On 17 May 2012 17:52, Howie Fung hfung@wikimedia.org wrote:
Everyone,
It’s my pleasure to announce that James Forrester is joining our San Francisco office as a Technical Product Analyst, supporting the Visual Editor team. James started his work as a remote contractor yesterday and will be joining us in San Francisco later this year as a staff member.
James will help prioritize the short term and long term work log on the Visual Editor, conduct user research, and incorporate community feedback into the development process.
As many of you know, James is a long-time Wikimedian. He started contributing to English Wikipedia in October 2002, and was a founding member of their Arbitration Committee. He was also the movement’s volunteer Chief Research Officer, helping shepherd the predecessor of what is today the Research Committee, has for years been the “gopher-in-chief” at the Wikimania community conferences, and helped found Wikimedia UK in 2005.
You forgot one biggie: he has run the London Wikipedia meetup which first started in June 2004 has now met 57 times.
Hong Kong has met more often, but London is, I believe, the "Original and Best" (in all 57 varieties).*
* The Heinz joke blatantly stolen from Jon Davies at Wikimedia UK.
Anyway, James F. knows more about Wikipedia than most people on the planet. Good hire.