Weblog/Oct-2007
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Venture Northwest 2007 a showcase for Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial moxie
25 October 2007
Each year, the Venture Northwest conference is an opportunity to show off the region's entrepreneurial might, with new and emerging companies in Oregon, Washington and throughout the Pacific Northwest presenting before a collection of the region (and country's) Venture Capital companies and other sponsors. This gives all in attendance a chance to learn about and celebrate the region's hot new companies in addition to meeting potential investors.
Presenters at this year's Venture Northwest 2007 include: Brammo Motorsports, Brain Candy, Daverci Solutions, Inc., END Outdoor, Escapia, Inc., Formotus, Healionics Corp., iSense Corp., Lagotek Corp., Lumencor Inc., Phoseon Technology, SynerG Software and Versis as well as AboutUs.
Contributor: TakKendrick
Universal Wiki Edit Button version 0.1: a work-in-progress
19 October 2007
How cool would it be if there was a shared symbol on every wiki, where people got to know that any place they see this symbol, they can click it and edit the page? How great would it be if we came to agreement on such a symbol in a bottom-up, wiki-way? We can have such a symbol.
The idea of a Universal Wiki Edit Button began at RoCoCo in Montreal. This inter-wiki project to first adopt version 0.1 involves participants from several wiki communities and wiki engines (more are welcome!). We think version 0.1 will define the metaphor to use, and that subsequent versions will expand on the visual appearance of the icon. If individual wiki communities can come together, with some symbolic unity (a common brand, in a way), intended to makes all stronger. More than that though, through shared actions and decision-making, the larger wiki community can become more self-aware. The strength of this larger community is also demonstrated though our ability to self-organize for a common aim. The following two sections are from the actual work-in-progress UniversalWikiEditButton document. Please join us!
Purpose
Just like the weblog community has the orange "radio waves" RSS icon
, we want an easily-recognizable universal Edit This button. This is a movement to start the ball rolling. When this process succeeds, the participating wikis will include this edit button in some way. Just as the RSS icon evolved over time (
...
...
Principles
The following principles guided our selection of the 0.1 UniversalWikiEditButton
and will inform our selection of version 0.2
- Compatible
- Language-independent
- Wiki-engine-independent
- Evocative of Edit
- Metaphorically Rich
- Professional
- Simple
- Skinnable
- Re-taskable
Sunday, 21st through Tuesday, the 23rd of October is WikiSym, an ACM conference co-located with OOPSLA in Montreal. WikiSym will be an ideal place to work further on the UniversalWikiEditButton, to unleash some wiki-creativity to move the process forward, hopefully concluding with a v0.1 UniversalWikiEditButton that wiki developers can add to their wikis.
Contributors: TedErnst, Obed Suhail
Returning and New Readers
15 October 2007
Recently AboutUs started doing something in the vein of Richard K Miller's post last winter about his Seth Godin inspired plugin which tries to distinguish between new and returning readers to a WordPress weblog. Here is our attempt to help new readers to the AboutUs wiki, heck, really any wiki.
First off, we are in a continuing phase of understanding WhoWeAre and how we exist in this new emergent internet. We realize many of you are discovering wikis and that they initially can be confusing. Hey we are here to help you with that, teach TheWikiWay, and other exciting things about wiki.
To help us explain this, we have set up messages (currently for non-logged in people) at the top of our site, which try to help readers by providing a clearer message.
For example, the message on the AboutUs home page and what folks see when you click around the website:
Another example is the message for people who come to AboutUs via an external site, such as a search engine like Google:
These two sets of messages are an attempt to serve up better messaging based on where you are on AboutUs and how you got here. In that spirit, please check out WhoWeAre and AboutUsTagline for other ideas. If you have any thoughts on possible messages, feel free to add them here: AboutUs PossibleMessages.
Contibutors: MarkDilley, Vinh Nguyen, TakKendrick
WikiWednesday wrap up
4 October 2007
Portland Recap
In Portland, the group discussed quite a few things, including getting a presentation from David McCabe, a developer who's created LiquidThreads, an extension allowing for threaded discussion on TalkPages in MediaWiki installations (like Wikipedia, AboutUs, Wikia and wikiHow). The LiquidThreads is currently being tested on WikiEducator.org; the demo received rave reviews from all in attendance.
Other discussions centered about various wikis, as well as an initiative to regularly invite other Portland area groups to learn about wiki at our monthly meetings. The hopes of this initiative is to start teaching about wiki to various types of people in organizations, including (but not limited to) other tech groups, teachers/school groups, politicians, unions and more.
In addition to McCabe, the Portland WikiWednesday consisted of a number of Wikipedians, AboutUs staff, Charles Radley of Lunarpedia.org, Chuck Kisselburg from ICANNWiki and a few other area enthusiasts.
The next WikiWednesday in Portland will be held on Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the AboutUs offices, 107 SE Washington St., Suite 520, Portland, OR 97214.
Ann Arbor Recap
NOTE: Ann Arbor notes courtesy of BrianKerr and taken from ArborWiki.org.
Ann Arbor's Wiki Wednesday, a last minute affair, was lunchtime (the 3rd of October 2007), 12:15pm at SilviosOrganicPizza.
4 people in attendance for lovely pizza and conversation. Topics included:
- Google Analytics for ArborWiki -- 'fake click' integration of revision numbers, etc., as a way to link user agents and other info to edits
- weird spambot behavior on ArborWiki:
- one-line nonsense word spam
- ampersand truncator spam
- recaptcha work Matt did, how this is helping
- wiki-library, wiki-map, wiki-blog integrations
- The-Communicator.org [1] versus the Ann Arbor News
Contibutors: TakKendrick, BrianKerr
Getting ready for WikiWednesday this week (Oct. 3)
1 October 2007
As we've been mentioning the past couple of months, WikiWednesdays are a monthly opportunity for people in the wiki community and those interested in learning more to gather once a month. For newbies and seasoned hands alike, these events are co-located in time (generally the first Wednesday of the month), with other events happening (theoretically) on the same day all around the world.
This Wednesday being the first one of the month, there are a few WikiWednesday events located around the globe:
- In the San Francisco Bay area, there's a gathering at 6:30 p.m. at Citizen Space, the co-working space located at 425 Second St. #300 in San Francisco, CA. Featured speakers will be the IT team fro the local public TV station KQED, who will share how their no-profit organization uses wikis. (more information)
- The London WikiWednesday event will be held at the creative consultancy, WhatIfInnovation, The Glassworks, 3-4 Ashland Place, London, W1U 4AH. Plans for the event include gathering at 6:15 p.m. for food, refreshment and relaxed chat, with a 7 p.m. formal start for 5-minute presentations from individuals and organizations using wiki and social media technology. (more information)
- In Montréal, there will be an event at 6 p.m. at Caféo, at 4177 Rue Saint Denis (corner of rue Rachel and rue Saint Denis). (more information)
- Again this month, the Portland, OR WikiWednesday event will be held at the AboutUs offices, 107 SE Washington St., Suite 520, Portland, OR 97214. Starting at 6:30 p.m., the gathering is held as an "Open Space" meeting, attendees are invited to bring ideas for projects and help create the itinerary during the event. For those new to wiki or just looking for more information, there will be an "introduction to wiki discussion. (more information).
- While no event or location has been planned for Chicago, IL or Ann Arbor, MI; both cities have someone interested in either bootstrapping an event for this week or planning for next month. Anyone interested in WikiWednesday events in Chicago should contact Ted Ernst; for planning an event in Ann Arbor, contact Brian Kerr (Ann Arbor).
To see a list of upcoming WikiWednesday events each month, check out the Wiki Wednesdays page on Socialtext.net.
Contibutor: TakKendrick
