WikiWednesday is a free monthly gathering of wiki enthusiasts that AboutUs has hosted for several years now. Usually it’s fairly open in format, but occasionally we roll up our sleeves and all collaborate on something pressing. This is one of those times.

In the wiki world, a gathering dedicated to work on a particular site is called a Barn Raising, and this month we’re devoting WikiWednesday to a barn raising for a Portland city wiki.

A city wiki is a place for everyone to find and share information that matters to their community, and now Portland will have one too. Please join us for WikiWednesday tonight (same time, same place) to help create the building blocks for PortlandWiki.org. They’ll be snacks, drinks, and plenty of wiki experts around to help you contribute to Portland’s wiki in whatever way you can.

WikiWednesday is tonight at AboutUs.

We have a Facebook group: PDX WikiWed (which you can join).

Possible topics are:

* Thinking (and maybe working) further on a PortlandWiki

* Thinking (and maybe start planning) next year’s RecentChangesCamp.

Hope to see you tonight! If you are not in the Portland area, join us on IRC at #WikiWed.

Inspired from the fabulous Facebook PDX WikiWed group (which you, yes you, can join) announcement:

Hi all, just a reminder about WikiWednesday tomorrow night.

Possible topics:
* the City of Portland is curious about setting up a civic wiki for – the City of Portland.
* Wired.com GeekDad recent post highlights a civic wiki, Bloomipedia and their twist on WikiWednesdays… WikiWeekend – hosted at a public place ( a library) and doing Social Media training on top of wiki work. sounds like an interesting idea!
* The Intellipedia video.

Hope to see you all tomorrow evening!

Seeing this post last week about the 11 Unitentionally Hilarious Domain Names reminded me that I wanted to write about that from the AboutUs angle.

First of all, we have a bot who gets public, fair use information from a website that we haven’t heard from. Then the bot tries to CamelCase the domain name – which usually results in a successful event. When it doesn’t the results can be hilarious, as noted from Identity Woman a couple years ago.

When the bot gets it wrong, it gets it really wrong. As noted by RunningAsRoot last year. (No we don’t think they are trafficking marijuana.)

Please, for a good time, check out some of our bot’s best-miss-hits, AboutUsBotGoneBad

Come join us at WikiWednesday 5:30 – 7:30 tonight (107 SE Stark) to discuss these wiki ideas and more! (like the new Wikia bliki option and SocialText’s new offering)

Oh, by the way, even the Cub Scouts get this idea!!

props to Vartan for the fancy bot graphic!

A month ago, we let you know about a fantastic new conference on open source in Portland: Open Source Bridge. Now, after reviewing the 260 proposal submissions, the volunteers of Open Source Bridge have announced the speakers.

Taking in to account the 400+ comments on the submissions, a great array of speakers have been chosen, broken down by track in to Business, Chemistry, Cooking, Culture and Hacks. Basically, Open Source Bridge has proven that it has something for anyone involved in open source, regardless of experience, interest or expertise.

In addition to these speakers, don’t forget that our own Ward Cunningham will be keynoting. Also, a little bird told us we’ll be having a June/July WikiWednesday in concert with Open Source Bridge. (Stay tuned.)

It seems that wiki design in on the minds of everyone these days. Whether you’re founding one of your own or just trying to glean some of the usability features, wikis are an important case study in understanding how knowledge and culture are shared on the Web and behind the firewall.

To that end, we’re pleased to say that our own Ward Cunningham will be speaking at CHIFOO — the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon — about the design principles of the technology he invented. Since it will happen concurrently with the monthly WikiWednesday gathering we host, we’re glad to be able to invite everyone at CHIFOO back to AboutUs after for drinks, snacks and more wiki discussion. CHIFOO is at CubeSpace just a couple blocks away from our offices, so please, feel free to follow Ward on over when you’re finished.

This month’s WikiWednesday may (or may not) include the following topics, in it’s usual informal wiki format:

5:30pm – 8:30pm

* OregonHealthConsensus

* Wikimania

* UniversalEditButton

It would be lovely to see you there – rsvp though Facebook – if you have an account.

Also, announcing WikiMeetups.com – an awesome website idea from a friend of AboutUs

Let’s chat, mingle, and wiki together.

One of this month’s topics may easily include the recent “Universal Edit Button” (http://UniversalEditButton.org) or the upcoming Wikimania event!

and we imagine the rest will self organize – itself.

at the AboutUs office, 107 SE Washington #520 5:30-8:30