Wikipedia:Meetup/Portland/April 2012

Selena and Pete invite you to a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon! Join us and the Portland wiki community as we dive into editing the biggest, most fascinating, and most collaborative encyclopedia in human history. This informal event will help you get your bearings, create an account and start hacking in this decade-old project. Never edited a web page? Never fear! We will give you a background/overview of how things work and suggest some easy first-timer edits. Or, if you're an old hand, please join us and share your valuable knowledge!

What to bring:

• A laptop. (If you don't have one, try to borrow one! Or just let us know you need one -- we will try to come up with a few loaners.)
• Ideas. Is there a new Wikipedia article you've been dying to write, or an existing one that needs some love? Poke around on Wikipedia before you come, and make a list!
• Interesting reference materials -- books, magazines, library card (for logging into databases).
• An appetite for knowledge and snacks -- [_____]* has generously kicked in some geek fuel to power us through.

[*] Okay, so we're still working on this part, but we have high hopes!

Hosts

• Selena Deckelmann, a Portland entrepreneur, techie and enthusiastic Wikipedia novice, and an advisor to the Ada Initiative (a non-profit supporting women in open technology and culture)
• Pete Forsyth, a Portlander at heart currently spending most of his time in San Francisco; a founding member of Wikipedia's WikiProject Oregon, PortlandWiki and an online collaboration/Wikipedia consultant (see wikistrategies.net)

Venue and time

• The offices of P-I-E, 1227 Northwest Davis Street, Portland
• Saturday April 21, 11:00-3:00
• Cost: F-R-E-E!

Topics

• Women's history: following on a successful event in San Francisco and elsewhere, we'll continue to work on topics of interest to or about women. Selena will be on-hand to relate her experience from the San Francisco Women's History Month Editathon.
• Portland and Oregon: WikiProject Oregon and PortlandWiki.org have been working at this for a long time -- but there's a ton left to do! Pete can point you to interesting topics, reference materials, and just babble on and on about Oregon history, politics, etc. Be careful what you ask for!
• Anything else wiki you feel like working on!

Participants

Please add your name below if you're interested! Give us some way to get in touch in case we need to -- but beware of spambots, you may not want to post your email address! A Wikipedia account, a Twitter handle, a cryptically encrypted email address like b o b at example com, whatever works for you :)

• Pete (talk)
• Dave Myers (User page on PortlandWiki.)
• Another Believer
• Michael Andersen (talk) For the love of wiki, but also to (knock wood) correct the cosmic anomaly that has prevented me from meeting Pete.
• Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
• Selena (talk)
• Valfontis (talk) I found out I have a prior committment, darn it.
• Jclemens (talk) Possibly... depending on a few factors.
• Caseorganic (talk) This would be great! I'll try to make it.
• Teresa Boze (talk) hoy hoy
• Scottywong (talk) Not likely I'll be able to make it, but there's a slim chance
• EncMstr (talk): I plan to be there for the whole session. The only doubt is whether by bicycle or car...
• Dhr @dhrasmus

Outcomes

We had about 15 people, including many of those listed above, and an interested City Commissioner. We worked on a few articles together. I'm trying to remember 6 months later -- here are the ones that come to mind:

• Dorothy McCullough Lee, the first female mayor of Portland. (Revisions during event)
• Gretchen Kafoury, prominent Portland politician during the 1970s–'90s (Revisions during event)
• Irina Ratushinskaya, Russian dissident and writer (Revisions during event)

Minor revisions:

• Kagi chart
• Rich Cho
• Jeld-Wen Field
• Bill Sizemore