RecentChangesCamp Montreal, aptly named RoCoCo - a wiki style bar camp brought together some amazing minds from the wiki world. An unconference in style, a physical representation of wiki - these wiki camps let people decide the agenda and purpose of why they are there.
Participants at RoCoCo spanned from the West Coast of North America to Europe.
Nine wiki developers at RoCoCo formed a collaborative group to better communicate amongst wikis. A weekly IRC meeting is planned for the first Tuesday of each month at 21:00 GMT on irc.freenode.net, #wikiohana. Among the topics to be discussed are OpenID, wiki markup and an extended interwiki / sisterwiki map. A bot is in place to capture discussions and the chat room is open for use any time for those interested. Notes on the collaborative efforts can be found at [1].
Wikithon.org type house parties that teach wiki and the wiki way. - EugeneKim mentioned that Socialtext.com was doing similar type events.. parties to work on other wikis than your own.
WikiWednesday.org - co-located by time - a likely candidate is the day after the WikiTechTuesday IRC meetings, the first Tuesday each month.
WikiClock.org - The Wikiclock was created as part of the “Wiki and…” project, as a demonstration of the silly extent that we sometimes over-use Wiki technology.
It’s amazing how quickly news can accumulate. Never mind just the news outlets like print and television, with blogs and other internet-base news mediums constantly pumping out up-to-the-minute reports of interest it’s hard to keep up. Sure, sites like Digg.com help promote items deemed important by a global audience, but what about news for your area? In Portland, Oregon, we’re lucky enough to have ThePortlander.com to fill this gap. Based on open source content management software, ThePortlander.com is a web application allowing users to submit news articles related to Portland that are then reviewed and promoted by other users in a Digg-style popularity system. New items sit in a “Just In” section until they’ve had a chance to be voted on; users can also see most popular items by today, yesterday, week, month or via a search. According to their website, The Kastner Group, operators of ThePortlander.com, have a few more projects “coming soon,” so hopefully the idea will take seed and grow in other communities besides Portland. (View Comments)
There is something about log cabins as an image of rustic life, whether it’s on a weekend getaway or as your year-around abode. Thanks to modern technology though, the rustic life doesn’t require weeks of pain-staking labor and clearing of timber for planks. In a nod to the manufactured home style of building, the internet has begun to flourish with do-it-yourself kits and pre-manufactured cabins. In England, one such business is Hortons Portable Buildings, which offers a wide range of timber and wooden buildings including log cabins and houses, portable buildings, children’s playhouses, garages and more. Included on their WikiPage, Hortons-PortableBuildings.co.uk has some pictures of their buildings as well as a demonstration of their “Winterised Twinskin” insulation that allows for their cabins so equipped to be used year round. With delivery available in England and Ireland, their buildings are supplied in kit form with all timbers cut to size and pre-machined for perfect joints and ready to be assembled in hours with little technical knowledge required. (View Comments)
As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, so does thoughts of water parks and summer fun. Here at AboutUs headquarters, we’ve suffered through another rainy winter in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s nice when we see great work being done on WikiPages in sunnier climates. Over the last couple of days we’ve had a few editors working on a variety of travel destinations in Mexico, including SeaLifeParkVallarta.com, a water park in Vallarta brought to life by DolphinDiscovery.com. In addition to the fan favorite activity of being able to swim with the dolphins, attractions include water toboggans, a little water world for children, swimming pools, and shows with sea lions and tropical birds. (View Comments)
Fresh from a four week east coast tour, Los Angeles/Portland, OR based singer-songwriter Scott Fisher is headingback to Portland this weekend for a grand finale CD release show at local hotspot The Doug Fir Lounge this Saturday. The press response to his recent second national release ‘Step into the Future’ has been nothing short of overwhelming: Scott has been deemed a ‘sophisticated pop artist whose keyboard prowess, progressive vision, and ear-and-eye catching poise has drawn impressive response.’ We’ve been helping Scott and his 1 AM Approach community test out ways to use AboutUs as a venue for collaboration, communication, and building, complete with images, lyrics and more. Check out their page – ScottFisherMusic.com - to see what we’ve done so far and show our new community members some love! (View Comments)
At our core, wikis are about collaboration, creativity and self-management. Which is why we love to gather for collaborative sessions full of these ideals. One such event is the now annual RoCoCo Camp in Montreal. Taking place this weekend, the RoCoCo Camp features an Open Space model for the agenda, allowing participants to self-organize the flow of conversation as the event happens. Because of this, topic areas going into the conference are broad, but the focus largely is on wikis, with space for discussion and thoughts on anything relating to collaboration, creativity and self-management. Remote participation via the internet is also available for the bilingual event. Sponsors for the 2007 RoCoCo Camp include: Atlassian, Google, AboutUs, The Keiki Project, Socialtext Incorporated, The SolSeed Movement, Wikia and WikiHow. (View Comments)
Mental health isn’t just a buzz word anymore. Society has realized that the pursuit of mental health — as well as learning to deal with crises, stress, trauma, etc. — is of major benefit to our complete well-being. One website helping to provide some insight into the mental health realm is the blog BeyondBehaviors.com which provides strategies, information and thoughts on classroom management, school crisis response, crisis intervention, traumatic stress, counseling and other topics related to mental health. This award-winning site is maintained by a behavior specialist with a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology who has trained over 700 teacher and school staff on Crisis Intervention and Behavior Management. (View Comments)
With the US Presidential races taking shape, AboutUs is a great place for candidates and supporters (and detractors) to fill out information on the people and issues. Such is the case with supporters of Republican candidate Ron Paul, who last weekend started filling out the RonPaul2008.comWikiPage with information about the candidate as well as news items, related videos, links and more. Of course, since tonight is also the Republican Debate is seems fitting to spotlight not only the RonPaul2008.com page, but also our Republican Debate page, which provides a great way for debate viewers and followers to interact and discuss the issues, outcomes and thoughts from the debate. Of course, being a wiki, supporters of other candidates beyond Ron Paul are welcome to polish up their respective pages as well. Tonight’s debates start at 9 p.m. EST on FOX. (View Comments)
AboutUs has been invaded by monsters. Oh, sure, they’re cute and oh-so cuddly and made of recycled clothing blankets and sheets, but the monsters are deviously — ah, never mind the set-up — they’re just cute and oh-so cuddly. Created by a Baltimore artist and available via CottonMonster.com, these plush monsters are now a favorite in the AboutUs office. Two have already joining the ranks of the AboutUs Staff, with several more staff members already plotting their own Cotton Monster purchases. Because each Cotton Monster is hand-made without a pattern and evoked from the imagination of the artist, each one is not only unique, but seems to be be infused with quirks and personalities as well. Cotton Monster come in small and larger sizes, with the large one featuring a pocket-like mouth for storing army men, secret stores of candy or just having your Cotton Monster pretend to eat your arm. (View Comments)
