Fae: Monmouth becomes the world's first Wiki Town

“My weekend was spent with a crowd of Wikipedia enthusiasts enjoying the smart town of Monmouth. It enjoys a long history from being the site of what may be the earliest Roman fort in Wales (Blestium), a 10th century Norman castle and the birth place of King Henry V. It has become even smarter as the town Council decided to become the first town in Wales to roll out free wifi, and at the same time ensure there is relevant and fun open knowledge content about their town by partnering with Wikimedia UK to establish a world wide volunteer network (my buzzword is "e-volunteers") to write interesting Wikipedia articles about everything of interest in many, many languages.  Around the town, most visible in shop windows and public information and direction signs, there are beautifully made plaques with a name of an attraction and a two dimensional bar code. These can be scanned by anyone with a smart phone or tablet using applications like Google Goggles to whisk them off to a Wikipedia article about the relevant cultural attraction or profession. Thereally clever bit, is that if your mobile device uses a non-English language (such as Welsh, Spanish or Hungarian) then you are automatically directed to an article in your device's preferred language by the free QRpedia service... The Library (who happen to be located in a delightful restored historic building) have quietly have got on with their experiment of adding QRcodes to books and the tops of shelves so that the public can use their mobile devices to read Wikipedia articles on author biographies and topic areas (such as the history of Monmouthshire)... As we always seem to discover when us Wikimedians get a chance to chat with GLAM professionals (that's jargon for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), we share the same values and mission to deliver free and open access to the world's knowledge...  Another enthusiast was Linda Tomos (director of CyMAL - Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, part of the Welsh Assembly Government), who has responsibility for Welsh cultural programme and funding. She was interested to hear about our progress inside the British Library and The National Archives, and she had some lovely case studies to consider on how open knowledge principles should apply to her projects of 3D digitisation of Welsh historic artefacts and the mapping and documentation of preserved historic buildings. As Linda is heavily involved in the funding side, I suggested we work together on promoting a set of shared values for the access, preservation and openness that might become expected criteria for funding of public projects. It's the sort of thing our on-wiki collaboration works well with, so I have knocked up a stub at Open Knowledge manifesto for Wales for everyone interested to help with creating...  My radio interview about Monmouthpedia was put out on the 22nd on the BBC World Service, World Update programme. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00rzzmw @8'40'' (for the next 7 days)> ...”