Category: Wikimedia

Full-time Freedom

“Freedom without responsibility is certainly tempting, but there are few people who will give you that gig and take care of you and take responsibility for your work as well.

Responsibility without freedom is stressful. There are plenty of jobs in this line of work, just as there are countless jobs where you have neither freedom nor responsibility. These are good jobs to walk away from.”

– Seth Godin on Freedom and Responsibility

“Contributing full time provides a ton of freedom to work and iterate on any aspect of the community you can dream up. Sounds good right? It is if you can sustain it.

Here’s the thing: burnout is a real struggle. And when you’re working on something full bore, 100 percent of the time, and you burn out, there aren’t a lot of good options to help combat that except to keep pressing on and try to get your groove back.”

– Drew Jaynes on contributing full-time to WordPress

When I joined the foundation I never thought I’d lose a super power – the ability to ignore things. 🙂 1

Liaison, Community Liaison

I’m in my second week of joining the Wikimedia Foundation. So far, so good. I’m still in shock. 2 The first week was a whirlwind of introductions and meetings. The biggest thing I got out of the last week is that folks are at the foundation motivated by the movement, know things need to get better (culture and technology), and are there to make an impact – and I get to be part of that. Hot damn.

When joining a new organization my brain always tries to organize information. Mostly by comparing and contrasting to previous experiences. I’m really excited to have more peers in a similar role as mine. At my last employer I was a bit of an odd-man-out in relation to what I did on a daily basis. 3 At the foundation I have a near gluttony of folks with years of experience working with communities. They’re a pretty diverse group and I love every one of them.

They are all different in their approach to work and have been patient in sharing with me what works best for them in hopes of making my own time at the foundation a success. That’s a really great thing. I’ve been at other organizations where sharing information with peers was minimal – you shared what made your job easier, not job of the person you were sharing with.

This got me thinking about the different folks I work with and their approach to the work before us.

The role of community liaisons are like James Bond. Not 4 the debonaire, suave hero of over 24 films, but the character. Bond is played by a different actors across different generations, each a little different, each with their own take on the character. If you’re a Bond fan, some are your favorites, some never struck your fancy, some you might even dislike. Depending on when and how you were introduced to the character you have parts of each you like – and parts you miss when new Bonds come on-screen.

Like Bond, liaisons all have the same title (007). But each is a little different in their approach to the job. Some use stealth and subterfuge to take down wait, where was I going with this analogy? 🙂

True to form, some folks don’t like Bond. That’s ok.  Hollywood is still making movies! Still trying out new things. Trying to improve. That’s what all us liaisons have in common – all of us are trying to improve. Ourselves, and more importantly the communities we serve.