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Another WikiWednesday tomorrow (Nov. 7)

6 November 2007

It's that time of the month again for WikiWednesday, an opportunity for people in the wiki community and those interested in learning more to gather at various locations around the globe to discuss, meet and socialize.

This month, the Chicago WikiWednesday group has their first meeting, which follows an impromptu first meeting last month in Ann Arbor, MI; those of us in the wiki community are excited to see this list growing and growing:

• In the San Francisco Bay Area, they'll be meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the Socialtext co-working space, 695 High St, Palo Alto, CA 94301. more info
• The Chicago kicks off their first meeting at 6 p.m. at Cosi, 116 S. Michigan (near Monroe), Chicago, IL 60603. more info
• In London, they'll start gathering a 6:15 p.m. for a 7 p.m. formal start at the Sun Microsystems London Customer Briefing Centre, Regis House, 45 King William Street, London, EC4R 9AN. LondonWikiWednesdays.com
• The Ann Arbor WikiWednesday meeting will be at a 8:30/9 p.m. at Rendez-Vous, 1110 S. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. more info
• The Portland WikiWednesday group's meeting will again be held starting at 5:30 p.m. at the main AboutUs office, 107 SE Washington Ave Ste 520, Portland, OR 97214. more info

(all events are being held on Wed, Nov. 7, times are local)

To see a list of upcoming WikiWednesday events each month, check out the Wiki Wednesdays page on Socialtext.net.

Contibutor: TakKendrick

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 (......), we recognize that the UniversalWikiEditButton will also evolve over time. Rather than struggling to create a perfectly evocative button for version 0.1, we recognize our primary objective is quickly getting to wide deployment of a single icon that is good enough. This exercise will be a success when we can demonstrate the ability of the wider wiki community to self organize for collective action.

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.