Five Years Later…

I’ve been at the Wikimedia Foundation for five years now. I don’t often speak publicly1 about what it’s like to work at the non-profit behind one of the biggest social movements, website, and community on the planet. Also one of the few that aren’t backed by squicky dude-bros who care more about money than humans. AAAAANNNYYYHOW, there’s something special about the number five and so here are my thoughts.

Where is the Foundation now?

I think the Foundation is in a better position than in the past five years – both internally in how the organization is structured and work is managed, but also in what we work on and where our focus is. We’ve learned a lot from the lumps garnered in the past (deservedly or not) and with Movement Strategy and strong focus on Objectives and Key Results (ORKs) it’s more transparent (and apparent) that our work is tied to the needs of the movement.

Better, not perfect.

For example, the recent strategy and board work are both well-staffed – with regional support. The teams (from my perspective) are taking it slow and giving folks a chance to talk and listen. Doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything (we can’t) or hear everyone (we can’t) but that we are trying to acknowledge gaps and biases.

Product has been kicking butt in building tools that help. In particular the Growth team, mobile web, and the desktop refresh. I still love Community Tech after five years. I think I will after another five. If I were a billionaire they’d get 100 million a year just to do more of this.

I still feel like new teams/initiatives/people still sometimes get burned. Unclear expectations, combative community, crossed wires. We’re working on that. I am seeing less of it. Still a few spots of things we should be doing IMHO, but aren’t. Like Maps and visualizations. Like search and the portal. We need to make a decision about the weird stuff kinda floating out there.

Have you seen the multimedia search for Commons? It’s a media search that’s useful! No more “site:commons.wikimedia.org dog” searches on Google.

Onboarding staff new to this wacky world is a challenge. It’s inconsistent and it takes six months to even get up to speed – if not longer! I know smart people are working on this, so I have optimism for the future. It’s still going to be a struggle. We are a multifaceted organization2 and an even more multifaceted movement. And we’re continuing to grow. Obtaining knowledge about the river in which the ship is moving in, while the ship is moving, is tricky. Making this more systemic and process-driven will help, but we still have so much information about our volunteers and the relationship, in well, individual relationships with people. I mean, it should be that way. Humans connecting to humans, but hoo boy does that not scale easily.

Foundation is investing into listening. I mean, I’m on a team literally charged with improving Movement Communications. With Diff, and our needs assessment work, I’m feeling jazzed about moving the needle on the relationship with communities. The Foundation has been inconsistent in talking to folks and connecting our work to theirs. We need to be better storytellers, listeners, and force multipliers. Especially in emerging communities and places of the world where we have communities but know little about them (and therefore can not support them).

I feel like my work is contributing in a more strategic, positive way with Diff. Working with and amplifying the work of people where we can treat each other like teammates and not combatants. It’s encouraging and impactful. Fun Fact: Diff saw 86,865 views from 65,935 visitors in January. Higher than any expectations I had.

As I was drafting this blog post our ED announced she was stepping down. I’ve reflected on all that has happened under her leadership and I think it make sense to mention it here. Katherine has put the org – and by extension the movement – on a solid course.

  • Gained the role in the midst of a terrible era of trust (both internal to the Foundation and with community).
  • Lead with grace and dignity in every interaction I had that was reassuring and respectable.
  • Got a movement strategy rolling for the future and in solid shape to get us to 2030 and beyond.
  • Leadership at the C-level and below shored up (Hiring new folks for gaps, new needed roles, sorting out HR, etc.).
  • Clarifying governance (Board make up, sort out the board/Foundation responsibilities, bylaws, election).
  • Movement-wide Code of Conduct.
  • Endowment is nearly at it’s 100 million goal.
  • Organizational growth and capacity.

I mean, the next CEO can step in and goof off all day for ~4 years and still leave successful – assuming they don’t muck with stuff too much. 😉

Where is the movement now?

2020 sucked. I’m inspired by the folks who keep on trucking. And reminded by those that took a step back that you can’t keep others warm by setting yourself on fire. It’s amazing that folks have continued the amazing work, supporting one another, and moving the needle of trust and free knowledge. I was on the committee for Wikimedian of the Year and in all honesty I would have nominated everyone. They were all inspirational and all so human.

There are still folks who like to be edgy jerks and stoke the fire on the whole WMF/Community divide. I think it’s unconstructive. It’s also super demoralizing. It’s also something you can’t do anything about. But I have noticed less petty picking-of-fights over a lack of clarity and supposition with fear and doubt that The Foundation is evil. So that’s nice. I also am caring less about the loud minority of folks as I give more of my attention to those who want to work with me within the system. You know, like you would anywhere else in life.

Where am I now?

Five years is the longest I’ve been at any prior organizations. It’s also easily the longest I’ve been in the same position. Or roughly the same position. Community-facing communications.3 Five is also half a decade. A lot can change in five years. When I joined the Foundation my youngest daughter was less than two years old. She’s now kicking my butt (and the world’s) as a smart six-year-old.

I still care and am still invested in my work and the movement. A little less than in the past. I don’t know if that’s me trying to learn how not to give a fuck or if that’s burnout over all the changes the last few years have brung. Ya’ll, the work is hard, the work is plentiful, and working remotely can feel isolating. Not gonna lie.

I worry more about my co-workers than myself. They’re the smart ones I rely on to appear intelligent. 🙂

Working remotely is challenging because getting an attaboy or acknowledgment of your work is really hard when you don’t see your boss in the hallway. This sort of encouragement, I know, is very American, but I like to have a sense of knowing where I stand in organization and how I’m doing with my work. So far, I think I’m doing pretty good. Still a struggle to be OK with ambiguity and chaos.

Remote work productivity tips

So yeah, let’s end this on an up-beat note. I’ve been working from home for five years now. Full-time. I’m super privileged to be able to afford the time/money/space to have built my studio. If you cannot do the same, I still want you to take your self-care seriously. Here’s some advice. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work for you. It sometimes doesn’t work for me.

  • Get a white noise machine. I even have a portable one for when I travel. Helps focus from distracting house-noises.
  • Don’t work in spaces that distract you. Find yourself feeling unproductive after a day at Starbucks? Don’t work there.
  • Setup your space to be organized and keep it separate from where you do your personal computering.
  • Use a quick launcher. I have saved billions of trackpad taps (and seconds) by using a nice launcher. My go-to is Alfred. I was a Quicksliver user for over a decade. Alfred is just so nice. Keep your hands on the keyboard as much as you can. Learn the shortcuts for your commonly used apps. Yell at the ancient gods when you can’t use command-K to add a link in Slack.
  • Everything is a draft, that’s ok. Perfect is the enemy of good – and feeling like you’re not getting anything done isn’t productive. Even organizing your bookmarks or deleting old email is production. Don’t beat yourself up on slow days.
  • Work from libraries – in my suburban area we have public libraries with quiet study rooms you can borrow for an hour or two. Lots of comfy seating. People around you, and most are trying to be quiet – unlike a Starbucks.
  • Write it down.
  • Listen to music? I can’t listen to anything new to me or anything with lyrics. The best for me is a chill playlist, music in another language, or the creme de la creme – video game soundtracks.

So, five years down. Maybe I’ll do this again in another five?

Don’t Use Your Charging Cables for Data Transfer

I recently got a little external enclosure to use with a SATA SSD that was going unused. Nothing fancy, this one if you’re curious. I’ve been using it without issue with the short cable that it came with (and a USB A to C adapter) to connect to my 2019 Macbook Pro.

Today I was being lazy and instead of getting my butt out of my chair to get the cable from my bag, I just grabbed the closest USB-C cable to transfer some files to the SSD. The cable I happened to use was the one that came with my 2020 iPad Pro 11″. Hooked it all up and started copying over some files. Usually an operation that takes a few minutes. Ten minutes later? Still transferring. Confused I loaded up Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and ran some comparisons for fun.

iPad Pro 2020 11″ cable

That’s not right! 41 MB/s is super slow. So I tried the cable the drive enclosure came with.

SSD enclosure cable

439 MB/s! Ok, that’s much better. Then I tried a few more cables. How about the nice long and thick USB-C cable that came with my Macbook Pro?

2019 Macbook Pro 13″ cable

Yikes! Super slow. For giggles (and it’s what I had laying around) the cable that came with my Pokeball Plus.

Pokeball Plus cable?

Again, super slow. These cable are just for charging, not for data transfer. To illustrate how slow, here’s a test using my external spinning disk Western Digital 4TB drive.

HDD drive cable

Not as fast as the SSD, naturally, but 100 MB/s faster than using the wrong cable on the SSD. 🙂

I know this might be common knowledge for some folks, but I was kinda surprised. Use the right cable folks!

There should exist a system to ensure politicians admit to their blatant lies.

My response from a “Change my View” post on reddit. 1

What you are describing is proper journalism and an informed electorate (particularly the later part of this section assuming you’re in the US). News, particularly newspapers, are referred to as the “fourth estate“. Yes there is bias (even going back to the turn of the 20th century and beyond) but the general gist is that newspapers sit outside the government and act as a body that keeps politicians (and companies, etc) to task.

Citizens, particularly those who have the capacity to vote, have the responsibility to be well informed on pertinent matters. At the local level, state/territory, and country. You do this by reading multiple sources, remaining skeptical, and not giving into extremism (Strong beliefs loosely held!).

No one is going to be able to do this for everyone. It’s something you have to do for yourself. Here in the US one could even consider it part of the unique strain of individualism many hold so dearly. It is on you – especially if you are concerned about the future of your country.

“But Chris, That’s hard!” You’re right. Being an adult, and an informed citizen is difficult. Nothing worth doing comes easy in life. 🙂 Given that news media (news for entertainment), social media, and any person with a YouTube account often gets mixed up in popular culture as journalism it can seem as though journalism doesn’t exist. It does, but there’s just more crap to sift through.

Want to do something about it? Be informed. Subscribe to a local paper, maybe more than one. Curate what you read. Be critical of your own habits. Do some research. Here’s some resources I’ve found useful.

Link List – January 8, 2019

Some things I’ve recently watched/read/listened to that I recommend.

  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
  • We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • This was a fascinating episode of “Reply All” that talks about social media hacking, the people and culture behind it, and the impact having “just a social media account” hacked can have on a person.
  • Super Smash Bros
  • Child of Light
  • She-Ra – great reboot on Netflix
  • Anastasia The Musical – great lead, amazing costumes, and technically complex set. The IT/AV nerd in me was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was impressed that everything ran so smoothly.

Some things I helped with:

A bunch of random links:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-assessment

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8vi02i/dads_of_reddit_what_is_your_advice_for_new_dads/

https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/8valyl/incredible_1080p_oncar_footage_of_the_1962_monaco/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8vc6b3/senior_citizens_of_reddit_what_were_the_elderly/

https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/8uj63t/21311_lego_ideas_voltron_revealed/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8uicjx/when_did_you_have_the_most_difficult_time_staying/e1fmsok/

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8s7y24/til_of_the_bullshit_asymmetry_principle_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/a5lktv/the_privilege_of_the_petersonian_the_importance/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture

https://kottke.org/18/07/hidden-treasures-of-amsterdams-river

https://kottke.org/18/04/dna-sites-show-why-we-need-a-hippocratic-oath-for-data-science

https://kottke.org/18/04/the-culinary-wonders-of-msg

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/9tv799/steve_jobs_explains_why_a_companys_product/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy

https://lithub.com/fascism-is-not-an-idea-to-be-debated-its-a-set-of-actions-to-fight/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/25/17279294/toronto-massacre-minassian-incels-internet-misogyny

https://medium.com/s/story/how-white-people-handle-diversity-training-in-the-workplace-e8408d2519f

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-government-sponsored-cyber-militia-cookbook/

https://nadiaeghbal.com/independent-research

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/26/17613844/racial-diversity-poll-twitter-white-people

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018

https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-or-2018/public/schedule/detail/67172

https://twitter.com/jamchamb_/status/1025977659522789376

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=All%20Tea%20No%20Shade

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

https://sexismfieldguide.com

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/sharp-objects-female-journalists-in-culture/567898/

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/18/distributed-teams-are-rewriting-the-rules-of-officeless-politics/

https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/penn-jillette-in-conversation.html

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17252410/jordan-peele-obama-deepfake-buzzfeed

http://jnack.com/blog/2018/08/23/absolute-witchcraft-ai-synthesizes-dance-moves-entire-street-scenes/

http://jnack.com/blog/2018/08/26/everybody-dance-now-amazing-performance-transfer-tech/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/opinion/the-expensive-education-of-mark-zuckerberg-and-silicon-valley.html

https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/26/17613844/racial-diversity-poll-twitter-white-people

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-government-sponsored-cyber-militia-cookbook/

https://hbr.org/2018/07/youre-never-going-to-be-caught-up-at-work-stop-feeling-guilty-about-it

https://vimeo.com/283555096

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/09/17/linus-torvalds-empathy

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1039567055060492288

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/matreon-the-patreon-platform-for-emotional-labor

https://eand.co/if-the-point-of-capitalism-is-to-escape-capitalism-then-whats-the-point-of-capitalism-bedd1b2447d

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/up-next

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSJXKoD6mA8&index=2&list=PLhV3K_DS5YfJ5raH7_jw3DVvLHWwoxJzR

“Changing the World” by Erica Joy Baker – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4

“Machine learning failures – for art!” by Janelle Shane – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yneJIxOdMX4

https://seths.blog/2018/10/non-profit-overhead/

https://kottke.org/18/10/stochastic-terrorism

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/who-is-poppinkream-the-reddit-user-fighting-for-a-fact-based-internet.html

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2018-in-review/the-year-in-good-men

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1074856487514726400

“Rules for Online Sanity” https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=582aad955a2c357f3c39654b4&id=44b268dc3b

https://blog.vrv.co/merrittk/5216/how-the-it-crowd-gave-us-one-of-the-most-beautiful-moments-in-sitcom-history/

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