Greetings, Pine, et al.
Glad to finally have a mailing list up and running!
Portland has had the most success by riding the coattails of major campaigns such as Art+Feminism and Wiki Loves Libraries (WLL). The 2012 WLL event was held at the Central Library:
In 2013, I helped organize WLL events in both Portland and Vancouver, Washington:
In these cases, organization involves reaching out to libraries (or, in case often they reach out to me directly), setting a time and date, then spreading the word via talk page invitations and WikiProject notices. These three events have each attracted roughly 10 participants.
A "non-Wikipedian" (meaning someone who does not contribute to Wikimedia projects often) proposed a local Art+Feminism event at PSU (she teaches art) as part of the national campaign. She created an event page on Facebook and I helped by distributing invites on-wiki. The event attracted around 40 people and was covered by local press. Using social media can be a great way to get Wikipedia events on peoples' radar.
The A+F event was so successful, that one attendee volunteered to organize a follow-up event at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, which attracted at least a dozen participants:
Apologies for the many links, but they can be helpful as examples of event pages. I think it is very important to create separate pages for each event, to archive the activities and results of each meetup.
WikiProject Oregon remains an active project, Though weekly collaborations have slowed, project members are still creating great content, but generally on their own. We do still have some collaborations, and we also host two themed photo campaigns each month. We assign two themes such as "Coffee Culture" or a specific neighborhood and try to leverage picture-taking. So far, most of the work has been done by me and one other photographer, but I find they are easy and enjoyable, and if they happen to leverage work by others, great!
You can think of the photo campaigns as "Wiki Loves Monuments", but for two different themes each month. If you have Seattle Wikipedians who enjoy taking pictures, I would highly recommend starting these as low-maintainence, opt-in projects that don't require much organizing. Participants can take pictures on their own, or propose group walking tours. Examples of photography projects at this template:
As for Wikimedia Cascadia, I think it would be very helpful if we had a Facebook group/page, so that people can follow activities and have dates added to their online calendars. Other chapters/thorgs have pages.
If you need an idea for a project to support locally, consider an LGBT edit-a-thon or LGBT photography project as part of Wiki Loves Pride. Following are links to the Portland pages:
It would be great to have Seattle residents upload photos of the city's LGBT culture and history.
I hope this helps! Sorry so long. Thanks for contributing to the mailing list.
Jason (Another Believer)