Telecafe

There is an open invitation to join the Pikia Charter, which is the first step to forming the team and defining for-profit services.

Pikia is a proposal to establish an entrepreneurial arm of the PortlandWiki contributor team.

The essential idea is to launch a business enterprise that would seek commercial work and devote a portion of earnings and/or development resources to PortlandWiki.org. Pikia's origination comes from the notion that the existing contributors of PortlandWiki are equipped with commercially valuable skills. These talents could be leveraged to provide a bridge to PortlandWiki to professional level resources, while fostering a more robust network of contributors.

Pikia is a play on words: pwiki (pet name of Portland Wiki) and Wikia (the for-profit arm of Wikipedia).

Support

Pikia is a way to work on PortlandWiki without having to work for 'the Man'.

In other words, Pikia is a possible avenue of revenue that would allow primary contributors to focus full-time effort on creation of wiki-based content, project development and administration.

Concerns

As the idea of Pikia develops, there are concerns about the potential for confusion between PortlandWiki and Pikia that might inadvertently taint PortlandWiki's grassroots, public domain charter.

Specific concerns and proposed solutions:

• Need to avoid the perception that PortlandWiki is owned or controlled by Pikia or Pikia members, and not the greater community. New people won't help build PortlandWiki if they think it's built or controlled by a specific cadre of people. (added by kotra (talk))
  • Proposed solution by kotra (talk): Effectively communicate that anyone who chooses to help build PortlandWiki is an equal partner and has the same level of authority as any Pikia member, and that Pikia members are just a group of particularly active PortlandWiki contributors with a closely related side project. And that this side project, though it supports the PortlandWiki infrastructure and finances, has no implicit or explicit authority over PortlandWiki. Pikia supports PortlandWiki because that's part of Pikia's purpose. Perhaps formalize this in Pikia's mission statement. Also, Pikia members wouldn't "pull rank" in PortlandWiki disputes/debates, or cultivate the idea of "Pikia authority" in PortlandWiki (I don't foresee this to be a problem, but it deserves a mention I think). -kotra (talk) 05:37, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Join the Pikia Charter

Per discussion at April 18, 2011 Monday Meetup. Interested parties are calling for a charter. A list of who would be interested in pursuing the planning and creation of Pikia. Since the effort strives to be open and transparent, the hope is the list can be visible and available to add.

Please add your name if you're interested.

• Matthew (talk) 11:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Dave Myers 19:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• kotra (talk) 02:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Skills available

• Matthew
  • Business planning
  • Information architecture
  • Wireframes, flows, maps, various schematics
  • Market analysis
  • Manufacturer Product Design
  • Technical writing
  • Enterprise Software Design
  • Product Innovation
  • UI Design
  • Inventing
  • HTML,CSS, Jquery, CMS
• Dave Myers
• Kotra DeNies
  • Mediawiki configuration & maintenance
  • graphic design (print)
  • graphic design (web)
  • identity branding (particular training and experience in logo design)
  • HTML/CSS/Javascript/AJAX/XML/LotusScript
  • CMS configuration/customization: Lotus Notes/Domino/Administrator, MediaWiki (some WordPress, Joomla)
  • copy editing
  • press release writing
  • SEO
  • online & offline research
  • event organization
  • tech support

War of words!