This is story preparation for an interview with Roger McNamee, internet and technology inverstor and a co-founder of Elevation Partners.
The interview is scheduled for Monday, 14 Jan. 2008, at 4:30 pm PST (-8). It will be a phone conversation conducted by Amgine.
Background[edit]
Mr. Mcnamee,
With the recent challenges in real estate, I would have thought that your investment in Move would have done quite well. It provides the portal for real estate agents and other related Home vendors to promote their services. Despite this opportunity Move has become a $2 stock with persistent uninspiring set of results.
What is the catalyst that might turn this story around?
What's your sense of the timeframe in which we might see some positive results emerge from Move?
Are you still as optimistic about this investment as when you initially wrote the check?
- Free or fair use images
- full background
Questions[edit]
Please help suggest reasonable questions for this phone interview below:
- One of the earliest donations to the WMF in the fundraiser was $500 for "tripling the number of elephants in Africa". A number of wiki people suspect this was Stephen Colbert "paying his dues". If you were making a donation, what message would you want to attach? - (question suggested by BrianMC in #Wikinews.)
- What made you get invoved with the WMF in the firstplace?
- Have you ever used a Wikimedia project for reference? Editing?
- If you had your choice of picking a celebrity to donate $500 to the Wikimedia Foundation, who would it be and why?
- Have you ever worked with any other non-profit Boards to raise money? Who and when?
- Questions from Thunderhead - (talk - email - contributions) 04:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- It appears, from data not purged from the leaked presentation given to Sun, that you were the one doing the hard sell to them.
- Is this the case?
- If so, who were you pitching to?
- The Wikimedia-run foundation mailing list had comments to the effect that some of the sell to potential donors was done by a "... friend of J. Wales", was that you?
This is generically what I plan to say/ask, and the order in which I plan to ask, and will be under active editing until I actually am doing the interview.
Hello Mr McNamee!
I wanted to set out some of my personal ground-rules for interviews before we get into things. Number one is that anything you want to take off-record, whether you've already said it or are about to, is completely your choice. If you want to "unsay" something during the interview, it won't be in the final record. With Wikinews we develop the lines of questions collaboratively, so not all of these questions are mine, personally, but I will be doing the asking. I will be posting my notes from the interview on Wikinews, and other contributors will be writing the news article.
You're a mover in the technology investment sector, having co-founded Integral Capital Partners, Silver Lake Partners, and Elevation Partners.
Crude notes, forwarded to Mr McNamee via e-mail for correction 14 Jan.
What got you involved with the Wikimedia Foundation in the first place?
I see Wikipedia as the first and most important education tool to come out of the internet, and that's where I first became involved was using Wikipedia. I have a huge respect for what everyone was able to do there.
Have you ever used any of the Wikimedia projects for research or as a reference? Have you edited any of them?
Oh yeah! I use it all the time! I started out primarily as wp user, just like everyone else, and I learned about the other projects too. And I studied how wp wrks & grows, especially over-seas. I don't think everyone realizes just how important the wikipedia is as a model of how the internet works.
Have you been volunteering to help the Foundation with fundraising?
I first met Jimmy a couple of years ago and the issue then was how to make sure Wikimedia would thrive going forward. So I asked him the obvious question, is there any way I can help? And this is one of my areas of expertise.
What other non-profits have you been involved with in fundraising?
I'm a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, as well as working with the School of Business at Dartmouth College, and I'm on the board of Jerry Garcia's Rex Foundation.
One of the earliest donations to the WMF in the fundraiser was $500 for "tripling the number of elephants in Africa". A number of wiki people suspect this was Stephen Colbert "paying his dues". If you were making a donation, what message would you want to attach?
You know, I have made donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, but I didn't leave a message. I just made the donation, without any strings attached. I don't know what kind of message I would add, no I don't think I would.
If you had your choice of picking a celebrity to donate $500 to the Wikimedia Foundation, who would it be and why?
I don't know. You know, it's a good question, but I just don't know who I'd pick.
A pdf of a fundraising presentation from Wikimedia has an internal title of "Roger McNamee presentation". In the Wikimedia community there are three rampant rumors regarding this: 1) the presentation was originally prepared to request donations from you, 2) the presentation was created at your request, or 3) the presentation was created for a series of interviews which you helped arrange. Would you care to clarify or support any one of these theories?
It was presented to me, but mostly the last one. I can help Wikipedia, not writing articles maybe, so I volunteer my expertise.
An e-mail to the Foundation-l by Erik Möeller talked about a recent tour through Silicon Valley making initial contact with key people as part of the Foundation's fundraising effort with the support of a friend of Jimmy Wales. Were you that friend?
Not asked
If so, can you tell us some of the organizations or people you helped arrange meetings with?
Not asked
One contributor wanted to ask about a part of your portfolio, Move. The were interested in what you saw as a catalyst, and maybe what kind of timeframe...
I'm going to have to interrupt and say I'd have to be very careful here in answering any questions about our portfolio. We're very excited about Move, and all our investments, but we couldn't possibly discuss time. These things take time, and lots of work, and maybe we can talk about these things another time. What I can say is I'm very excited about Move.
That leaves me the question I'm very interested in, which is about your new band MoonAlice. When is the album coming out?
Oh, well now you're talking! You know, I can't really say for certain. I'm hoping, really hoping, we'll be able to release in June, but it depends on a lot of different schedules. And you know we're doing shows in the Midwest now, so we're working on music together. And you know, we're like the Wikimedia Foundation, we have four or five tracks, free, on our site. And three high quality full length shows there too. The band is really great because it's like there are old bands with old music, right? and new bands with new music, but there aren't many bands of old guys with new music, and that's what we're doing. New music. It's a great blend of rootsy, blues, folk, and more, all mixed in there, with some really great guitar and vocals.
Will you be coming to Vancouver, BC?
Is that where you are? Oh yah, I love BC, and Vancouver. We were on Vancouver Island for the folk fest a while back, and it was really great. I love the city.
Oh, there's one other thing, was there anything I didn't ask, or something you'd like to say?
vry mmbr of the cmmnty has an opportunity today to really vision wp. there is so much ooportunity here. Much of the content to date has been text, but pictures are really coming in, and you can just see the opportunity with audio and video. In the next years I think we're really going to see an expnsn bandidth. Wikipedia is a beautiful thing.
References[edit]