Hi everyone,
Howie and I are pleased to announce the onboarding of four new community
liaisons for the product team. Howie has generously allowed me to send
this email, since their initial tasking will be to VisualEditor and the
Change Management team, working with me. At the conclusion of the
deployment of VisualEditor, they will be assigned as community liaisons to
other groups within the product team.
Please welcome four new contractors: Erica Litrenta, Sherry Snyder,
Patrick Earley, and (a returning face) Keegan Peterzell.
These positions are temporary, contract-based positions, each with an
initial term of roughly 90 days. Below, I've pasted below a brief summary
of each of the four so that you can get to know them. I know you'll join
me in wishing them the best with their new work!
pb
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
*Erica / Elitre*
Erica will be initially primarily tasked with supporting the deployment on
Italian Wikipedia, but will also be helping out with other wikis as well.
She edits as User:Elitre <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Elitre> on
the Italian Wikipedia. Born and raised in Cosenza, Italy, she graduated
from Università della Calabria (with a Master's degree in Foreign Languages
and Literature), and now lives in Bologna. Her favorite work experience so
far was last year with lettera27 Foundation, where she wrote case studies
for the WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge projects (go GLAMs!) and hunted for
more free contents and institutions to involve (She's been involved with
the Wikimedia Movement and has evangelized about our projects since 2005).
She's fond of: playing life/construction and management videogames, taking
pictures, making cheesecakes, studying and writing about Italian folklore -
notably the Palio di Siena, listening to symphonic metal/rock.
She's in a romantic relationship with OTRS (yes, you read that right - she
was once dubbed "romantic and dreadful" because of this) since 2006 which,
she points out, is longer than her relationship with her boyfriend: she met
him later.
*Sherry / WhatamIdoing*
Some of you know her well, if nothing else, for her descriptive username ("
WhatamIdoing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WhatamIdoing>"). She
writes:
*My name is Sherry Snyder, better known as "WhatamIdoing" on several
English-speaking projects. My culinary quest for the summer is a low-sugar
chocolate peanut butter, which those of you with European tendencies should
interpret as "like Nutella, only better." (In response to this, my husband
says, "POV-inline, dubious - discuss?") I've been a Wikipedian since
2007. I am a metapedian by nature and a typo fixer by compulsion. I'm
still a little amazed that the WMF hired me for this project and happy to
be joining the team that is trying to make the transition to VisualEditor
be more successful and less surprising.
*
Sherry will be supporting the deployment on the English Wikipedia and
non-English speaking projects to be assigned still. She was a huge help
during the development of the Terms of Use, and I'm looking forward to
working with her.
*Patrick / The Interior*
Patrick is from Kamloops, British Columbia (yes, another Canadian!), a
logging and cattle town in the Interior of the province. He edits enwiki
as "The Interior <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Interior>". He
has studied library science and film, and has worked a variety of
interesting jobs so far, including wildland firefighting, documentary
filmmaking, treeplanting, sorting books at a second hand store,
cataloguing, screenwriting, teaching English in Taiwan and, now, liaising
for the WMF! He currently lives in Vancouver in the aptly named Mount
Pleasant neighbourhood. He wishes to point out that he uses Canadian
spelling. :P
Patrick has been a Wikipedia editor since 2008. He loves working on
geography and both natural and human history. He has worked with the
Education Program, hopes to be more involved in GLAM projects in the
future, and is very interested in the Wikipedia/library interface. Patrick
will be focused on non-English speaking wikis.
*Keegan*
Some of you will remember that
Keegan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan> previously
worked with us on the 2010 Fundraiser. He has been editing since 2005,
and has a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of
Tennessee-Chattanooga. An English Wikipedia administrator, oversighter,
and CheckUser, he served a year-long appointment to the audit subcommittee
for 2011-2012.
Globally he is a volunteer response team leader (OTRS admin) and member of
the Communications committee.
He says that he's not an article writer, so he tries to give back in other
ways. Keegan will be reprising his role from the 2010 fundraiser, where he
was a workhorse in communicating with non-English wikis.
___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe(a)wikimedia.org