Hello Sandra!

My name is Sandra Fauconnier. I am joining Wikimedia Sverige in the role of Product Strategist. WMSE is establishing a Content Partnership Hub to support the Wikimedia movement in working with partners across the world, to make content freely available on the Wikimedia platforms. In my new role, I will help to develop structures to support the necessary software that is used in content partnerships; making sure that Wikimedia affiliates, groups, volunteers, developers and other stakeholders can all use, and contribute to, a healthy and sustainable ecosystem of key tools.

Sandra Fauconnier, photo: Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I am trained as an art historian and have worked on digital and online video projects in the cultural sector since the early 2000s. I am also a long-term Wikimedia volunteer: I did my first edit on Wikipedia in 2003, and am now also a very active contributor to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

In the past 10 years I have also become professionally active in the Wikimedia movement, working on GLAMwiki and structured data projects: as a Wikimedian in Residence, and with Wikimedia Nederland and the Wikimedia Foundation. I actively use many of the volunteer-developed tools in the Wikimedia community on a daily basis, and am a huge fan of this ecosystem; I’m very excited to help make it more sustainable!

Gazelle Kwikstep folding bike, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons using OpenRefine! Photo: Sandra Fauconnier, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Besides my work at Wikimedia Sverige, I also work as Project Director for OpenRefine, a free and open source software for data cleaning and manipulation. In my free time, I enjoy contributing to Wikidata and Commons as a volunteer (usually on the topics of public art, architecture and biodiversity). This encourages me to go out to take photos, where I’m especially drawn to artworks, buildings and plants that most people will not notice or may even find very ugly. Whenever the weather in my hometown Rotterdam (NL) is not terrible, you may find me on my bike: I’m a passionate recreational cyclist, increasingly going on multi-day bicycle trips now as well!