Hi all,
One thing I have been thinking about is if it would make sense to base a number of programs that we have in various stages of development in Wikimedia Cascadia instead of developing and running them as an individual.
For example, personally I am involved with Cameras for Commons Photographers, which is currently in development as a grants program in IdeaLab. Someone needs someone to run it if WMF funds it. Other chapters apparently have similar programs. Would people be open to the idea of running this as a local, or global, program out of Wikimedia Cascadia?
Another project that I have in mind is transforming the presentation that I have been drafting into a series of well-polished instructional videos about Wikipedia that could be posted on Commons for use by professors or researchers. I am currently thinking about requesting a WMF grant to make this happen, but I think it would be great to develop and run the program through Wikimedia Cascadia so there are more people involved. For example, I think it would be great to have a diversity of presenters for different modules, and we have some good diversity of highly skilled Wikimedians here in Cascadia who I hope would be interested in participating.
Another Seattle Wikimedian, and I forget exactly who proposed this, suggested that we could use our Wikimedia affiliation to get a greater level of access to areas that are interesting to photograph for Commons, for example underground tours of Seattle where we might be able to get press-level access.
Last but not least, I hear that we have some existing GLAM and cultural outreach projects in the Portland area, and I think it would be great to see if affiliating those projects more directly with Cascadia and the Wikimedia brand would be beneficial. For example, we might be able to get support for micro-grants for bus fares to enable more people to attend our events.