This week I have signed away another chunk of my life by helping to start up and offering to co-ordinate Wikimedia’s new Communication Projects Group, or comproj. This is great, because I’ve been interested in the Foundation and how it communicates for a while, so this is an excellent opportunity for me to do something useful for Wikimedia and also to learn some new skills. The Communications Committee has been dealing with press issues and the like for some time, however the Foundation’s newly-hired communications manager, Sandra Ordonez, has plans to get this secondary group set up for less time-sensitive tasks and those that require a larger slice of the community. My job is going to be hopping around and trying to keep people organised, which takes some work off the shoulders of Sandy. At the moment it’s all about recruiting, but I think we can start doing some good work very soon.

I think that this, coupled with my work as a member of the e-mail response team, allows me to call myself a volunteer for the Foundation, since I’m working more for Wikimedia than Wikipedia; the latter was where I got started. This is of course not too important, but I think it’s a good idea to have a title when asked for one by real life people, not so much online.