Volunteering Portal/Featured volunteer/2

John Cummings is an experienced Wikipedia editor and event organiser who started the Monmouthpedia project in 2011 and was more recently the Wikipedian in Residence at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum, in London.

I first got involved with Wikimedia UK when I attended TedX Bristol in 2011. Roger Bamkin and Steve Virgin were there talking about the project that had been done at Derby Museum - where QRpedia codes linking to articles had been placed on exhibits. I wanted to reuse and expand upon their idea for my hometown of Monmouth in Wales. The project grew to become MonmouthpediA.

I became a volunteer because Wikimeda were doing something amazing - and I didn't need permission to join in. It's easy to organise a Wikimedia event with a host organisation. Often host organisations will come up with the idea for an event, but Wikimedians are very welcome to initiate projects themselves - it's what I did in Monmouth. Once a host organisation understands the ubiquitous nature of Wikipedia (Wikimedia projects get 21 billion page views per month) and that they are able to make it a richer resource it becomes a very easy conversation to have.

I have received lots of support from Wikimedia UK, like advice on how to run events and projects, loans of equipment, funding for projects and desk space in their office when I need it!

If I could offer advice to people who want to run an event, it would be to try to attend an event before you run one yourself, and to teach someone you know before trying to teach strangers, maybe friends or family, try to pick people with different levels of computer literacy. And most importantly, be specific about what you want to achieve running an event.

John can be contacted on his user talk page.