On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Rob Schnautz
<schnautzr@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
All this talk about hugely successful events in places like India and
Italy has got me wondering, since I haven't seen many successful events
in the U.S. mentioned-- only in a few very large metro cities (San
Francisco, MIT, and NYC).
We're doing our event in DC this weekend, expecting ~100 attendees.
It seems to me that the other wikis must have
had some advantage here; not sure what it was.
[snip]
A quick check on the National Public Radio (NPR) website returns zero
stories about Wikipedia festivities, other than brief mentions that
Wikipedia was turning 10-- no parties or conferences were mentioned at
all. This radio station is devoted to providing full up-to-date coverage
of news on national and global issues, and I find it surprising
reporters didn't even mention the kite-flying parties in India.
We did invite them to our event, though we're doing it a week later so it's old news by now. :/ For OpenStreetMap, we did get coverage for our ad-hoc local group in the Washington Post and expect as our local group ramps up and is doing stuff, we'll get media coverage for Wikimedia stuff here.
Do interesting local stuff, the media will notice (and it doesn't hurt to invite them).
Considering Wikipedia is one of the most heavily-used sites in America,
I'd say that we've got some problems here with publicity, event
organization, and possibly even spirit.
Anyone have suggestions on how to improve future events in America,
particularly in small metros? (Obviously having events planned more than
two weeks before the event would be one improvement!)
Can we please resurrect the #wikimedia-us IRC channel? Right now, it's invite only!
Also, let's get a mailing list going for Wikimedians in the US:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-us (doesn't exist!)
As for events, I see things being organized in Indianapolis and Minneapolis, and certainly there is potential for more elsewhere.
Cheers,
Katie (@aude)
Thanks!
Rob "Bob the Wikipedian" Schnautz
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