Hi all,

Our fellowships program is growing, and I'm pleased to announce Jon Harald Søby as our newest Community Fellow.  Jon brings 6 years of experience in the Wikimedia community to his fellowship: he is an active editor, translator and vandal fighter for several Wikimedia projects, an admin and bureaucrat for Norwegian Wikipedia, and in the past has also been a steward, board member for Wikimedia Norge, member of the election committee for Wikimedia Norge and Wikimedia Sverige, and OTRS volunteer.

Language and localization are a major area of interest for Jon. Not only does he help translate the MediaWiki interface and extensions, he's also a founding member of the Language Committee and is finishing up a BA degree in Linguistics from Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has traveled widely is always thinking from a global perspective. All of this makes Jon a great fit for his fellowship project, which is focused on piloting a new model for volunteer translations in the 2011 Fundraiser. (Full disclosure: Jon started working with WMF earlier this summer as a Fundraiser Production Coordinator, but we just had to make him a Community Fellow when we saw how much potential there was for this project!).

Jon's fellowship will run until February 2012. His project priorities include recruiting and coordinating more translators for more languages, building pages and processes that make it easier for new volunteers to get started, and improving systems for producing high-quality translations. To learn more about the project or volunteer to help, please visit the 2011 Fundraiser Translations page and sign up to be a translator.