From Mindspillage
These are notes for a presentation on a session from the Creative Commons Global Summit 2011, "CC's Role in the Global Commons Movement". Mike Linksvayer led the session; other presenters were Silke Helfrich, Leonhard Dobusch, and Tyng-Ruey Chuang.
This is roughly what I said--though in talking I generally added some parts and probably left some sections out.
Presentation
[intro blather]
As a contribution to the discussion on the role of CC in the global commons movement, I'm going to talk a little bit about how Wikimedia turned from a project into a movement.
Wikimedia started with some great ideas and ambitions, but it didn't explicitly set out to define a movement. It was started in 2001, a short time before CC came into existence (which explains license), and it was just Wikipedia, and just in English. It was the experimental sandbox for a freely-licensed but much more restricted Nupedia. As an experiment they decided to open up a section for public contribution, at the end of its existence Nupedia ended up with about 25 articles; The Wikimedia projects will hit 20M in the next few days, with over 11M media files.
No one used this term "wikimedia movement" until 2008, at least not in a way that stuck. The idea owes a lot to Florence Devouard, former chair. the first community-elected board member of the new WMF. before anyone else was really thinking in terms of a movement, she has put the idea of creating a revolution and helping the internet reach its potential in her statement. Early on She was also one of the driving forces behind expanding Wikipedia from a very English-centric project to an international one.
I'm not going to say much about Jimmy Wales because first of all everyone saw his face for about two months this past year already, and secondly one of the most important things he's done to enable the movement was get out of the way. Not disparaging -- formation of the Foundation, not a one-man project. Managed to step down as chair, take an evangelist role but not formal leadership.
Florence post here: "This site will summarize what is being done by the Foundation and Chapters globally. It would welcome pages such as "Listing speaking engagements", or "press interviews" done by all organizations. It can also, in the simplest terms possible explain readers what are the roles and responsibilities of each organization. It can be a place where chapter members and WMF members can built together a description of the movement in its entirety, even if it also means a lot of redirection to the individual websites. It may be a place where we can list lobbying actions, even if some organizations do not engage in lobbying. It can be a place where we show and share the diversity of actions held to reach the same goal (the photo workshop here, the language conference there)."
Message was talking about the separation of discussions about a movement. It was happening on individual chapter websites, on the internal discussions, some scattered pages on the working meta-wiki, but someone visiting the main wikimedia sites would have no idea it was anything but a project. That wasn't in our messaging, it wasn't how we thought of ourselves.
This was seven years into our history, by which time we were already one of the top ten websites and bringing in 6 million dollars. What does it mean, to think of yourselves as a movement, rather than a project? The change in mission statements reflects:
[old statement] "Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias, collections of quotations, textbooks and other collections of documents, information, and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license"[and so on]
[new statement] "The mission of the Wikimedia movement is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. The collaborative efforts of various groups around the world provide the essential infrastructure and framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission."
We've changed the interpretation of what it is that we're doing--broader and more inclusive. When you're building a project, creating a resource is the goal and changing the world is a dream. When you are reaching over 400 million people, creating a movement means getting all of the people whose lives you enrich in some way to understand how your values already make their lives better, and how adopting them and extending them could improve everyone's experience.
Florence hit on a feeling looking for a word. (chapters) It wasn't long after Florence's post that we began a strategic planning process. Unusually for a process like this one, we tried to be as participatory as possible. With this new conception of ourselves, it became more important to identify goals to focus our resources for directed action.
(We have never suffered from a lack of good ideas. We have suffered from a lack of focus.)
If we are a movement, how do we figure out what we do with that momentum?
Eugene Kim: "We’re trying to figure out where Wikimedia should be in five years. That question is hard enough, but there was an even harder question that we needed to answer first: Who’s “we”?" (used pro help, internal staff, and stakeholders, as many as possible, over 1000)
One part of turning from a project into a movement was redefining the idea of who the community is. Traditional conception was just of people who contributed directly to the site. 300000 authors, about 400 million readers. We're not just one community, but many. Not just users, not just editors--expanding definition to include educators, reusers, donors, fellow-travellers, people who have never made an edit, maybe people who barely even use the site. Over 30 national and subnational chapters. Over 500,000 donors. People are using it in their classrooms and putting it on low-cost laptops for kids.
One of the major outcomes was the "movement roles" working group which started to define what it is to be part of the movement:
[quote from charter: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Movement_roles_project/Charter_topics#Skeleton_Charter]
The goals of the strategic planning process itself came out with a set of five goals that reflect the changed identity of the foundation: 1. Increase Reach: 2. Improve Content Quality: 3. Increase Participation: 4. Stabilize Infrastructure 5. Encourage Innovation
Each goal came along with its own small report, some practical actions and some ways to measure success. In talking about those goals and how to achieve them, not jusyt top-down but with the movement in mind.
Some practical effects:
Conceiving of ourselves as a movement, not just a project, meant moving from the online world into the offline world. Offices in new places.
Incorporating chapters into fundraising, trying to be more conscious of the potential of many decentralized organizations. Reaching outside ourselves for expertise. The board used to be entirely internal, staff entirely focused on improvement of the site. Changes the way you think about priorities: decisions about fundraising aren't simply about "do the books balance" but "how does distributing money in this way align with the roles each of us have in the movement"--who should have control of it distribution, who should decide how effectively the money is being spent.
What shold chapters be doing, what does it mean for them to be part of a movement?
Thinking of ourselves as a movement rather than "just" a project leads to trying to figure out how to communicate effectively within it and devote more resources to it; we have several staff whose main job is to be a liaison between groups, and find research into the ways people are contributing outside simply editing.
Changes priorities: it's important to be inclusive, to be diverse, to be welcoming. We can't fulfill our mission by focusing inward. Directed growth rather than just organic; the easy way is done but to fulfill goals it is important when you notice a lack--of editors from various regions, part of various groups.
When you talk about a movement instead of a project, you stop thinking about the Foundation as the center of everything, because one Foundation isn't going to scale up. You have to think of how to make your community. Because part of being a movement is that we're not entirely in control of it anymore; control has gotten further and further from the center. a bunch of things changes: one project to many, one organization to many, one language to many. One community to many.
We're not there yet. But we have some idea where to go.
Being a movement means recognizing the vast amount of potential you have for change. A movement has real power, not using it is a choice. It's irresponsible not to use it for change. Responsibility to recognizing what you have, considering its effectiveness and how it contributes to the world, and use. In order to focus that power, it's important to defining principles and goals, what you're working toward, and what it means to succeed.
One of the most valuable tools that Wikimedia has for effecting change is the goodwill built around what we do and what we stand for--to echo Leo, its brand. Mentioning Wikipedia is recognized, people know what it does, more and more what it stands for, the sort of thing that's possible under the world we want.
From the outside: CC is the most visible brand in the space of creating the infrastructure for openness and freedom. You mention CC and people have associations with it, recognize that things that Creative Commons supports are things that further than association, and will rally behind it where they wouldn't for things with less built-up goodwill. WMF and CC both benefited when license transition. It's made me happy to see how many people and affiliated groups are represented here and to try and build those connections; I want CC to consider itself as the focus for a movement like Wikimedia is. Looking forward to seeing the outcome of CC's strategy process and of the 4.0 license process.