Cascadia Wikimedians User Group, an independent group of Wikimedians, is the user group which serves as the regional affiliate for the Cascadia region of North America, including the Northwestern United States (Oregon and Washington, also known as the Pacific Northwest) and British Columbia. Its mission is to support Cascadian Wikimedians in their Wikimedia-related endeavors and to partner with local organizations in their use of Wikimedia projects.

When this organization matures to the point where it achieves Wikimedia chapter status, it will likely change its name to Wikimedia Cascadia.

Cascadia [ edit ]

Cascadia region

"Cascadia" is a term describing the bioregion surrounding the Cascade Range. The region politically centers on the cities Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, which are geographically proximate and each have city populations of about 600,000 and metropolitan area populations of more than two million. Cascadia also refers to the social movement to promote cultural independence for people in the region. Cascadia Wikimedians is not affiliated with the independence movement but does share the common goal of promoting local culture.

What does this organization do that independent volunteers cannot? [ edit ]

Independent volunteers can handle most Wikimedia projects, including the coordination of many events and outreach efforts. However, at the point when projects become so complicated that participants in them begin to consider a long-term, invested effort to make the project successful, the participants expect the professionalism and stability that comes with an organization rather than with only unaffiliated, independent volunteers. In such cases, Cascadia Wikimedians accepts proposals for collaboration so that Wikimedia users can have the backing and support of an organization when they conduct their Wikimedia outreach efforts. This makes the local Wikimedia community participants feel supported, the outreach audience feel more confident, and gives the international network of Wikimedia project participants a communication channel with the region so that they can have a stake in the major projects there.

Events and meetups [ edit ]

Wikimedians participating in Wiki Loves Libraries in Vancouver, Washington in 2013

Edit-a-thon in Portland (2013)

Seattle Wiknic (2016)

Editing as Activism edit-a-thon @UW Bothell, 2017

Do you want to learn about Wikipedia? Certainly you can learn by visiting the website, but perhaps you would like to meet a Wikipedian and get an in-person tour of the site! Are you a Wikipedian who wants a collaboration partner? Why not meet other Wikipedians near you and start working together?

Wikimedia Cascadia organizes and promotes meetups so that Wikipedians can have conversations with each other in person. There are many different kinds of meetups: backstage passes, conferences, edit-athons, social events, talks, unconferences, etc.

The following are the Wikipedia meetups pages for active cities in the Cascadia region:

With hundreds of thousands of contributors and millions of readers around the world, Wikipedia offers plenty to discuss and do. In addition to organizing meetups, multiple campaigns are organized by Wikipedians in the United States each year, providing many opportunities for local interaction. Examples include Wikipedia Day, the Great American Wiknic, Wikipedia Takes America and Wikipedia Loves Libraries.

Visit Cascadia Wikimedians' Events by type page for additional information about these campaigns.

Meetups by other friendly organizations [ edit ]

Other grassroots community organizations which host regular public meetups are listed below. While Wikipedia is not a focus of these organizations, these organizations promote online activism and education and have compatible values to Cascadia Wikimedians. They also have Wikipedia supporters at their meetings. All of them give presentations which are accessible to people without professional background in any particular field.

Mailing lists and social media [ edit ]

Mailing list : https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-cascadia

: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-cascadia Facebook : fbl.me/cascadiawiki

: fbl.me/cascadiawiki Twitter : @cascadiawiki

: @cascadiawiki Google+ : gplus.to/cascadiawiki

: gplus.to/cascadiawiki LinkedIn: linkd.in/1BFUwi7

Supported WikiProjects [ edit ]

Regional [ edit ]

Thematic [ edit ]

Organization outreach [ edit ]

A Wikimedian may want to request that an organization in Cascadia assist in the development of Wikipedia by sharing information, applying a Wikimedia-compatible license to its media content, or otherwise collaborating with the Wikipedia community in developing Wikipedia articles within its field of expertise. In such cases, Cascadia Wikimedians assists Wikimedians in making requests to organizations within the region by giving a forum for keeping records of the request, providing community review of the request, and potentially endorsing the request as a communication of the chapter.

How to do organization outreach [ edit ]

Identify an organization in the geographical jurisdiction of Cascadia Write a draft of a request to that organization and post it here for chapter review Get feedback from Cascadia Wikimedians participants and the general Wikipedia community If the community consensus is that the request is aligned with the goal of advancing the development of Wikipedia, then the chapter will endorse it Send the request with chapter backing!

Examples of requests to make from organizations [ edit ]

When you draft your proposal, consider adding any of the following requests:

Would you please send me…

general sources of information on the field of your organization’s expertise, regardless of whether these sources have anything to do with your organization specifically? links to online copies or citations for print-published third-party, externally published media describing your organization and its projects? images or other media describing your organization’s work, licensed with a Wikimedia-compatible free license an appointment to meet with any of your staff to talk about developing Wikipedia articles on your organizations' field of expertise? your thoughts about having one of your expert staff be the guest at an edit-a-thon in which people develop Wikimedia content in your field?

GLAM outreach [ edit ]

GLAM is an international Wikipedia project to support Wikipedians’ outreach efforts to galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Cascadia Wikimedians encourages interested Wikipedians to contact local cultural institutions to explore options for collaborating with them to advance the shared goals they might have with the Wikipedia project. For example, local museums may want that Wikipedians visit their collections, photograph them, then share the images in Wikimedia Commons and link those images to the Wikipedia article on the museum. Visit Cascadia Wikimedians' GLAM page for additional information.

Health organization outreach [ edit ]

Cascadia hosts a large number of major health organizations, including the following, which invest at least one billion dollars yearly in international health projects: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, PATH, Seattle BioMed, University of Washington, and World Vision.

All of these organizations do public educational outreach of their work, and all of them have a stake in community education in their field of expertise. Since Wikipedia is the leading or at least a very popular source of information for general information in their fields, these organizations should recognize that to achieve their outreach mission they ought to consider the quality of information which their outreach audience is getting from Wikipedia.

Cascadia Wikimedians reviews any proposals anyone has to collaborate with these organizations to advance Wikimedia projects. Examples of proposals might be contacting these organizations for help finding published sources of information in their field or doing an edit-a-thon with them.

Commercial entities [ edit ]

There is no real interest in partnering with typical commercial entities, but Cascadia hosts some commercial entities which hold critical data, publications, and media which are fundamental to understanding the region and global culture. If anyone has any proposal to contact the following organizations to request their assistance in collecting information on their fields of research then please share. No one wants any conflict of interest controversy or commercial promotion but each of these companies are billion-dollar entities and have had a cultural impact even beyond their economic impact, so understanding their fields is a part of understanding the unique influence each has had on the region.

Amazon.com is the world's largest online retailer and the most successful pioneer of the concept that people can buy things online. The company has expertise in web architecture and other Internet technologies.

Boeing is one of the world's largest aerospace manufacturers and the company's history is a timeline of the cultural heritage of aviation.

Lions Gate Entertainment is a major producer of movies.

Microsoft is the company which set as its goal "a computer on every desktop" at a time when owning a computer was a strange thing. They hold unique media about the societal adoption of personal computing technology.

Nike, Inc. holds information about footwear, athleticism, international manufacture, and advertising.

Starbucks is the world's largest coffee processor. Coffee is one of the world's most traded commodities. Starbucks funds and maintains the world's most thorough research on all aspects of coffee production, including its impact on economies both local and international, biochemical explanations of coffee variation by production technique, and its cultural influence.

Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest producers of paper and one of the leading funders of forestry research in Cascadia and internationally.

Activist organizations [ edit ]

People contribute to Wikimedia projects because they are fun but contributing is also an act of altruistic activism to increase free public access to the world's information. The following organizations are notable as major regional activist organizations. All of these organizations do educational outreach and if anyone has any ideas to collaborate with them in accordance with Wikipedia's community policy on adhering to a neutral point of view, ) then these organizations definitely have notable perspectives to share.

Wikipedia Education Program [ edit ]

The Canada Education Program and United States Education Program, projects within the Wikimedia Education Program, are efforts to connect university classes with Wikipedians who assist the students in learning about Wikipedia and creating article content. Cascadia Wikimedians provides "campus ambassadors" to classes. Campus ambassadors are Wikipedians who give presentations to the classes about Wikipedia and arrange for the classes to have support in editing. Campuses in the Cascadia region with ambassadors include San Francisco State University and the University of Washington.

Wilderness recreation, Wikivoyage, and OpenStreetMaps [ edit ]

OpenStreetMaps is a project to map the world. It works by having individuals track their travel with a GPS device, such as the smartphone they carry, and then upload their location data to the project under a free license. In this way, everyone who uploads data improves the integrity of the map. As of 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation began to support the OpenStreetMaps in various ways so that it could integrate its maps into Wikimedia projects - see OpenStreetMap on Meta Wikimedia and Collaboration with Wikipedia on the OpenStreetMap project page.

Cascadia attracts some of the best hiking, river sports, and mountaineering opportunities in the world, and no one can map these wilderness trails except the volunteers who actually travel them for fun. Wikimedia Cascadians seeks to facilitate the mapping of all regional wilderness travel routes in an effort to encourage people to appreciate its natural places. Along with the mapping data, region would benefit from its explorers noting the outdoor recreation opportunities in Wikivoyage, the Wikimedia tourism project. In that project, people can contribute trail guides, advice on wilderness exploring, and educational information which would help people understand the significance of the bioregion.

Wikipedia articles and Wikimedia Commons media files already exist for many hiking trails in the region, but these also need expansion.

Here are some potential partners in the region who might support a project to map wilderness paths:

Regional indigenous languages [ edit ]

Wikimedia Indigenous Languages is the primary organizing body for incorporating media and text related to indigenous languages. In the Pacific Northwest there are many native communities and organizations which already work to promote appreciation of native languages. Cascadia Wikimedians offers Wikimedia support to cultural institutions who would have their volunteers incorporate their local-language content into their own language Wikipedia projects. Here are some local organizations which host indigenous language researchers, writers, translators, and educators:

See also

Policies [ edit ]

Press about Wikipedia activity in Cascadia [ edit ]

Board [ edit ]

The current board and officer assignments are below:

2018-01-01 through 2020-12-31 terms (3 year)

SounderBruce

Jmabel

Bri

2019-01-01 through 2021-12-31 terms (3 year)

Peaceray

Conrad Kilroy (Ravin Pierre)

Benjamin Mako Hill

We have 3 remaining open seats on our board that may be appointed by the other board members, or may be filled during the next regular election.

Officers [ edit ]

President: Peaceray

Vice President: Benjamin Mako Hill

Secretary: Vacant

Treasurer: Vacant

Reports and meeting minutes [ edit ]