Peter Guy (technical volunteer)

Another of our head office volunteers is Peter Guy who has been with us for almost a year – supporting our IT team as a technical volunteer.

He joined us after retiring and moving to the area.

Peter knew he wanted to do something with his time and when he saw the role advertised, it resonated with him as something he would find interesting.

His role is mainly focused around the database which serves our Sonata internet radios.

Hundreds of people have these sets which give them access to thousands and thousands of radio stations from all around the world.

The content they can access is vast which means we need to keep on top of the database which holds all the information about the stations.

Peter is responsible for dealing with new content requests when users discover stations on our database they would like to have access to on their own individual radios.

He links these stations to their sets.

Another side to Peter’s role is tracking down and fixing URL links for the radio stations as these can often change and no longer work.

He also spends time helping out with other daily office tasks.

Peter explains: “On an internet radio station the frequency is [essentially] the URL which can change quite often.

“The reason most people listening to internet radio don’t experience problems is because they are listening through a database and someone is maintaining that database.

“It’s about keeping the radios going – that’s what it’s all about.”

Talking about volunteering, Peter says he enjoys it as it’s doing him good to keep busy and that everything he does for us makes a difference.

“I like it at BWBF – it’s a good atmosphere in the office,” he added.

He also said he would encourage anyone who is thinking about volunteering to give it a go – but to remember that it is a charity which is a place to give to.