Washington, D.C./Media advisory
Wikipedia's 10th birthday (Jan 15) is coming up this month! We want to invite you to a special event here in DC to celebrate. It will be on Saturday, January 22 at the National Archives in downtown DC.
The event is both a celebration, but also a initial meeting between our local Wikipedia volunteer community and NARA. We are looking at ways that Wikipedia volunteers can collaborate with NARA, and get NARA materials (e.g. photographs and video) digitized and available via Wikipedia (among other ways), and support the FedFlix project. (see WP:WikiProject FedFlix) We already have been doing work with the Smithsonian. The Library of Congress and others are also interested in working with us.
- Event details
- Date: January 22, 2011 (9:30 AM - 5 PM)
- Location: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), downtown building, Pennsylvania Avenue & 7th St NW.
- Description: There will be a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Archives and you will learn more about what NARA does. We will also have a mini-film screening featuring FedFlix videos. In the afternoon, there will be lightning talks by Wikimedians, wiki-trivia, and cupcakes to celebrate! In the evening, there will be a happy hour and more celebrations!
- Details & RSVP for the event are at WikiXDC
- About us
Wikipedia has become the fifth most popular website in the world with 410 million monthly readers (comScore, November 2010). Just three years after its founding, Wikipedia reached 500,000 articles in 50 languages. Now, at 17 million articles in 270 languages and growing, Wikipedia is the only top-ten website in the world that is truly user-generated, supported and maintained.
In Washington DC, we have a local meetup group and are working towards becoming a formal chapter in the next months or year. This way, we can directly take in donations, get grants, and more easily undertake projects, including in areas of outreach and technology.