Hello Wiki Cascadia,

I wanted to share some news. I have served as Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports since April 2012. Thanks to Cascadia's own user:llywrch for writing in 2006 "Wikipedian-in-residence, a proposal http://original-research.blogspot.ca/2006/12/wikipedian-in-residence-proposal.html", which I credit as the origin of the creation of this first full-time wiki job position.

Elsewhere on this list there is discussion about Wiki Cascadia's organization and development. Normally I like to be a little reserved and have something to show before making announcements, but since people are asking about what is next for Wiki Cascadia, I have some news. At the beginning of March accepted a new job as Wikimedian in Residence at the Data Science Institute at the University of Virginia. I have some projects with Consumer Reports which I will continue through 2018 at least, but now my focus is on Wikidata for the university.

- job announcement https://dsi.virginia.edu/people/lane-rasberry/profile - profile page https://dsi.virginia.edu/people/lane-rasberry

I recognize that I am on the opposite side of the country as Cascadia, and while my projects at Consumer Reports put me close to Wiki NYC, I grew into these job roles because of the culture of Cascadia and the collaboration that I have had with Wiki Cascadia members. Wiki Cascadia and the spirit which preceded it contributed significantly to the creation of these wiki jobs and will continue to generate future institutional partnerships including jobs, media donations, in-kind support, recruitment of individual organization members and wiki participants, and when the time comes, direct sponsorship.

In my new role I will be engaging with Wikidata on behalf of the university and its own partners. In Seattle Mako and Jonathan have organized these kinds of activities for years, so this kind of activity already has 5+ years of history in Wiki Cascadia. https://wiki.communitydata.cc/Community_Data_Science_Workshops_(Spring_2015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle/archive Other people in Seattle have done other data based projects, like Sage whose excellent Programs and Events Dashboard provides the communication metrics which organizations require to justify their wiki engagement, and Monika, whose cooperation with OCLC has encouraged librarians and information scientists to explore opportunities to federate Wikimedia content to all the information available through the connection of individual concepts to library catalog identifiers. Other people in Cascadia have other data heavy projects which eventually we will better document.

Although I think Wikidata partnerships are trendy now and likely to become more popular, the entire Cascadia region is well positioned to benefit from a range of interest in Wikimedia projects for all the reasons that this list's members continue to recognize. If and when there is any organization in Cascadia that could imagine a Wikidata partnership, then as always, any program in partnership with Wiki Cascadia and its members has my particular attention, favor, and gratitude.

Thanks,