Hey friends!

We've got two extremely exciting announcements for you. Our first focus community, serving Denton, Texas, has launched! And we're making the first major release of the new LocalWiki software today!

Launching our first pilot

The DentonWiki, serving the community of Denton, Texas, has officially launched to the public! Check it out!

Denton is a small, college-focused community in North Texas, about an hour from Dallas. Being a college town, it's easy to see parallels to Davis, California. But it's a radically different place than Davis, as anyone who's been to the Dallas area can attest!

Folks in Denton, Texas had been building up and playing around with their project for a few months. With the new LocalWiki software at a good point, and a solid amount of interesting pages on their project, Philip packed up and headed out to Denton for two weeks to help them get their project ready to launch!

We held several marathon editing / hang-out sessions while there, met with lots of local Denonites, got a feel for the community, and did a bunch of work to prep the site for launch.

A little pre-celebration get-together of DentonWiki folks

The Denton project has already seen a higher level of participation and usage than DavisWiki did in its early days. And we're really seeing our extreme focus on usability pay off -- I watched many non-technical people simply get handed a laptop and just immediately start creating great stuff without any guidance.

If you want to read more about DentonWiki and the launch process there, check out some information we're compiling on our guide site.

This first focus community launch -- the first of many -- is a huge milestone for the project!

LocalWiki software released

Today we are also excited to announce the first major release of the LocalWiki software! Check it out at localwiki.org!

Make sure you watch the video!

Starting today, any community can create a local wiki using our new software. The software is designed to be installed by someone who's somewhat technical - someone who's had some experience working with Linux, for instance. We worked hard to make the software as easy to install as possible.

Most people will simply use the software, not install it, though. We're hoping that over the coming months many technically-savvy community champions will set up LocalWiki for their communities. The localwiki.org site is currently focused on targetting these sort of technically-minded folks.

There's a list of communities currently running LocalWiki here (and a map here). We'll let you know as more come online, develop, and launch!

There's so much more we have planned for the LocalWiki software — but this day marks a significant step toward realizing the dream of collaborative, community-run media in every local community.

xo-
Philip & Mike

I'm off to Denton, Texas for a bit to help folks there with the Denton LocalWiki pilot! I'm hoping to meet with / connect-with a bunch of folks, spread the word and generally help them prepare to open up the project to the wider public!

More soon!-
Philip

Hey friends!

It's time for another LocalWiki update! What's happened since our last update? Erg, a lot!

Pilots

Folks in Denton, TX playing with the new localwiki software.

We've selected our very first few pilot communities. So far, we've been working with folks in Denton, Texas; Sydney, Australia; and San Francisco, California. Do you (or did you) live in or near Sydney, Denton, or San Francisco? Shoot us an email at contact@localwiki.org and we'll get you involved in the pilot buildout!

There are several more pilots in the queue, and we're looking to work with more folks now. We'll be more aggressively reaching out to people who've contacted us, and our Kickstarter backers will soon get a chance to vote for the next set of pilot communities.

Software stuffs

A bunch has been accomplished on the software front:

• We made a slick diff scroll-through thing.
• Implemented dynamic, global overview map that lets you 'dive' into different regions of the map.
• Added generic files support.
• Improved our file upload process.
• Made a ton of editor fixes and tweaks.
• Added ability to use custom map base layers.
• Refactored some code ("recent changes", most notably)
• Further improved copy/pasting in editor. This stuff is ridiculously complicated.
• Initial version of spell checking in editor.
• We created custom maps for two pilots and in the process learned a metric ton about GIS and the open source map stack
• Created a plugin system for the editor. Our first two plugins are "embed media" (videos, etc) and "include page."
• Cleaned up the way edit conflicts and merging merging happen when editing pages.
• Improved our deployment process.
• Simplified install instructions a bit.
• Conducted our first semi-formal usability test.
• Fixed a bunch of too-boring-to-describe bugs.

Overall, we've been improving functionality based on feedback from the initial pilots. Watching people interact with the software has been really helpful!

We're currently marching toward our next software milestone, due on the first of October. Our primary focus between now and then is to improve the installation process, the documentation, and fix all technical issues that block the public launch of pilots.

Programmer who wants to help?

Are you a programmer-type? Want to help out? Check out our first little code overview screencast, then hop on over to our development site!

Mike got hitched.

On a more personal note, two weeks ago Mike married his girlfriend of 12 years!

xo!-
Philip & Mike