As the one year anniversary for Oaklandwiki draws near, the potential uses for Oakland's own Wikipedia site continues to increase. Already, in just a single year the site currently... (Vicky, please give a brief overview of how Oaklandwiki is currently in use)
One potential use for Oaklandwiki that has yet to be fully appreciated is in its capacity to assist organizations in Oakland maintain an active presence on the internet. This is particularly evident for organizations operating on a shoestring budget. There are dozens if not hundreds of small to moderate size organization and nonprofits performing exceptional work in the community. These include everything from ethnic dance troupes for youth to programs helping low-income seniors obtain employment. However, much of their work goes unnoticed. They may have a website, but because of lack of resources, manpower, or technical skill level the sites are rarely updated to reflect the organization's current activities. And if an organization is not continually posting, twitting, tagging, or tumbling their activities they are handicapped in comparison to larger organizations with substantially more resources. For the sake of expediency, many of these originations solely utilize their Facebook Page as their only social media outlet. .
Oaklandwiki can provide these organizations with a means to maintain easy and low-cost updates on the internet. Like Wikipedia, Oakland Wiki is designed for anyone to easily create and edit web pages. Many of the features available on a typical website that an organization will pay thousands of dollars to create and maintain are available on Oaklandwiki for free and can be managed by anyone with access to the internet. And unlike a page on Facebook, an organization's page on Oaklandwiki is not confined to Facebook's format, bombarded by advertizing, or content owned by Facebook. In addition, on Oaklandwiki, an organization will be identified to viewers as residing in Oakland and serving the local community. It will not be one of a million organizations from all over the world.
For those interested in creating a webpage for their organization on Oaklandwiki assistance is available from the Oaklandwiki meetups. The meetups are every Thursday evening from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Sudo room. In addition, the meetup can also be at the site of your organization. Assistance is also available in Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
