do have a potential to learn that is not being taken into account). Wiki would not exist if it is only the white, American men making 20% salary more than women, have more time for unpaid volunteering.

There is a gap between the well assessed top skills whereas the "diversity" criteria are not detailed as "intersectional skills" but just tagging a label of representation. This differentiates them. I see no mention of CoC and anti harassment skills and experience in the detailed skills Contribution should differentiate between actual contribution on the wikis and participation in a chapter (there are many persons evolving around chapters who are remote from the contributing world, just as the WMF sometimes is)

Perhaps people are elected but then they will not be reelected. But maybe this would be a risk to reelect someone if there is a required skill seat - that might mean they get reelected without community support.

Chat log

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Jackie Koerner 11:53 AM Please join in taking notes https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Mohammed Bachounda 11:55 AM mozart

Mohammed Bachounda 11:56 AM مرحبا

Nanour Garabedian 11:57 AM مراحب‎

Jackie Koerner 11:57 AM https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Jan-Bart de Vreede 11:58 AM HI richard

Jackie Koerner 11:59 AM https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Houcemeddine Turki 11:59 AM Hello Richard

Hello Nanour Quim Gil 11:59 AM I don't miss so much commuting

Nanour Garabedian 11:59 AM Hello Turki Hi everyone

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:00 PM yeah, it sbeen a year at home now... my office has been open for three weeks in that period... went there once

sandra hanbo 12:00 PM Hello All

Jackie Koerner 12:00 PM https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:00 PM Hey Florence! fancy seeing you here ;)

Andrew Lih 12:01 PM Hi JB!

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:01 PM Hey Andrew

Ravan Al-Taie 12:01 PM What a lovely group of people :)

sandra hanbo 12:01 PM Thanks Ravan :)

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:02 PM right back at you Raven :) Ravan! sorry for typo Hi Lisa

Ravan Al-Taie 12:02 PM That's totally fine :)

Lisa Lewin 12:02 PM Hello!!!

Florencia Claes 12:02 PM hola!

Adel Nehaoua 12:02 PM Bonsoir

Fae VH 12:03 PM Remember you can turn on autocaptions in meet if easier to follow.

Jackie Koerner 12:03 PM https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Mallikarjuna J 12:03 PM Good Morning... Mallikarjuna from Kannada Wiki, India

sandra hanbo 12:03 PM Welcom Malikarjuna Welcome* sorry

Ravan Al-Taie 12:05 PM Welcome everyone

Mehrdad Pourzaki 12:05 PM Hi all, this is amazing

Lisa Lewin 12:05 PM Apologies in advance that I can only join you until :45. I promise I'll talk fast. :)

Jackie Koerner 12:05 PM Thank you Lisa for making the time!

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:06 PM is there another current board member attending?

Quim Gil 12:06 PM Jan: maybe, but Lisa is the one that committed to attend.

Jackie Koerner 12:07 PM Here is the Etherpad link again: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Florence Devouard 12:07 PM Hey Jan-Bart my friend !

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:08 PM Hugs back Florence

Rossouw van Rooyen 12:12 PM Sawubona Bobby

Florence Devouard 12:14 PM according to the meta page, Natacha would be on the panel as well ?

Mykola Kozlenko 12:15 PM @Florenche she is supposed to, yes

Kaarel Vaidla 12:15 PM For those wondering, here is link to WISCom meta page that Houcemeddine mentioned: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Indaba_Steering_Committee

Mykola Kozlenko 12:15 PM *Florence, désolé

Quim Gil 12:15 PM Nattes is coming, yes.

Florence Devouard 12:15 PM checking on the networks....

Fae VH 12:16 PM Nattes may be unable to attend, and may not be on social networks right now.

Jackie Koerner 12:18 PM Please join us on the Etherpad https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Hamza MUHAMMED AWAL 12:22 PM Hi, I’m Muhammad Auwal Hamza from Global Open Initiative Foundation, Ghana 🇬🇭

Mahuton Possoupe 12:22 PM Welcome Nattes

Nattes à chat 12:22 PM hello sorry! my wifi went bust!

Fae VH 12:23 PM Hi Nattes!

Mohammed Bachounda 12:23 PM Salut - Nattes   :)

Mykola Kozlenko 12:23 PM salut Natacha, we are on the first question

Houcemeddine Turki 12:23 PM Hello Nattes

Nattes à chat 12:23 PM Sallut !

Jackie Koerner 12:23 PM Ack! That's so frustrating - mine goes at the worst times! Thank you for joining us.

sandra hanbo 12:26 PM Sorry for disconnected many times ..

Nattes à chat 12:27 PM hand?

Nanour Garabedian 12:28 PM Enchanté Natte

Nattes à chat 12:28 PM enchanté!

Denis Barthel 12:28 PM Nattes: there is a raise hand button down right. Press it and you raise your hand :)

Nattes à chat 12:28 PM ok thank you !

Jackie Koerner 12:29 PM Welcome! Here is the etherpad if you wish to share notes or questions there: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

- 12:32 PM If someone's hard to understand someone's speech you can try to turn on english subtitles at google meet options to read instead of hearing...

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:32 PM Question for Lisa: I am curious if you are hearing anything new on board skills for the Foundation in the past month? Because I think that the goals that you state for the board (diversity on all levels, good team dynamics and base skillset for every board member) have been known for worked for in the past 15 years… but what are your thoughts on achieving these goals?

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:34 PM and worked toward sorry :)

Jackie Koerner 12:34 PM  :) Thanks for the question!

Nattes à chat 12:36 PM we also need more onboarding and help for underrepresented peole to "campaign"

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:36 PM agreed Nattes Not really, I would hope that the community seats also have expertise (as has been the case in the past)

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:38 PM We have posted profiles for community members in the pastas well,

Nattes à chat 12:38 PM and the "potential" to grow. But I am a firm believer in quotas

anass sedrati 12:38 PM Is there a plan that the community will have a say about the appointed seats? (as the board needs to be seen as a whole)

Denis Barthel 12:40 PM Saturday 13:30 UTC "Support for candidates"  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/Topic_panels/Topic_panel:_Support_for_candidates

Chico Venancio 12:40 PM o/ to Lisa's point about bifurcation: It goes both aways, shouldn't board appointed members have the skills to understand and engage with the onwiki communities?

anass sedrati 12:40 PM +1 Chico

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:41 PM No need for anyone to respond. But to set the records straight, I was not suggesting that community seats did NOT bring specific skills to the table. I was asking what alternatives are BETTER than using the appointed seats to fill missing skills (as they are more under controlof the board)... because I agree that this is not what we want

Houcemeddine Turki 12:41 PM Chico This is just the reason of my Specialization Seat Proposal.

Mykola Kozlenko 12:42 PM +1 Chico, or in other words, I wonder if Lisa has a Wikimedia account

anass sedrati 12:42 PM for me it feels more like we put more constraints and criteria for community seats, but what about appointed ones?

Jackie Koerner 12:42 PM Hi welcome! Please join us on the etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Fae VH 12:42 PM Some affiliates have non-voting board members to fill skill gaps, such as legal or financial experience. The same could apply to benefit from input from various minority group representatives, even if not at every board meeting. This also addresses Lisa's point about balancing a board.

Mallikarjuna J 12:42 PM thank you.

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:44 PM Tip to Lisa: One obvious example of that would be to have Board members attend meetings like the SWAN Meeting where only two community members show up... it is those kind of sessions that are critical to be exposed to for a board as a whole

anass sedrati 12:44 PM If people are there to represent the community (and this is why they are there), then why do we require other skills from them? While the skill of engaging with community is not required to appointed members

Jackie Koerner 12:45 PM Hi welcome! Please join us on the etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:45 PM It takes a long period of time for a community board member to get used to being on the Boaard of Trustees.... and it takes just as long for a non-community board member to understand the dynamics of the community and the concept of community capital

Melissa Ganus 12:46 PM Inclusivity requires going beyond the borders of our current communites Thank you Lisa for all the work you are doing!

Mallikarjuna J 12:46 PM thank yu=ou typo, Thank you.

Adel Nehaoua 12:49 PM Quelles sont les critères essentielles pour le choix de spécialistes on a trop de spécialités

Quim Gil 12:49 PM There is a "Regional diversity" session on Sunday where the regional quotas are being discussed

Paulo Perneta 12:49 PM gender quotas being discussed in "regional diversity" is somewhat quaint, no? It was not obvious to me at all that they were there

Quim Gil 12:50 PM She was talking about regions and nationalism, sorry if I musinderstood.

Paulo Perneta 12:50 PM on which panel are gender quotas? I'm lost :\

Adel Nehaoua 12:50 PM A ce que il y a un besoin de spécialistes pour le conseil on peut les recruter

Quim Gil 12:50 PM It's not one of the topics covered in the four panel sessions.

anass sedrati 12:51 PM Is there a "must-have" skill that anyone being in the board need to have? What is it?

Jackie Koerner 12:51 PM We will be discussing regional quotas: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/Topic_panels/Topic_panel:_Regional_diversity

Nanour Garabedian 12:51 PM comment ?

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:51 PM Appointed board members usually serve on several other non-profit boards. That is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because we need that experience, but we also require our board members to realise that a FEW but VERY important aspects of our movement and the Foundation are radically different from all the other boards that they are active in. and that is hard to do if you think you already understand the non-profit world ;)

Fae VH 12:55 PM Paulo, I think you are correct. There do not appear to be any new opportunities to discuss non-regional diversity or minimum representation. Perhaps this is already considered closed?

Melissa Ganus 12:55 PM Must have skills include: ability to successfully collaborate with people who come from very diverse perspectives. Ability to be patient while be criticized from all sides. Ability to put all the hours in that this level of work demands - probably among the hardest work of your life.

Jackie Koerner 12:56 PM Support for candidates: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Conversations/Topic_panels/Topic_panel:_Support_for_candidates

Paulo Perneta 12:56 PM I was wondering the same, Fae, why one of the most hot topics of discussion is completely absent from the panels :\

Adel Nehaoua 12:56 PM @Melissa Ganus +1

Jan-Bart de Vreede 12:56 PM anass: i think that understanding the community aspect of our movement is essential for all board members.. .because understanding this eliminates a lot of decision options for the board as a whole. It should not take community members to have to explain this to appointed memhers... because that is the wrong dynamic and "understanding" does not require constant participation on-wiki etc...

anass sedrati 12:58 PM @Melissa - @Jan-Bart - You have mentioned important skills, but they are all on a "high level". Do you think that the BoT started this discussion because the community elected members were lacking these skills? Or are we targeting other "more advanced" skills?

Quim Gil 12:58 PM Fae, Paulo, not considered closed at all. Selection committee or vetting candidates were hot topics as well that didn't get dedicated sessions. We are organizing already four panels. There is no hidden agenda. Happy to discuss after the session ends.

Mykola Kozlenko 12:59 PM @Anass I think this is what I called 'board material'

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:00 PM Honestly I think that this discussion was started because it helps other discussions on a diverse board. I would hope that the current commmunity members who have all served on the board for several years all have the basic skills that are needed... I would hope...

Jackie Koerner 1:00 PM Hi welcome! Please join us on the etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/CfF_Skills_for_Board_work

anass sedrati 1:00 PM @Mykola - But what is it? Maybe the solution to all this would be to create a list saying "please make sure you fulfill this and then you can apply"

Fae VH 1:00 PM Nicely said Nattes.

Nattes à chat 1:00 PM no ask them quesitons around these issues:)

Paulo Perneta 1:01 PM @QuimGil but there is one entire panel on "Board - Global Council - Hubs", which is kind of weird

Melissa Ganus 1:01 PM @anass - was responding to the Q re: what are “must have skills” that I think is a “minimum requirements list” that every BoT member and candidate must be able to commit to and demonstrate

Quim Gil 1:01 PM Paulo, happy to discuss after this session as well. :)

Nattes à chat 1:01 PM skiills are not enough : we need vision and clearly stated ones

Ravan Al-Taie 1:01 PM Arabic

Mykola Kozlenko 1:01 PM @Anass basically what Melissa said : being able to collaborate with diverse people, knowing how to listen, being committed to this position

Melissa Ganus 1:01 PM It’s also something that can help people self assess - if you know you dont have the time or mental capacity to handle the criticism, then you don’t need to apply

Nattes à chat 1:01 PM great!

Paulo Perneta 1:01 PM @QuimGil it's for tomorrow...

Mehman Ibragimov 1:01 PM +russian

Houcemeddine Turki 1:02 PM Italian

Ravan Al-Taie 1:02 PM Kurdish & Arabic

Mykola Kozlenko 1:02 PM + I would add strategic reasoning

Adongo 1:02 PM hi everyone

Quim Gil 1:02 PM Paulo, happy to explain our choices, I mean.

Nattes à chat 1:02 PM +1 Mykola

Melissa Ganus 1:02 PM +1 strategic reasoning yes

Paulo Perneta 1:02 PM ok

Adel Nehaoua 1:02 PM A ce que il y a un besoin de spécialistes pour le conseil on peut les recruter

Andrew Lih 1:03 PM +1

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:04 PM and that is the example I was looking for Richard... indeeed

Fae VH 1:04 PM Good example Richard.

Houcemeddine Turki 1:04 PM La question qui se pose est comment faire ceci.

Nattes à chat 1:04 PM et bien je pense qu'on doit leur poser des quesitons leur demander de s'évaluer sur ces points de donner une vision / stratégie et demander aux communautés de prendre en compte ces aspects

Jackie Koerner 1:05 PM Link to evaluation form: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approving_Trustee_Evaluation_Form

Florencia Claes 1:05 PM I'm sorry, I have to leave. Best regards

Denis Barthel 1:05 PM Bye!

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:06 PM https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Handbook#Desirable_skills,_experience_and_traits there you go :)

Melissa Ganus 1:07 PM We have had a method for using a similar form as a combination of self assessment and group combinations - not as a screening grid that blocks candidates from coming in

Mervat Salman 1:07 PM who will use this form?

Adongo 1:08 PM i'm  am os a member of GOIF in University for DeveloPM ent Studies, Navrongo campus in Ghana

Melissa Ganus 1:09 PM How should the lists of what we want on the BoT be crafted with community involvement?  And shared with the communities so we can reach to all corners for recruiting potential candidates?

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:10 PM @quim Do I need to copy stuff from the chat into the etherpad or will this chat be a part of the record?

Quim Gil 1:10 PM chat will be part of the record  :)

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:10 PM thanks!

Paulo Perneta 1:11 PM My idea of "specialized seats" was that one as well

anass sedrati 1:12 PM Thank you for the clarification Yes you did

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:12 PM I cannot find a specific example but I am sure that the board has in the past given the community and/or affiliates specific skills which were at that time lacking in the board as a whole... so the board asked the voters to take these into account when (s)electing their board members...

Chico Venancio 1:14 PM This is a general issue with the board seats feedback, themes are very general and can be implemented in a variety of ways with very different results. I feel this makes it difficult to discuss the themes and might create a mismatch of expectations between the community and the board on the outcomes.

Mykola Kozlenko 1:14 PM @Houcemeddine I think it does (board includes affiliates)

Nanour Garabedian 1:15 PM Could you add the Form's link on the topic page please.

Quim Gil 1:16 PM Nanour, done.

Nanour Garabedian 1:16 PM Thanx

Melissa Ganus 1:17 PM This form should not be used to judge people - it should be presented instead as a list of what skills and qualities we are looking for.    INTERSECTIONALITY is Key

Adel Nehaoua 1:18 PM @Nattes à chat +1

Houcemeddine Turki 1:19 PM The idea is not to be too selective from the beginning. We will to let the community choose some of their representatives without criteria. Then, we can identify the missing criteria and skills and run a second election from the community.

Adel Nehaoua 1:19 PM je suis pour des éxigences dans certain sièges d'avoir certains compétences

Melissa Ganus 1:19 PM How can we survey as broadly as possible what qualities our stakeholders feel need to be represented within the 16 member board?  (When our stakeholders include all humans in the world)

Nanour Garabedian 1:19 PM Adel, comme quoi?

anass sedrati 1:20 PM If we add "code of conduct skill" we will have probably to add many other skills that are at the same level, as different people have different priorities and they are all legitimate

Houcemeddine Turki 1:20 PM We can do a wishlist for the criteria as Wikimedia Technology Team does every year.

Nattes à chat 1:20 PM et bien nous devons dans ce tableau mettre des compétences en termes d'inclusions de différentes langues plutot que "parler " une langue (même si je pense que la quesiton de la langue doit rester aussi)

Adel Nehaoua 1:21 PM Capacité interopérabilité entre différents communautés

Richard Knipel 1:21 PM The form would be perhaps be great for the Facebook or Google board, it doesn't fit a community-driven nonprofit process.

Nattes à chat 1:21 PM pareil pour les questions diversité il est plus important d'avoirr des personnes qui ont des compétences dans ce domaine, 'être "LGBT+ ne signifie pas qu'on est compétent sur ces quesitons tout le temps

Nanour Garabedian 1:21 PM Turki, are you talking about this one?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech#Proposal_and_prioritization_process

anass sedrati 1:22 PM أعتقد أنه من الجيد تحديد لائحة من القدرات التي تعتبر ضرورية لمن يجل أن يكون في مجلس الأمناء ونشرها على نطاق واسع‎

Nattes à chat 1:22 PM https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Approving_Trustee_Evaluation_Form

Florence Devouard 1:22 PM dans tous les cas, on ne comprend pas pourquoi ce form est apparu sachant qu il y avait tout ce processus de discussion avec la communauté

Houcemeddine Turki 1:22 PM Yes, Nanour

Adel Nehaoua 1:23 PM @anass sedrati +1 نفس السؤال طرحته سابقا‎

Mykola Kozlenko 1:23 PM +1 Natacha (compétences plutôt qu'appartenance)

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:23 PM +1 florence

Nanour Garabedian 1:23 PM يوجد الكثير من القدرات، كيف نستطيع تحديدها؟‎

Adel Nehaoua 1:23 PM مع Natacha طرحها جيد‎

Nattes à chat 1:23 PM + 1 for community emgage,ent

Melissa Ganus 1:23 PM What are the job descriptions for current board members?

Nattes à chat 1:23 PM ?

Richard Knipel 1:23 PM I think it has been several years since someone with community experience was appointed

Nattes à chat 1:24 PM can someone translate the aranbic?

Ravan Al-Taie 1:24 PM So there is a question in Arabic about that we are having a lot of skills, who and how can we define the needed ones?

Fae VH 1:24 PM The fact that one of the WMF board members objected to the evaluation form is rather telling. As Nattes said, it's not very meaningful.

Ravan Al-Taie 1:24 PM @nattes a chat

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:24 PM if you count me as having community experience in 2014, then that was the last time @richard :)

Richard Knipel 1:25 PM 7 years!

Mykola Kozlenko 1:25 PM Alice Wiegand?

Nanour Garabedian 1:25 PM we have to identify a list of capacities that we need. What Anas said

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:25 PM YEP!

Nanour Garabedian 1:25 PM correct me Anas please

Nattes à chat 1:25 PM that about being in the bull's eyes is somenthing important

Houcemeddine Turki 1:25 PM Here are the biographies: https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/board/

anass sedrati 1:25 PM Yes Nanour this is right

Adel Nehaoua 1:25 PM @Nattes à chat  j'ai répondu a une question, et l'ai répondu que votre proposition est la bonne

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:25 PM you are correct, Alice was appointed after me when she was not elected by affiliates as I recall]

Florence Devouard 1:25 PM IdSo much agree with Melissa. I do intend to discuss that tomorow on the support session :)

Nattes à chat 1:25 PM merci Adel!

Richard Knipel 1:26 PM There are also very few if any appointed board members who are not based in the US

Richard Knipel 1:27 PM Elected board members are rather more geographically diverse

Quim Gil 1:27 PM Richard, while true, Raju is from India, Esra'a is from Bahrain... All in all the appointed trustee bring a good dose of diversity themselves.

Florence Devouard 1:27 PM Richard, this is not entirely illogical. Some skills, such as financial and legal probably better come from US...

Richard Knipel 1:28 PM Some but not all :)

Nattes à chat 1:28 PM the question is more to have services supporting the board members to document them ++ 1

Quim Gil 1:28 PM Another example, Tanya Capuano's role is precisely to contribute the financial skills the BoT of a US organization is required to have.

Richard Knipel 1:29 PM All appointed board members are based in the US, that is a huge diversity problem.

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:29 PM A Wikimedia board member should also not be intimidated by all the "legal" requirements of the Foundation. It is important to follow all these requirements and to make the required decisions. But it is even more important to be able to set your OWN agenda as a board, and deal with the topics that you as a board find important. This might seem obvious, but it is really hard to set your own priorities and make room for those on the board agenda...

Nattes à chat 1:29 PM defining by skills for me is linked to somenthing that has not been diversity friendly because of the biases

Fae VH 1:29 PM Again, non-voting appointments are a common way of balancing an elected board with skill gaps.

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:30 PM Fae: I don't think you will get the best appointed members if you do not give them a vote.... they will say "no thank you"

Melissa Ganus 1:30 PM Youth is also missing from the Team !

Nattes à chat 1:30 PM ++ 1 and how do you assess the ability to learn...

Mykola Kozlenko 1:30 PM I would say this as a mix. Not having a large org experience is a skill, but not knowing how Wikipedia works is rather a disadvantage

Melissa Ganus 1:30 PM And who are we building all of this for if not the youth? Who are the youngest leaders within our communities now? How are we including them in the decision making?

Euphemia Uwandu 1:33 PM ++1@Nattes a chat

anass sedrati 1:33 PM +1 Mykola - I was more meaning the former (as in large org previous experience), but of course everyone at the board should be able to read and write for example :D

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:34 PM Mykola +1

Fae VH 1:34 PM My experience was being the person signing off the charity accounts. Having an accountant giving advice was the way to do it, not to expect me to have an accountancy qualification. May not have to be a 'seat', but an adviser, even if they are paid for that advice.

Melissa Ganus 1:34 PM A question to the panelists: (and everyone else): As we are finding and filling the open seats,  what are we most afraid of having happen? How do we avoid those mistakes?

Adel Nehaoua 1:34 PM l'évaluation peut être faite a partir l'historique du candidat et ces contributions a travers plusieurs projets

Adel Nehaoua 1:38 PM nanor لم أفهم شيء‎

Olla Mahadi 1:38 PM +1 Melissa with youth do we need to give it a quta?

Paulo Perneta 1:38 PM why 1 youth would represent the movement youth?

Nattes à chat 1:39 PM plus we have to bear in mind some people "socially and culturally " diminsh their expertise and experience

Melissa Ganus 1:39 PM @Olla - I’m not clear on how the quota concept works - I’ve been thinking of it as “age diversity”

Nanour Garabedian 1:39 PM واضح؟‎

Adel Nehaoua 1:39 PM Nanour Garabedian جيد‎

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:40 PM Nanour: does that answer work for you?

Melissa Ganus 1:40 PM o/ rising hand to ask:   A question to the panelists: (and everyone else): As we are finding and filling the open seats,  what are we most afraid of having happen? How do we avoid those mistakes?

Nanour Garabedian 1:41 PM mot really, because we are talking about less level of skills whatever the domain is

Nattes à chat 1:42 PM I would be afraid of having elected people from the communities not supporting the enf conduct and supporting unchecked "free speach"orcement of the code of

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:43 PM aha: so you are talking about a board member who really is incompetent but does get elected? @nanour

Nattes à chat 1:44 PM ++ 1

Adel Nehaoua 1:44 PM نانور هل طرحك عن صلاحية هذا المقعد وقوة قراراته ومدى فعاليتها؟‎

anass sedrati 1:44 PM @Jan Bart - what is the definition of incompetenet?

My understanding is that we are discussing about community elected members, so the only competence required (for the moment) is to be endorsed by the community, no ?

Florence Devouard 1:45 PM but if it is only 2 person am ongst > 10... this will not change the guidelines of ucoc Nat

1 person

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:46 PM @anass I was responding to Nanour :) Theoretically you are correct. But I do think that there is a base level of skills that you need to be an effective board member (along with a lot of time) and if you cannot meet those requirements you would be unsuitable... no matter how good your community "electability" is

Florence Devouard 1:46 PM the point, once a decision is reached by board, individual members should stick to the collective decision

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:46 PM florence +1

Adel Nehaoua 1:47 PM florence +1

anass sedrati 1:47 PM @Jan-bart - yes I know that there is a minimum :) My point is to make this "minimum" explicit, define it and write it somewhere so that we can move on :)

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:47 PM Anass: agreed.. and a part of that is in the board manual

Nattes à chat 1:48 PM yup florence but the fact is this "free speech paradigm" stems from the begining of not accepting regulation and letting an invisible hand chosse who is elected to make the rules (I'm speaking from a wikipedian point of view)

Quim Gil 1:48 PM "The community vision" can be very different for different community members though.

Nattes à chat 1:49 PM yup we should speak about "communities"

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:49 PM to be clear: the current election mechanism by definition gives an advantage to people who are active in the larger projects... and might actually be promoting the wrong kind of qualities for the board

Nattes à chat 1:49 PM thank you! waves

Farah Jack Mustaklem 1:49 PM Good discussion. Thanks!

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:49 PM thanks everyone, sorry for flooding the chat!

Olla Mahadi 1:49 PM Thank you this was very rich discussion

Nattes à chat 1:49 PM sorry for being late :/

Florence Devouard 1:50 PM thanks everyone for the inputs

Mykola Kozlenko 1:50 PM thanks everyone and thanks Jan-Bart for flooding the chat!

Melissa Ganus 1:50 PM What an incredible conversation to be in on!

Nattes à chat 1:50 PM yes!

Justice Okai-Allotey 1:50 PM Thank you

Jan-Bart de Vreede 1:50 PM nattes: thanks for joining and still being able to add your important thoughts

Olla Mahadi 1:50 PM Thank you and stay safe

Adel Nehaoua 1:50 PM thanks everyone

Nanour Garabedian 1:50 PM Thank you facilitators  panelists and everyone

Nattes à chat 1:50 PM bye!

Ravan Al-Taie 1:50 PM Thank you Everyone

Zita Zage 1:50 PM thank you everyone!

Mohammed Bachounda 1:50 PM merci - choukran

Transcript

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This is an automatic transcript. The team has edited it only slightly and many mistakes still remain. We welcome corrections.

Generated during recording from Topic panel - Skills for Board work (2021-03-12 at 10_08 GMT-8).mp4


[00:00:00] And to our panelists and participants who are joining and thanks for taking time today to join us. So right now there's no consensus about the skills desired community candidates. Some are saying, you know, community experience is fine. That is enough. Other people are saying, well, we might really be more effective if there are certain skills. So let's take a moment and imagine what if what if the board would specify a specific set of skills desired and community candidates selected this year. How could the current practices be changed to promote the nomination and selection of candidates with appropriate skills and community support? Panelists will introduce themselves briefly. So I invite our panelists to do so now. And thank you to our panelists again for joining us. So let's go ahead and start with Mykola.

[00:00:55] Hello, Mykola Kozlenko, or user NickK I am an administrator and check user on Ukrainian Wikipedia board member of the committee Ukraine and currently serving as vice chair of board and also a member of the Project Grants Committee and Community Lifetime involved as well in the Central and Eastern Europe or CEE regional community. And we are working all sorts of strategic planning and a lot of funny stuff in CEE.

[00:01:26] All right. Thank you. All right, let's move on to Lisa. Lisa, please.

[00:01:32] Great to introduce myself?

[00:01:35] Yes, thank you, fantastic, so hi, everybody, my name is Lisa Lewin.

[00:01:40] I am based in New York where I am today, and I, I am nearing, I think, of about three quarters of the way through my very first term as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. I joined at the very beginning of, gosh, in pandemic time. What does time even mean?

[00:02:02] But it was the beginning of twenty eighteen I believe. Twenty nineteen, eighteen, twenty twenty.

[00:02:11] The beginning of twenty nineteen January twenty nineteen when I joined them as trustee and and I am also the chair of the Board Governance Committee. And my background is both an education from an industry perspective and functionally I've been an advisor in issues of of board development and board governance and I'm super excited to be here with all of you today. It's great to just see all of these faces so dedicated to to the to the movement.

[00:02:43] And I've been looking forward to this will be.

[00:02:49] Thank you, Lisa. I can say we share a hometown, so I can say you're definitely a dedicated person because we have some of those dedicated people coming from this region. So I really appreciate your work. And Bobby, could you please go ahead and introduce yourself?

[00:03:08] Thank you. Thank you so much, Jackie. And hello, everyone, my name is Bobby and I am from South Africa in Johannesburg. It's evening now here in Johannesburg, and I have been a member of the Wikimedia South Africa chapter for a number of years now. I've joined them in 2013 and it was the beginning of when I started really to to edit Wikipedia. I got introduced to the chapter as well. So I did not really I was a newbie when I was introduced to the chapter. And over the years I've really had fun. I've really had met a lot of friends and my interests really are small language Wikipedia, south of South Africa particularly, and increasing African content, really. I'm an advocate of increasing African content and really, I'm so glad to be part of this panel. I'm so glad to be part of these discussions and looking forward to what will be discussed today. Thanks to you, Chicken.

[00:04:23] Thanks, Bobby, and thanks again for dedicating time to education, because I know that you dedicate time to education. I think that's something that we're all passionate about. This group is getting more people involved. So thank you so much.

[00:04:36] So we're just going to go ahead and start the conversation. And my plan for this conversation is just to go where it flows. So the first there's this one person missing right there. Yes, we do have one person missing, unfortunately. So hopefully they'll be able to join us soon.

[00:04:53] It's me.

[00:04:57] I guess I have forgotten your let you off. I'm sorry. That just means that you're extra wonderful. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. This morning I did not pin you to the top. I'm so sorry. We're missing the one panelist. I'm so focused on that. My apologies. Please do introduce yourself because your research is close to my heart.

[00:05:17] Oh well, I am Houcemeddine Turki. I am a board member of two user groups now. I am a part of Wikimedia Tunisia user group and the member of the Wikimedia Libraries user group.

[00:05:33] I mainly work on wikidata related stuff, but before between 2009 and 2019, I was involved in Wikipedia related stuff. So that's all I just have to say, note that me and Bobby are our members of school, which is an advisory board for African communities, and no, we are de facto members because there will be elections very soon and we hope that the experience will go on because it is a fruitful one.

[00:06:21] And so my apologies Houcemeddine, let's start with you, since I was so rude to you and excluded you. So let me put this question to the panel and wonderfully, the other panel panelist is on their way. So hopefully they will join soon. During this call for feedback. We have heard different things. Certain skills are important and otherwise community experience is important. So it seems to be that one is a preference over the other and something you have mentioned and actually brought up a big discussion and a community idea about specialization seats. So I can tell that this is something that is meaningful to you. Can you start the discussion about what it means and what skills are good for Board work?

[00:07:07] Well, what we what we find when we discuss about Wikimedia related projects and wiki experience in general is that it combines plenty of things.

[00:07:22] We felt the Wikimedia community should include legal experts because there are issues about data distancing, etc., etc. This is in communication and in branding because we need to to spread the knowledge all over the world, et et cetera, and the technical skills related to the computer science and engineering. So if we we we don't have one of these skills at the scale of the board of trustees, we can fail to manage one of the main kind of fundamentals of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.

[00:08:13] And that's and that's why skills are important.

[00:08:18] But skills are not just having a degree.

[00:08:23] Well, they in fact, someone who who is a developer about Wikimedia staff and has proper experience in developing bots for Wiki, for Wikipedia, developing media, wiki, et cetera, et cetera, is better than someone who is, for example, a professor at MIT and has no experience and knowledge of the staff of Wikipedia Media-Wiki.

[00:08:51] So it should be a combination between field knowledge and also wiki experience.

[00:09:00] And that's why this is important as a subject.

[00:09:07] I'm great, thank you so much for that and could I ask Lisa, do you want to speak to that? Because I know you do have to go at forty five past. So is there something that you want to share to give you an opportunity to join in on this conversation before you must go?

[00:09:25] Sure, sure, I'm happy to.

[00:09:27] I'm delighted to, so rather than specifically responding to Houcemeddine's comments, he made some good points there or maybe share kind of the framework that I kind of apply when I think about what we should be looking for from a from a board of board skills and experience, perspective and board attributes perspective. So I've been looking and going through a lot of the a lot of the comments that have already been sort of submitted around this. And I think that there are and I think the kind of the block and tackle attributes are already getting discussed quite well. Things like, you know, the board should do what kind of functional and industry expertise do we need? What kind of community experience do we need? What kind of technical skills, technical skills, financial, legal, etc. do we need? One that hasn't been mentioned yet is what kind of geographic balance and stakeholder representation do we need? I think is another really, really important one. And another one that I see popping up is how important is actual sort of board, you know, having board experience, experience with boards outside of the Wikimedia community and outside of the foundation.

[00:10:49] And I think all of those are are valid and I think all of those are important.

[00:10:56] What I will say, though, is that what makes this it exciting, but very challenging, at least from my perspective, is that it's not when you're when you're developing a board. You're not just looking for skills for individual trusties, what high performing boards do is that they are bringing a diversity and a plethora of skills in balance. Right. And so what we might need in at one point in time, right. Let's say we say, OK, it's really, really important that we need we need this sort of technical skill at this moment. That might be now, but there might be another moment when a trustee with a certain type of skill falls off and then that creates a hole.

[00:11:44] And so what we're solving for I think when we talk about that, when we talk about what rubric should we apply, what sort of skills should we apply, really has to be thinking about both. What do we need in any trustee? What are the requirements that we want in any board member, but also relative to what does a fully balanced board look like? What does a balanced board look like from a geographic standpoint, which is a balanced budget look like from a skills standpoint? What does the balance board look like in terms of community engagement? What does a balanced board look like on all of those on all of those issues? So that's one lens that I sort of apply and then something that I know is not the topic of of necessarily this call, but one that I also think about, which is the dynamics of the board can create function or dysfunction. And so there's also thinking about and this is so important in the in you know, when we start thinking about how does one vet, there are the ways that you get someone against the profile you need. And then there are the ways that you vet someone in terms of how they will be able to sort of show up and contribute and create an environment that is one of radical candor and being able to discuss important issues, but also doing it in a way that is accretive and not dilutive in a way that moves the foundation and moves the movement forward and is not, you know, either. And that is collective in nature and not hyper personal or bespoke or special interest, et cetera, because those are also things that can diminish the functioning of the board. And I will stop there. I will cede my time because I've already said a lot. But I did just want to share those are some of the things that I think about, about the opportunity that we have here to get more more crisp about what what is it that we're looking for an appointment and our trustees.

[00:13:44] Well, great. Thank you so much for that. And Bobby, I'm going to see if you want to respond to that, because I saw I saw you doing some head nods there. So so like you're in agreement, so please.

[00:13:55] Yes. I would really like to agree with my two colleagues with Houcemeddine and Lisa as well. The couple of things that Lisa has mentioned that I want to circle back on. And she she mentioned the skills that needs to apply, the dynamics of the board, you know, and something that moves the foundation. I want to add on that.

[00:14:27] You know, I was thinking as she was talking about the very same conversations that we've had in the chapter, the South African chapter, you know, around the board.

[00:14:39] And I was really was the focus on the representation, the diversity and the and the practicality of the board, you know, and the board that when they sit there, you feel represented as a as a as a community member and in the activities of what they are doing.

[00:15:05] And you also feel that those those decisions have been taken day the impact you directly.

[00:15:15] So so am I.

[00:15:18] The one of the things that came out from our conversations as the Wikimedia South Africa was that diversity is number one is very, very important.

[00:15:27] And now I'm going to jump into into skills. And skills are very, very important and education as well, is something that is very much important. But passion as well is also something that is also very important to someone that does understand what we do as the movement. And what what the board stands for, so so those those are some of the things when we were talking as a chapter, we thought they are very much important to to be considered when we are putting together these this report that we looking contribute.

[00:16:15] And my potential here would be to to also highlight the fact that this is something that that you actually mentioned today about balancing balance in the sense that you don't necessarily need as much as you need people with those skills, like like lawyers, like people with experience in accounting and people that have experience sitting in boards before. But you also do need to balance as well to not really focus on people that that are technocrats, because once you focus, they tend to lose the plot.

[00:17:05] But then I feel that as much as we we we want to be professional when we are bringing professionals to sit on the board. We also need to to have that balance as well to look at the community itself. What is the vision? Where do we want to take the the Wikimedia movement as a whole? And who are the right people that will be sitting there regardless of their education? But that balance of seeing those those mouths that can be speaking out, you know, those ones that will be not necessarily speaking in a in a language that is too much educated, but in a language that is speaking to the community itself, that represents the editor and that represents the the the the volunteer that does the outreach. So I think it's very important to have that that that balance with things of what you know.

[00:18:14] And thank you for that. Let me just pause here. I see that your hand is raised, but Nattes has joined us. So please, could you take a brief moment to introduce yourself and then we will go back into the discussion so I can brief you on the questions. You know what we're talking about. And I want to ask and no time here if we could be brief and responses because we only have about 20 minutes left for this time. So please, please go ahead.

[00:18:44] So hello, I'm Natasha, I'm calling from Geneva. I'm one of the residents of the user group Les Sans Pages and most active on the Francophone Wikipedia tackling gender gap LGBT issues. And contributing around these issues and members of Wikimedia, France.

[00:19:08] Well, thank you for joining us and sorry about your wi-fi. We are asking and discussing right now is the question. So skills are important, but then other people say skills are not so important, just community experiences. So we're discussing that as an idea here. And Mykola is going to go with that response.

[00:19:30] Yes. So I think that actually is is first of all, the community experience is definitely important for trustees on the community seats simply because so we need to have at least the majority of the board who understands how our communities work, understand our projects, understand the dynamics, the different processes in our communities, who understand our projects from the inside, because that's the experience you cannot really find anywhere else. And if you don't have the majority on the board who have been in our community and who have already worked with community members on a variety of topics from, I don't know, from wiki source developments to how to recognize a user group the board would probably be lost on a day to day processes, and it would really matter for the board to have this knowledge. On the other side. There is one set of skills which in my opinion, is really mandatory for any board candidates. From what perspective is, is what we can call it being a board material would say. That's what we said. The topics that come up frequently, for example, in affiliate discussions that you might have qualified people about who are not made for working on the board because working on any board, not necessarily WMF board, but also a board of your local user group or chapter or a board of your community organization in your village is understanding how to work in a team, how to listen to others, how to delegate some responsibilities, how to have strategic thinking because a board member cannot do their work alone.

[00:21:11] So this is a skill which you cannot really earn in five minutes. And this is a skill which we really must make sure our candidates have, because otherwise we are basically given one given a seat to a person who would probably drive the board to a catastrophe. If this person is not made to work in a team, is there is this person would be in an inefficient board member or is this person who just drives the board into the wall? So that's the kind of skills of being capable of being a board member. It's something we really need to make sure. And but it doesn't mean that this person might have a rich board experience because affiliates recruit board members who have not served on boards before. And this these are the skills that you can earn. And working in a big organization, working in a team, working in some movement or so on and on. The additional skills like Wikimedia is a diverse movement. First of all, WMF is a big nonprofit. So we would eagerly welcome a candidate who knows how nonprofit works, particularly within board experience and a big nonprofit.

[00:22:22] Secondly, Wikimedia is one of the top ten websites. So we would welcome somebody with a tech experience with who knows how large technological companies work or who has first hand experience with Media Wiki. Third, we are a large, multilingual movement because pretty much no other movement speaks more than 300 languages. So we need someone who knows how our how to work in multicultural environments, probably experience with minority languages and stuff like that. And for us, we are also a free knowledge movement and we are also a leader in advocacy of free licenses and stuff like that. And we also would welcome somebody who are who is experienced in that. But I don't think we can get a person who is a perfect combination of things. Those are skills that are widely available in our movement. We have many people with technical skills. We have many people with support skills. We have many people with language skills. We have many people with advocacy skills. But we cannot get the perfect combination and I think most candidates we would meet in our community would bring probably one of those. But I don't think we should be strict saying, like, you must check X boxes, because that would not be practical.

[00:23:40] And thank you for that, we are at half past, so I just want to be mindful of that and I thank you for joining us. So I'm going to go to Nattes, please. You have your your hand raised, so I will invite you for comment.

[00:23:57] Yes. I think we we tend to focus a lot on technology. And I think we should bring also people who question the value of technology, the the intention behind technology, because we go we we are an open source movement.

[00:24:15] So we rely a lot on this hacker ideology. And I think this hacker ideology has to be a little bit over tipped so that we can move to a more inclusive movement. And that's what I think. I've been reading a book called Hacking Diversity, and I think we should question why we went technology. What we want and disseminating knowledge is not the same as disseminating technology. And we have to to be inclusive in the sense that we enable the different parts of the world to be represented on the board. But I don't think we should rely too much on the old structures which are chapter based. We should have diverse entry point and and the board members should represent these diverse entry points, not necessarily in one person, but I think it's important to have as many languages represented as possible. And I was wondering if we already had a set of skills that are already existent on the boards because we are speaking about skills. But if we want some skills, we have to assess what skills are there and what skills are missing.

[00:25:41] Right, thank you for that and we're actually going to do something a little unique. We're going to pause the panel section for a moment and do a bit of open mic. And please leave us at about 10, 11 minutes now.

[00:25:55] So there is a question asked Lisa and the chat. You can see it. I will also read it. I'm curious if you're hearing anything new on board skills for the foundation in the past month, because I think that the goals that you stayed for the board, diversity on all levels, good team dynamics and based skill set for every board member have been known for worked and have been known for worked for in the past 15 years. But what are your thoughts on achieving these goals?

[00:26:27] So can I ask you to briefly speak about that before you must go?

[00:26:31] Sure. I just want to. Oh, got it.

[00:26:34] Ok, so because so because I think that the goals that you state for the board have been known and worked toward in the past 15 years. Got it. OK, so so the question is, is, is what I understand the question to be is that these are things, you know, diversity of skill set functionally a diversity of technical kind of technical skill. I don't think it's technical in terms of technology, but technical in terms of whether it's legal, whether it's media, whether it's H.R., et cetera, a diversity of industry experience, geographic experience, etc. If those have been known, if those aren't shifting and changing, why are we having the conversation? Because those are known know and that is what has been worked toward all this time. Is it because something isn't working? Is that do I have I reflected the spirit of the question?

[00:27:27] Well, a little bit. Yeah. I think the basic thing is I think this is the challenge we've been dealing with for the past years. And I think one of the examples we mentioned the beginning is we used to use appointed seats to fill up the gaps in the skill sets after the elections. Often we've tried all kinds of different ways of achieving that. So I'm kind of curious of what your lines of thinking are. And if you've heard anything interesting, like new skills, which are new things, which you thought, oh, we haven't thought of that when we're when we're looking at new candidates, we used to make a matrix, but we need to add field criteria or whatever.

[00:28:02] Sure, sure. Sure. So I would say the the first reaction is I definitely understand that there's been a bit of an ethos that all of the things that the board needs will use the appointed seats for them that's there. And that's I think that that that that creates there are a few there are a few challenges with that. What it does is it creates this.

[00:28:31] It can create the bifurcation where if you are if you are requiring.

[00:28:39] If your if your expectation is that everything other than community experience is going to be the domain and the responsibility of the board appointed seats, first of all, you've reduced the capacity of your board to handle a plethora of issues to less than half. And that's that's highly problematic. I mean, this is a this movement is as large and global and deeply important. The size and complexity of the organization is as large and meaningful and significant. Our importance as a top five website in the world means that just as we think about kind of our peer group and competitive set, some of the largest big tech companies in the world. And so to kind of say that only this portion of the seats will be subject to this set of criteria really diminishes your board capacity quite tremendously. So I'm I'm quite supportive of this idea that we look at all of the seats collectively as a group and think holistically about what is the what are the what is that? What is the geographic diversity, the scale diversity, the functional expertise that we need that body as a whole to to bring, because I think that is what will serve the movement best, will serve the foundation best, what will serve the board functioning best rather than the sort of bifurcated model. So so that's that's probably the first reaction that I would have to that to that question.

[00:30:18] I thank you for that and also I just want to take a second here to say that there's good, good things going on in the chat and we actually have a panel session for that coming soon. So there's a panel session talking about supporting the candidates and what we can do as a community to better engage with candidates and better support candidates to thank you for that. Thank you for that response. Lisa, thank you for that question. Yeah. Are there any other questions before we unpause the panel session and go back? Because Lisa is only with us for a short period of time. And Mykola, you had mentioned that you might only be with us for a short period of time. Is that still the case?

[00:30:59] Sorry, you mentioned that you would only be here perhaps for a short period. No, no, it's fine. OK, thank you so much for being flexible. Are there any other questions to the open mic portion for for Lisa? Yes, please go ahead.

[00:31:22] Hi there, your mic is open. Please go ahead with your question.

[00:31:25] Ok. Uh. For board position, assuming they have technical skills, we have people skills and everything, is there any plan to engage a based on community health? You know, there are many dying languages and communities which are really on the verge of extinction. Are there any plans to get representatives from such communities it?

[00:31:57] I mean, I'm I'm happy to to take a shot at that and then invite others who who have a who have a point of view. So I think that the that is absolutely the ambition to to to have a board that is even more representative of the breadth of of communities that are that are represented in the broader Wikimedia community.

[00:32:23] I don't know if the board that we have today is fully representative of of of that. And and that is what we aspire to. And so I think that is what you are describing, or at least what I think you're describing was very much one of the catalysts behind opening up this conversation is how do we do better at bringing in that that breadth? I think the step one that all of us are mutually committed to is to trying to communicate and say out loud, that is something that's important to us.

[00:33:00] That is something that we value. That's something where we're not where we are yet. And we are mutuel asking for each other's help in terms of how we get there.

[00:33:09] And and the goal of what comes out of this process is both, again, that clarity of what is that balance of stakeholder representation, community representation, skill representation, et cetera, et cetera, that we want on the board. And what is the best way of getting there? Right. Is this is it a suggestion or is should it be a mandate?

[00:33:32] Is it a do we get it through a rubric before the fact or do we get it through a a vetting after the fact that that is that is exactly what I think the the the the intent and we'll know that we've been successful is when we get to the end of this and we feel like we have linked arms around what is the best way to kind of close. What I do feel is a is a is a current gap of the current board composition with respect to truly representing the plethora of sizes and and and and shapes of the different communities that we have.

[00:34:17] Well, thank you for that and I'm sorry, is it I don't mean to be rude, but Lisa must go soon. There's a direct question. Is it all right if you hold your response just for one more moment, please. So Chico put in the chat to Lisa's point about verification. It goes both ways. And pardon me, shouldn't board appointed members have the skills to understand and engage with the on-wiki communities?

[00:34:49] So, Lisa, you can speak to that briefly before you must go.

[00:34:52] Sure, sure. I'm happy to have to share about that. So I think part of the reason that I think there is. A real benefit and an asset in having a composition where. More than half of the current board seats are people that are deeply embedded in the community, but I also think there is merit in having these board seats that are representative of people with other perspectives, because, as you all know, this is a community is it is an absolutely critical stakeholder. But you will have other stakeholders. You have your readers as stakeholders. We have people who invest dearly and fund our work, and they are stakeholders as well. There are there are staff that are that are that are stakeholders and engaged in a world where companies are being held to task, to thinking about the health and well-being of their own employees. That's also a stakeholder, yet another stakeholder community that we need to take into account. And so all of that is to say that I think that it is it is a feature, not a bug, that we have seen fit to say that this is a board where the majority of seats should be people that have that community experience, but that there are folks that are bringing an outside perspective and people that are bringing an outside perspective, that represent other shapes of our stakeholders about stakeholder community. It's it's an ecosystem. And so I I'm actually very supportive of that balance. And I also agree that there there there should be then requirements and means of engagement after rights like this, this type of engagement. If you are going to sign up to be a trustee and to be a steward of this community, you must enjoy and get energy as I do and being in forms like this and engaging, but to place a requirement that every single trustee must be deeply embedded into the community. I think I think I think the current state actually gives us some some benefits that I think we would lose if we decided to cascade that across every trustee seat. That's my personal view on that topic.

[00:37:36] I will thank you for that, I appreciate that and thank you for your time today. I appreciate you dedicating this time and your response. I think you and Jan are on the same same wavelength about getting engaged and and being connected. So that was a comment in the chat as well. Thank you for that. And let's go.

[00:37:54] Yes, I'm going to head out and just sending the heart out to this whole community to for engaging for taking time to really be thoughtful about this important set of decisions.

[00:38:06] And it's always lovely to see you'll take care of everybody.

[00:38:11] And thank you.

[00:38:15] Thank you so much Nattes for waiting so patiently. We will unpause the the panel session and we will continue for about 11, 12 more minutes and the panel portion of the conversation and then we will switch back to open mic. So thank you for your understanding, everyone.

[00:38:37] And yes, please go ahead.

[00:38:41] You want me to go ahead to do what? Sorry, I didn't get it.

[00:38:46] Oh, no, I'm sorry. We will continue with the panel discussion now because we paused temporarily because Lisa must she had to leave it at forty five past at this time. So please continue with your comment. I'm sorry to make you wait so long.

[00:39:08] Ok, maybe what happens is you will have your hand raised, and this is why I needed. OK.

[00:39:13] Uh, yeah. So I don't know. Sorry, because I had a problem with my wifi. I'm just not I didn't get the beginning of the. It's kind of odd. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. You speak again about quotas or just about because from the conversation I gathered, some were quota oriented and some were skills oriented. And I can get a mix because I still think that we need representation. We need a better representation in languages. And I don't I don't necessarily have that. I do know for some people it's important from India and Africa to have a geographical representation. But I believe that we are such in a global state of the emphasis on nationalism.

[00:40:14] Can I interrupt you for just a moment? I'm sorry. I feel like we're going we're going off-topic. You were talking about skills, so skills for Board work. I'm I'm glad that you're interested in quotas, but we're talking about skills right now for board work. So could I could I ask perhaps how how skills might play into this maybe which skills you think might be important? Or is it important to to assess community skills, to see how that fits on the board? Do any other panelists want to jump in here?

[00:41:06] I think we was made in, so I need to clarify one thing before we can move the discussion.

[00:41:17] So the problem is that the community chosen members of the board of trustees do not lack skills.

[00:41:29] In fact, all the kind of members that were elected, James, Denny, Maria, etc, etc, have skills.

[00:41:40] Well, what we dealing with here is the imbalance of skills rather than the assistance, if people have the skills or not to to move with the world, let them overwhelmed by criteria for nominations, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the point.

[00:42:03] Well, well, I heard Lisa talking.

[00:42:12] I, I have it I have seen that it is true that that sometimes we need people outside the community to help us get along with, for example, around the industry, for example, the founders, et cetera, et cetera, the government and et cetera, et cetera. However, what I seen, what I have seen from the people that has been appointed is that there are I can name four or five people for each.

[00:42:55] The reason for the assignment that can be fulfilled by five.

[00:43:02] Already six people from the community itself, so why should you?

[00:43:11] We.

[00:43:19] I think you're frozen.

[00:43:25] Yeah, I went through your back, OK. So what they said is that.

[00:43:33] By the idea about Specialisations deals with that, in fact, after we elect community members, we elect them without any strict kind of criteria that we can identify the criteria that are missing.

[00:43:54] After that, the board after meeting we can identify what is missing, for example, we need a lawyer

[00:44:02] We need the specialist in technology, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:44:08] We need the positions and grow a second specialized.

[00:44:15] Elections from the community, and if we there is a seat that was not filled by the community, we can get it from outside the community and appoint them directly from someone that is known by the members of the board of trustees.

[00:44:33] So that's the point.

[00:44:35] I think that should be kept in mind for this types of discussions.

[00:44:43] Oh, thank you, Mykola. I think you had your hand raised and then we'll go to Bobby.

[00:44:50] Yes, I would probably or I wanted to say something else, but I would probably more react to what Houcemeddine has said, that as far as I understand, the current concept is that we would have eight community seats, which would be split between general online community and affiliates. But like, we would either have to fill the seats and all other and the board would be free to choose the people for other seats. So from a practical point of view, I don't see how this two stage election would probably work. It's quite difficult to imagine how this would work. On a practical level, what can probably be more practical if, for example, that we had like three community seats in the past and now we are moving to five. So, for example, we can say that we keep like three seats open to everyone and then in some way, maybe selection committee for discussion with the board, identify, for example, two types of key skills. For example, we absolutely need one person to represent in minority languages and one technical person, for example. And we proactively recruit candidates for like two special seats, making sure that we still, with any election might must have at least one or at least some number of seats open to any candidate so that we have a full democratic election.

[00:46:16] Because what is important for me as a community member said this is a democratic election and like there is a Democratic link between these board members and the community that they feel they are not. They are not there just because they are qualified, but because they are also entrusted by the community, because that's what makes them a powerful voice of our community. So I think that. We probably can come up with some mix, but the key requirement is to identify before the election. From my point of view, we should we need to know before the election what skills we want to get elected in this election. And we probably need to focus on targeted recruiting because we have a lot of skills needed for the our community. We just. We are just not very good at convincing people with the skills to nominate themselves.

[00:47:13] So if we know that, for example, we need a person with minority language experience, we need to say like a few months before the elections that we really want to get to minority language person elected in this in this election. Given that we still I think these the two requirements and mentions the community experience and being sort of board material still should be there. So this is not an excuse to for a person to have zero community experience or be not qualified at all to serve on any board. But we need to concretely recruit these people to stand for the election if we want the skills to be represented. Otherwise, we don't get them.

[00:47:54] And thank you for that. And I also and pasting of a chat, the support for candidate panel session that we have coming up tomorrow. So that is a that's a good one to actually connect. What Mykola was saying here about this. We've had lots of great discussion. So let me have what we're going to do since time is short is have Bobby briefly respond, Nat briefly respond, then we're going to move to open mic.

[00:48:21] Ok, thank you so much. I think most of what I wanted to touch on has already been highlighted by Houcemeddine and Mykola as well. But I want to go back to what Lisa said. The point that is I made about bringing different stakeholders, especially the stakeholder that is defined in the stakeholder that is a leader. I feel that and that is my personal feeling, really.

[00:48:46] I feel that as much as we need representation from that end, as much as that is views, that we need to have representation that in my personal view, I think that maybe we don't need some of them and we might not need the volunteer because they might have great influence. We know the person that puts money. They might not have great influence on the direction that the board takes. I want to as a parting shot, they want to vote for community elections of representatives and so that so that we have more representative in the in the Board. I think for me, really, what is very much important is to have someone that understands how the movement works and someone and diversity for me is very, very much important in someone that will go in there and sit there and and speak, you know, and someone with passion about where they're coming from, but someone that will not just be a seat warmer, someone that will speak, you know, whether some of the board members, you know, don't like what they are saying, whether they like it. But the person needs to speak. And also for me, that's very much important. I like that what we call in South Africa, the spirit, you know, because as as Houcemeddine already pointed out, we already have the skills. So I'm just going to stop the things I want to thank you.

[00:50:25] Please Nattes go ahead.

[00:50:27] Ok, so I'm going back to what I was saying before because I was going to language skills, which doesn't mean that you need to master all the language, but you need to have some experience about how to bring different languages together. And I speak from Switzerland, where we we do translate for everybody in every session and we need to move out of that Anglo centered piece to be more inclusive. So someone who has a vision about that. That's the first thing then we need. We need people with the vision, with the key vision when they candidate too often the candidates are not very maybe I'll say aggressive enough what Bobby was saying, not ready to speak up because you might not be elected if you show the color of what you are representing. So we need to to have people with a clear vision of what has to be implemented, especially what is harassment and the application enforcement of the code of conduct. So persons with experience in dealing with the harassment issues, because it comes that to be to be able to have diversity, we have to tackle harassment. I mean, the people who contribute a lot, who are women, who are Afro descendents, who are not white and who are LGBT, are facing a lot of harassment. So if we are going to have a democratic process, I'm a bit afraid that the harassment stemming from the community will step on the board. So we need to be if we need to skill is we need people who are dedicated to not allow harassment and have a clear vision about that.

[00:52:17] Oh, thank you. Thank you again to all our panelists. We're going to now close the panel session and open open mic session. So please, can I invite Mahuton to go over the logistics for the open mic session?

[00:52:31] Yes.

[00:52:32] Thank you, Jackie, thank you, everyone, for for this first forty five minutes now, it is the open mic discussion. So any discussion is welcome. Any comment? Any questions is welcome. Just so, please keep your questions brief and ask one questions at a time. And please, let's keep the discussion focused on the topic of this panel that skills for Board work. So, yeah, let's start the floor is yours. Go ahead.

[00:53:07] Just so that we are keeping records in also the conversation and yeah, I'm paraphrasing might of the moderators and the facilitators to say which languages might be supported in the chat.

[00:53:23] Yes, you can you know, we you can ask any question in the chat if you have any comment in French, if you are in German, in Arabic, in Spanish, and you have in Turkish also.

[00:53:40] So, yes, no barrier to all of the language here. Go ahead and feel free to comment, to ask questions there.

[00:53:49] And yeah, the floor people.

[00:53:54] Just to to clear your your thoughts about the distorted.

[00:54:04] Ok, I think there are some people who raise their hand, so I have Richard.

[00:54:23] So maybe we need to move to the next. Do you hear me? Coming through, yes. Now we're going to hear I'm sorry about that.

[00:54:32] Yeah. So thanks for thanks for bringing the panel together. I think skills are important. I think it does matter how we approach the question of skills. If the board or anyone else at the foundation wants to produce a document saying that these are skills that are desirable and that we encourage people with, you know, accounting or legal experience or technical experience to run that's cool. But if there is some sort of requirement of you have a certain degree where there is a vetting committee that that says who can run, who cannot run, that that is not going to work over well with the community. And I don't think that it's going to have much of any support. I think we should encourage more people to run, to have different types of skills. And that's part of the the supporting supporting candidates things. I also think that it's important that we see that the communities being part of the community and having served the community background is is an important skill and it is a skill that is lacking in the current board in some important ways. If you look at the whole branding thing, there was a lot of money spent on things. That would not have been wasted if they were more people with community knowledge on the board, and that could have been easily avoided. And I think that sometimes community members on the board have been felt intimidated by a lot of professionals who think that they're you know, you think that from the outside experiences is super relevant. And it is sometimes. But, you know, there are hundreds of employees at the foundation who have a lot of professional experience. We have, you know, probably not the counsel and legal experts are going to get some more. But I think it is important that the community elections and they're done, that they'll be done in a diverse way. I think there should be like, you know, provisions for regional things, things like that.

[00:56:20] But that that the the community process remains open and that it be at least half. I think it should be more than half. But right now it's half our elected anyway. Thanks.

[00:56:32] Thank you, Richard, for your comments and let's see, I think Nanour, the floor is yours.

[00:56:45] Hello, everyone, and thank you for this session. Actually, I have a very simple question, which is in the topic of this session is what role should the trustees evaluation form play? Which should trustees evaluation form? You are talking about the one that is it was in 2020 candidate evaluation form or there's not another form.

[00:57:23] Yes, I thank you for your question. I'm looking for someone okay, very, very good.

[00:57:34] So that that is the link. So, yes, you know, for now, the is is not yet defined in their in their in their evaluation form. Maybe they should be one that will be use, but what should be in it. It's not defined. That's why we are doing these conversations. So to know if someone should be in the board. What are these things that are required. Maybe this can be included in the evaluation form or not.

[00:58:06] I don't know. OK, can I continue or. Yes, sure.

[00:58:16] If it's not in this evaluation form that is already, I think, is the sense of the 2020 election that will be in October. But most of that information is in the handbook of the board of trustees, actually. And we can go there and read more and more about what we need exactly. So we know what we need from a skills. But what the question, how we do it as Turki ask here or which one of the skills they speak about.

[00:58:56] Everything, everything. Exactly everything. And this is the final session and then where we are going, because when we read the reports. Every report, there is no response. Their only question is the same way. Repeat, repeat it again and again.

[00:59:21] Yeah, thank you Nanour, maybe any panelists have you thought about this?

[00:59:33] I thank you, raise your hands. So go ahead. Yeah, I think I think what kind of surprises me in this forum said basically all of the subject matter in the same box and there is a set.

[00:59:48] I would say that's what surprises me, because that's where we expect most people to have at least some experience like global movement building and community organizations or price level products from technology and so on. Like there is a long list of things that most candidates would take at least one box.

[01:00:05] But on the other hand, I think that we kind of what what surprises me in this forum is it kind of we want candidates who have worked in an executive position in WMF compared foundation, which is, in my opinion, one of the same skills which fall to the same box. We cannot want candidates who like if a candidate has previously led a WMF sized organization organization, it's quite unlikely that this person. Probably not. I'm sorry I got lost a bit in my reporting, I would say that we need, on one hand, candidates who have worked for large organizations and who know our structures mean. But we also need to source from our communities people who have not, who would bring some fresh vision to WMF, because people whom we recruit from appointed seats most likely come from large organizations, frequently American or frequently large enough movements, because that's how we notice them, because if we want to recruit a world class technology person, most likely they have already worked for a large organization. And if we also require our community members, candidates to have worked for large organizations of WMF size, we would just have no fresh perspective on that one. So I think we need a healthy mix of large organization and smaller perspectives because otherwise, like the governance structure of the WMF would be in a kind of echo chamber set of people who decide the system of governance would be people who are used to this kind of large corporate governance. And we need to avoid this. We need to have fresh voices and new voices. And so I'm I'm afraid that this would be a. Like this would drive the double himself into. An organization managed by people who have all been managed very large organizations and will just be used to being compared to complex structures and would just make it more complex.

[01:02:13] Good. Thank you. I can see Anass you raised your hand, so please go ahead.

[01:02:21] Thank you very much. And hello, everyone. I just want to go back a little bit to the scope of the discussion because I was expecting another discussion. But it's fine. The discussion is going well. I was just expecting another subject that we didn't discuss that much, because if we read the proposal in Meta, or at least when I read it, my expectation or my understanding was that it's actually related to the fact that we will assign a specific seat for a specific skill, for example, like don't know, knowledge of the American law. Then maybe this is this is one skill that will have one seat. And there is all the time at the board someone who should know the American law, something like this, that this was my expectation of the discussion. So actually, I want to ask a question. Are we discussing when we discuss specialization seats or skills, are we discussing the fact that we will have a quota of seats that are about specific skills that always need to be there? Or are we discussing the must have skills that everyone, if they want to be at the board, they should have?

[01:03:29] Yes, so that's the topic here is not focused on the idea of the specialisations seat, it's more large or small board, so it can include specialization seats. But here we are not discussing about quotas.

[01:03:47] No, we are talking about what are skills required to be a member of the Board. But, you know, how can we implement these?

[01:03:58] For example, how can we assess those skills, for example? So maybe we don't know the idea of specialization seats.

[01:04:05] This can be one of them. That why we conclude also that proposal in the discussion. I don't know if I answer your question, Anass.

[01:04:24] Ok, I think.

[01:04:30] Houcemeddine you raise your hands, so please go ahead.

[01:04:36] So I just have a follow up about what I said, in fact, it is a combination of both.

[01:04:45] We are dealing both with what the board of trustees, as you heard, should have as skills, but what also about what a given member or a given seat should include as listed as a specific skill. So it is about both the how is the combination is done, how it is organized, how we we will try to achieve that.

[01:05:20] This is the subject of the discussion in itself.

[01:05:24] So I want to go back to the forum.

[01:05:31] I think the forum, well, it is too subjective.

[01:05:37] Well, when we see it in depth, for example, we have here in the.

[01:05:46] And in the in the form in the evaluation form, we have, for example, Wiki board experience, they are saying about nationally or globally focused organization.

[01:06:01] But they can this can this can include as well the local media chapters and affiliates.

[01:06:09] I think.

[01:06:11] Because if you have held an administrative kind of seat or chair inside the Wikimedia movement, it is as valuable as if you had secured a chair in the board of a national organization.

[01:06:33] So I this is to too subjective having the titles like that and quantifying the experience based on that.

[01:06:50] Also. Also, you have.

[01:06:56] That idea, if you have secured it at the same time to positions, for example, you have been a member of the board of trustees of two organizations at the same time will we count, will be with will it be counted as the period, the twice the period are not or just he had the experience of three years. You see the point.

[01:07:28] So it is too subjective and I think this can harm of the process of using such forms or the evaluation.

[01:07:40] Yes, so thank you again for your on this topic, so I thank Jan-Bart, but you raise your hand, but maybe for just to be to to ensure that, Natasha, I think you still have your final choice. Do you want to say something or.

[01:07:59] Ok.

[01:08:02] You make your mark, you.

[01:08:06] Sorry, I'm a bit troubled by that form because it seems to me that there's a hierarchy between the top competencies that attend in terms of skill and then the rest down below, which has all got to do with diversity, geography and everything. And since last time that we had discussions about how to include people from different geography and languages, we had different ideas when we spoke. And it's true that we can't have everybody on the on for four, three seats. So we have to choose somebody who has the skills to integrate, understand and have a vision about these different geographies and languages more than mastering languages or stemming from a different from a certain geography. I don't know if I am clear enough. Intersectionality is key. Yes, because we can't have in 15 board places. We can't have represent everybody. But we need somebody who has experience and skills about these issues. And this is not pictured in the in the in the proposition because it all amounts to, OK, we are going to choose people from certain geography diversity, but it doesn't really mean anything. And I also feel that Wikimedia to experience it's not the same having contribution experience and belonging to a chapter.

[01:09:41] I see a lot of people in the chapters who have no contributing experience, and I do really think that we have to make sure that contributors are well-represented. And I think that's where the rift comes with the community because there's not enough communication with the community. That is people who contribute. Like if it's going to if we are going to be called nerd basements, I don't think we'll feel welcome anyway. That's it. And so, yes, I feel like it should be termed it should all be termed the same. And they should. And also the subject matter expertise. There's nothing I see nothing about harassment there. Maybe it stems from an American perspective where you have you want to term everything positively. But I am French, so I'm a bit troubled that I don't see anything about code of conduct, enforcement or harassment, because I think that's what we need to that will be the challenge and not for the Wikimedia, not for the foundation. It's going to be a challenge for the communities. Actually, because that's a code of conduct can be enforced without the will of the communities.

[01:10:58] Yeah, yeah, good, so thank you, Natasha. I think that you raise your hand, so please go ahead.

[01:11:07] Thanks. Yeah, I was just going to point out, I think the form is a weird thing. I don't know why the form is there, because I think what you're looking at is what Lisa said is you have a puzzle. This is what you want to create. This is the end of this is this is the board you need. And every year two things happen. A certain piece of the puzzle disappear because sheets become vacant and the puzzle changes slightly because we might need we've noticed that we need more technology or we need more community or whatever. So but it doesn't all happen at once. I mean, a third of the puzzle or whatever changes, but it doesn't. These are all staggered terms if we're going to do this correctly. So. That makes that that makes it actually pretty reasonable to get insight into, OK, as a board, we would like to advise the community or at least or go for staggered election, whatever ideas. But it's not that hard to identify the three things that are specifically important this year. This is why the form is so weird, because it's like, why is this now? I mean, next year will have probably have other things which want to emphasize. That's all I wanted to say.

[01:12:16] Yes, and that's really interesting, just to to remind, we are ten minutes less left of the official time, surely we can continue after the official time, if you will.

[01:12:29] So and so, Mykola, I think you raise your hands if you actually want to react to what Natasha said, said Natasha mentioned vision.

[01:12:40] And I think that's I think that we must want also from all board candidates, but from more like from the community perspective, we don't want this as a part of requirements from before, but we want to see the requirements from the community that we said there are people who might have a good vision of, I mean, of multilingual movement, but not be multilingual themselves. So what was a vision part is that there are skills and there are like there are proposals. There are there are there is a strategy. So you might it's very hard to have a past experience on building on the implementation of the code of conduct, given that it's only a few months old. But you might have a very good vision on implementing the code of conduct. And I think that's where we as a community must ask the right questions, because we as a community always have a round of discussions for candidates. And that's where we want to we must understand that we can we can make some kind of form from the community where we want to know their opinion on specific questions. We want to know their opinion on multilingualism. We want to know their opinion, branding on harassment or whatever. And that's where we as a community should choose. That's where we can choose one region over another, which does not necessarily go with which is probably orthogonal to skills.

[01:14:09] Thank you, Mykola. But we do want to share some of what about this, the evolution from what you.

[01:14:17] Yes, I think I think it's I would like to agree with especially what Jan has pointed out.

[01:14:25] I think the selection criteria needs to change and it needs to be more inclusive.

[01:14:32] What you see right now is, yes, we do. But there is a part where we don't necessarily need you to be included. And I think it's we need to as a community, we need to look at, you know, what what is the best way to select, to have representatives, to have people that will represent the community and maybe all the other stakeholders that I talked about earlier on. But they are the selection criteria really needs to change and there needs to be radical change around that.

[01:15:05] And it needs to also include community engagement thanks over to you.

[01:15:12] Jan-Bart I think it makes it back to you, sorry, no, it should have been OK.

[01:15:22] My mistake. No problem.

[01:15:25] Let's see if there are other questions in the chat. No, I cannot say any specific question, but yes, you can still go ahead and another participant in your question, any comment? Oh, I think Melissa said what the job description for current board members.

[01:15:58] Would you like me to speak to that?

[01:16:01] Oh, yes, well, I can clarify, so one of the biggest things I see in some of the chatter is this idea that we're going to go find candidates, we're going to go put them up in front of people and say, this is the person where we have to start with. Are there people able to do what is required of a board of trustees member in this very strange organization that we're all part of the collection of organizations and finding those remarkable human beings that are willing to sit in the middle of the bull's eye and be beaten to a pulp by all of the critique that happens all of the time. I really want to know what the expectations are of our board of trustees members, what the job descriptions have looked like, and being able to put that out as we recruit new candidates to say this is what you're getting into, we want you to be successful. And then what can you bring to the table? What is the list of things you can bring to the table? Because we need everybody in the world represented everybody. That's how big this is and no one can possibly do at all. So so there is my why this matters so much. And I'm so very grateful that all of you guys are working so hard on this.

[01:17:25] Mahuton you're muted.

[01:17:28] Thanks Quim. Thank you, Melissa. I think there is and I know you had a question.

[01:17:35] Can you go ahead? I think I can see this in the chat, maybe you can express it clearly.

[01:17:42] Actually, it was not a question of discussion between us on the chat, and Anass said that we need to identify a list of capacity that we need for skills. And I say that how can identify just ask them? The first our office and the.

[01:18:06] To add my opinion, if I can, I think after the here is the third session and the if they think it's more clear for me that we don't need somebody to represent, we don't need someone to have everything, we need someone who could not be a hindrance for the other to do the things. If I don't have the capacity to be a leadership, but I have the capacity or skills to making a decision, but I can't be a support for the one who can be the leadership.

[01:19:01] So this is, I can say, improve now after this three sessions about the skills. Thank you.

[01:19:12] Oh, yes, thank you Nanour. I think Anass you raise your hands, please go ahead.

[01:19:22] Yes, thank you very much. I would like to go back a little bit to the beginning of the discussion, because when Lisa will speaking, I can see she has raised a very nice point about the skills and that we should have a variation of skills and that it's really important to have a balance between all this. And I believe that that is true. A lot of skills are needed. And it's important if you are in the board of trustees to be skillful and to to know what you are doing. But on the same time, I am kind of wondering here that if we impose too many things, then it would be some kind of echo chamber. And I want to to maybe state that the fact of not having a skill, it's also a skill in itself because you will see the things from another angle, you will see it from another perspective, and you will maybe give new ideas and you will give other feedback that the old experienced people and those who know a lot have maybe not seen or they had it in some kind of angle. So I would be very careful in saying that we have to have these must skills and you have to have a lot of experience in this and in that, because maybe children can come to you and tell you the truth that you would have missed because you are so experienced and you you have your routines and your process that you have been doing for 40 or 50 years and that you will not you not see.

[01:20:53] So also, I mean, part of the diversity would be, in my opinion, also diversity in skills. So maybe, yes, have a lot of experience. People have those who know finance those on of legal stuff, but also those who don't know that much or that no other other parts that are not related to something professional. I mean, after being in the discussion in the chat, I would say that they must have skill is everything related to the communication and to be able to to make compromise or to to be a good listener, but not more than that. I don't want to say that everyone in the board should have been in a board of another organization before otherwise. This, you know, like the young person who just gets got the university degree and everyone is asking them for ten years experience, but where we we get the 10 years experience to start your first experience. I mean, this is how I see it. So that in conclusion, for me, no skill is also a skill.

[01:21:53] Interesting point. Thank you.

[01:21:55] Plus, I think we are officially off of the official time. Yes, but yes, we can continue the discussions.

[01:22:09] I will. I want to give the mic back to to walk to the panelists.