The Appropedia / Omidyar Vortex!
I have just escaped (perhaps only temporarily) from a hybrid wiki / social networking vortex! Many exciting things are going on. Working closely with Chris Watkins, and just met Lonny, both of whom are Wiki-types extraordinaire, working diligently on Appropedia! (Side note: I had begun to refer to Chris and Lonny as "wikians", then learned that "Wikians" is specific to Wikia. That's where I started WinWinWiki, but it's not where Appropedia lives, so the label is inappropriate. But I digress...)
Related news is that, thanks to Chris' suggestion and Lonny's openmindedness, Appropedia has opted to expand its scope to include (most? maybe all?) of the content that I was looking for with WinWinWiki! Yay! So I'll be focusing on that fine effort in two ways. First is to actually make wiki changes myself (I've been quite remiss in that department, kinda like I've been a blog-slacker lately). Second is to snoop around for contributors to Appropedia. The first angle will be useful to create some good framework for new content at Appropedia. The second effort will likely result in more content than I can provide (though I hope contribute there as well).
It was part of my poking around that I came across the Millenium Development Goals Wiki and Mark Grimes. The MDG Wiki is a great concept, exactly what I want to do! Unfortunately, MDG Wiki seems to have stalled a little bit (oh no!), but fortunately we can now replicate the idea at Appropedia (yay!). In addition, finding Mark led me to Omidyar.net, an excellent networking site for entrepreneurial world changers. I joined up promptly and Chris was right behind me. There is a wealth of great people, great ideas and discussions going on there, and I spent a bit of time in that direction. I hope to pull some folks there into the wiki vortex :-)
Another area, which hasn't been quite such a diversion, has been learning about Engineers Without Borders (US site, International site). These folks are doing exactly the kind of projects that Appropedia wants to document for the benefit of other efforts. I signed up with the San Francisco Professionals chapter. Turns out that they have a wiki also :-). I need to learn more, but perhaps there is an opportunity to join forces there as well! And looking into EWB helped me find Water for People, another great organization!
In addition to all this great stuff, my good friend Laura pointed me to Global Volunteers, another organization that may be able to leverage/contribute to wiki such as Appropedia. Or maybe it is Global's affiliate groups, like Amizade, which is Portugese for "friendship."
So, I've been enjoying the Vortex. This one, at least, is a good place.
Oh, and couple of minor notes: I changed this blog template to make for a wider content column. If that is painful for many of you, leave a comment (come on, it's easy!) and I'll make it narrower again. And I am in the process of migrating my preferred email address to gmail. See my profile for the address. The Yahoo address will continue to work, though.
Related news is that, thanks to Chris' suggestion and Lonny's openmindedness, Appropedia has opted to expand its scope to include (most? maybe all?) of the content that I was looking for with WinWinWiki! Yay! So I'll be focusing on that fine effort in two ways. First is to actually make wiki changes myself (I've been quite remiss in that department, kinda like I've been a blog-slacker lately). Second is to snoop around for contributors to Appropedia. The first angle will be useful to create some good framework for new content at Appropedia. The second effort will likely result in more content than I can provide (though I hope contribute there as well).
It was part of my poking around that I came across the Millenium Development Goals Wiki and Mark Grimes. The MDG Wiki is a great concept, exactly what I want to do! Unfortunately, MDG Wiki seems to have stalled a little bit (oh no!), but fortunately we can now replicate the idea at Appropedia (yay!). In addition, finding Mark led me to Omidyar.net, an excellent networking site for entrepreneurial world changers. I joined up promptly and Chris was right behind me. There is a wealth of great people, great ideas and discussions going on there, and I spent a bit of time in that direction. I hope to pull some folks there into the wiki vortex :-)
Another area, which hasn't been quite such a diversion, has been learning about Engineers Without Borders (US site, International site). These folks are doing exactly the kind of projects that Appropedia wants to document for the benefit of other efforts. I signed up with the San Francisco Professionals chapter. Turns out that they have a wiki also :-). I need to learn more, but perhaps there is an opportunity to join forces there as well! And looking into EWB helped me find Water for People, another great organization!
In addition to all this great stuff, my good friend Laura pointed me to Global Volunteers, another organization that may be able to leverage/contribute to wiki such as Appropedia. Or maybe it is Global's affiliate groups, like Amizade, which is Portugese for "friendship."
So, I've been enjoying the Vortex. This one, at least, is a good place.
Oh, and couple of minor notes: I changed this blog template to make for a wider content column. If that is painful for many of you, leave a comment (come on, it's easy!) and I'll make it narrower again. And I am in the process of migrating my preferred email address to gmail. See my profile for the address. The Yahoo address will continue to work, though.
posted by Curt Beckmann at 6:47 AM
2 Comments:
Curt- Thanks for supporting Appropedia by paying for a faster web-host. It needed it.
Curt- Thanks for supporting Appropedia by paying for a faster web-host.
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