PortlandWiki:Barnraising/PR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:

PortlandWiki Inbox -

Mark Dilley -

Kotra DeNies -

Dave Myers -

Public invited to PortlandWiki's Barnraising event

Come join others to help build Portland's knowledge commons

17:13, 1 March 2011 (PST) | Portland, OR -- Do you ever wish you had a place where you could share details about your street, neighborhood, favorite Portland hangout, band, art gallery or...?

Your wish has come true! PortlandWiki.org is the City Wiki for Portland, Oregon. It's Portland's "knowledge commons" that welcomes your input; a community information hub that wants the knowledge you have to share!

So what's a city wiki? A city (or civic) wiki is a collaborative website where citizens of a particular town, city or region can share their knowledge about their local community. The wiki serves as a knowledge base or information hub for the community. It's where citizens contribute news and information about their town or neighborhood. A city wiki is a sort of "local Wikipedia" for a particular town or community. You might think of PortlandWiki as the "Wikipedia for Portland."

PortlandWiki welcomes participation from all Portlandians, and anyone else interested in building an outstanding community resource for the Rose City. To help kick off broader community participation, PortlandWiki volunteers are organizing a...

PortlandWiki Barnraising Event

PortlandWiki's Barnraising event is where you help decide which improvements to PortlandWiki are most important, and then help make them.
Attendees will enjoy an afternoon of vibrant, real-time collaboration. Share your Portland knowledge and help make PortlandWiki a world-class city wiki. Why would we expect anything less than a world-class wiki from the "birthplace of wikis"?
PortlandWiki's Barnraising event is FREE and open to the entire Portland community. Refreshments and "unique" swag will be happily provided at no cost.

Where: Portland Central Library at 801 S.W. 10th Avenue, downtown Portland.
When: Saturday March 5, 2pm - 5pm.
Room: Central's U.S. Bank Room, near main entrance on right as you enter the building.

Helpful links

Barnraising Event details page | Come tweet with us. | RSVP | Calagator! | Contact PortlandWiki

About PortlandWiki

PortlandWiki was launched in October 2009 by a group of local volunteers.
In less than a year and a half, volunteers have made 25,406 editorial contributions, creating 6,071 pages, of which 1,686 are content articles (the other pages are tutorial, administrative or other internal pages). 491 people have obtained their own PortlandWiki account, of which 1 have made recent content contributions.
People contribute to PortlandWiki out of the sheer joy of sharing their Portland knowledge, interests and passions with the greater Portland community. PortlandWiki is not just another business directory for a public relations flack^[1] to post content on behalf of some faceless company or organization. That said, neighborhood businesses and local organizations are strongly encouraged to share information about what you do.
PortlandWiki is on its way to evolving into the "Swiss army knife" of news, information, community resources and historical archives for Portland and the greater Portland community. The information-rich resource hub PortlandWiki contributors bring to life can serve as a constantly updating, organic, people-powered knowledge base that is open, accessible, useful and available to everyone.
PortlandWiki is not meant to take the place of the rich tapestry of community based information resources already available to Portlandians, but to act as a robust, fluid and evolving community powered directory to those resources. Within that framework, PortlandWiki volunteers hope to spawn collaborative communities of contributors who find value in reaching out into the community, beyond the information silos they may normally operate within. It's exciting to watch vibrant and new collaborative communities spring up as a result!

Folks in our community have a wonderful opportunity to significantly add their voices and insights to this unique community resource. We look forward to building PortlandWiki with you!

About wikis

Portland, Oregon is the world birthplace of "wiki", the website format that gave rise to Wikipedia, wikiHow, and thousands of other specialized wikis. In 1994, Portland resident Ward Cunningham created the first wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository, commonly called WikiWikiWeb.
A wiki is a type of website that is edited and built by visitors through the browser.
WikiLeaks started out as a wiki but no longer is.