PortlandWiki:Barnraising

This page is a brainstorming page for a possible upcoming "barnraising" event in early 2011. (Proposed date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011, or Saturday, March 5th.) Our goals for this event are threefold:

1. Have fun and celebrate collaborative community-building culture, Portland, and PortlandWiki.
2. Have speakers, presentations, and open discussions to improve everyone's understanding of the frontiers we exist in.
3. Identify areas in which PortlandWiki can improve, give people the tools to achieve this improvement, and kick off a series of follow-up events to keep our PortlandWiki-building momentum going.

A possible fourth purpose is to show off WikiWednesday's new meetup space at Meyer Memorial Trust (this may not happen, we have yet to discuss this with Meyer Memorial Trust|MMT!) and also to potentially assist with introducing PortlandWiki to others engaged in Portland's non-profit sector. The overall goal is to encourage greater participation from this and other Portland communities.

Update: since we would like the venue to be the Meyer Memorial Trust, and we haven't been able to meet with MMT sooner than Feb 1, we are rescheduling the event for the first Wednesday of March, March 2nd, or the following Saturday, March 5th.

Confirmed Speakers

• "Farmer" & "Wiki Zeus" Pete (Petey) Forsyth

Fresh from Wikimedia Foundation, Pete is a foremost authority on all things wiki, and will deliver the keynote address. He will not, however, extol the virtues of WikiLeaks.

Venue considerations

• Meyer Memorial Trust (Scheduled a meeting with Marie D. on Tuesday, February 1st.)
• AboutUs
  • may encourage participation from original crew
  • may be difficult to ensure accessibility due to doors locking at 5:30?
  • would need approval from Ray King
• Backspace
  • could be noisy
  • is typically drafty and not entirely intimate
• Blitz Pearl
  • has been offered by manager to dedicate entire upstairs
  • may be noisy/dark
  • no presentation screens, layout is difficult for speaking or presentations

Activities

• free drinks/food
• have speakers
• give brief overview of PortlandWiki and/or its history and/or how it is different now than after launch in September 2009
• identify what needs to be done
• secure activity commitments from attendees
• if time, have collaborative editing session
• raffle

Ways to promote activity after initial commitment

• frequent follow-up meetings that are fun or otherwise personally worthwhile
• rewards (mentioned below)

(Good) reasons to edit

For Portland enthusiasts

• Share your love and knowledge about Portland and all its quirks
• Learn pieces of Portland's story from fun and enthusiastic peers
• Get to know your neighbors; participate in discussion about local issues
• Get practice and feedback on writing, photography, design
• Find a local audience for your writing, your photos
• Learn to use a wiki in a fun and welcoming environment
• Build unique resources (e.g., where are there pay phones in Portland? Bike racks? Free WiFi?)

For wiki people

Are you already working on one or more wikis? Maybe one for your organization, or for Wikipedia? Here's why it might be fun to work on Portlandwiki, too!

• Exchange ideas about wikis; show off your work, learn from others.
• Help build a network of wiki and free culture enthusiasts in Portland. Portland has a rich history in the wiki and free culture worlds; this is a way to extend and express it.
• Be part of something innovative!! We can be more nimble than a big wiki like Wikipedia. Is there a way to mash up our content with OpenStreetMap? Let's find out! Want to try out a cool new wiki extension? Let's give it a whirl! It's fun to fool with wikis with other wiki folk.

For businesses

• Bring a little local traffic to your web site
• Network in your neighborhood; get to know your neighbors and neighboring businesses

For non-profit organizations

• Establish your role in Portland's story

Ways to edit (or, what we need)

These include long-term as well as short-term goals.

• creating new articles and improving existing ones
  • goal: 10 impressive articles, worth showing anyone!
  • goal: 500 very basic articles (descriptive sentence or two, a url or two, perhaps a few standardized section headers [history, etc] a few categories)
• adding categories to articles
• creating [[wikilinks]] from one article to another
• great freely licensed images, video, audio, drawings, other art and creative media
• content that is useful or interesting that unique to the Portland community and to PortlandWiki
  • example: How to contest a parking ticket
  • example: Google map of Portland neighborhoods (with borders defined)
    • Like this? But, maybe OpenStreetMap instead of Google? -Pete (talk)
      • Yeah Pete, that's the idea! -WikiMaster (talk) 06:18, 21 December 2010 (PST)
  • example: Google map of all articles' physical locations automatically created by street data in their articles
  • example: Portland history articles
  • example: superb and thorough listing of Portland music venues and/or musicians and bands
  • example: ? (you add here)
• giving awards, compliments to other editors that are doing good work
• organizing exciting/fun events/meetups
• improving technical infrastructure, graphics (interface, awards, illustrations, etc)

Timeline

Feel free to adjust or alter this timeline as you see fit, this is a community-planned event and anyone can help!

1. Done Early January - Dave schedules meeting with Marie Deatherage at Meyer Memorial Trust (MMT)
2. Now - draw up rough schedule, recruit speaker(s)
3. January 15 - WP10 event, publicize Barnraising event by distributing postcards/flyers or just mentioning it (done)
4. Mid-late January - draw up schedule, create backup plan if preferred venue (MMT) falls through
5. February 2 10-11am - Dave, Kotra, Mark, and anyone else interested meets with Marie at MMT to discuss if they can spare some office space or a conference room on Wednesday evenings for us to host WikiWednesdays
   • I'm available at this time if needed. Pete (talk)
6. February - check out MMT space and ensure is suitable (if available)
7. Week prior to March 2 - finalize food, drinks, speakers/schedule
8. March 2 or March 5 - Barnraising

Big Picture

Frequently conversations at our Monday Meets or WikiWednesday meetups will gravitate towards weightier subjects. Not in the "a moment on the lips, an eternity on the hips" sense, but more like a "wow, like that's totally deep" sense. One theme we hope weaves its way throughout our Barnraising event is the "what's our motivation?" question. What's your motivation? Why PortlandWiki? What are some of the possibilities that can emerge? What are your thoughts and ideas? How can PortlandWiki contribute to the entire Portland community?