Sue Gardner of the the Wikimedia Foundation announced today the move of the foundation’s offices from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco, California. Makes sense from a technology point of view, may not be so good for European cross-collaboration, but may be advantageous for Asia and Australia interaction. Some of the announcement details:

In making this decision, we assessed five major cities: Boston, London, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC – as well as St. Petersburg itself. The upshot: after a fairly detailed analysis, I recommended to the board that the Foundation relocate to San Francisco, and the board accepted that recommendation.

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Here is what’s planned at this point:

- The new office will open sometime this winter. We’ll probably start out in downtown San Francisco, until we get our bearings and choose a permanent location.
- The St. Petersburg office will close late this winter, probably at the end of January.
- We know that many people’s personal circumstances will make it impossible for them to move, but we are hoping that some of the current staff will be able to come with us.
- The servers will remain in Tampa indefinitely. If we do choose to move them, that would be a separate, subsequent decision. At this point, it’s not under active consideration.