The Portland Beer Wiki Gets A Face Lift

The Portland Beer Wiki gets a new look. The home page and each page associated with the Beer Wiki will have the Beer/Hop banner on the top of the page. The guys over at AboutUS created this new look for the project. We are building this wiki on the AboutUS website so I wanted something to make it look different than the rest of the pages. This is a great start and we will continue to make changes to the wiki and appreciate suggestions. A Google Map was also added, but we are still getting the bugs out of it.

Beer Advocate and RateBeer links added

Last night I finished adding links to the portland beer wiki from BeerAdvocate & Ratebeer. The Beeradvocate link takes you to a review of the brewpub. While the Ratebeer link takes you to all of the beers that that brewery or brewpub makes. These new links can be find near the bottom of the page of the brewery under the "additional information" or "beer links" tab. We are playing around with the name of these section

I wanted to have popular beer websites linked up to improve the value that the potland beer wiki offers. We are also thinking about linking up articles from local beer publications as well in the near future.

The Latest Event was a Success

Anytime you can chat with fellow beer writers and recruit new members into the project you should feel good about yourself. However; when you get local beer writing legend Fred Eckhart involved it makes you feel good about the porland beer project you are creating. This was the case tonight. Tonight I showed the local beer writing legend about the project that I created a few months ago. He really liked the concept and wanted to help out. Fred suggested involving Vancouver WA as well to the list since it is kind of a suburb to Portland. He said some of the European countries include breweries within 25+ kilometers of their town as a brewery in their town. With Portland having so much around it within 25 kilometers from Portland to Vancouver suburbs the amount of brewpubs we have really adds up.

I believe we should promote the Vancouver WA businesses like Salmon Creek and By the Bottle to the overall list, but I am not 100% sure if we should add them to the Portland list, since they are typically not in Portland and are in Washington. Not a bad problem to have.....to live in a town where there are so many brewpubs that you really do not need to count the surrounding areas as parts since there is already so many in town.

Our next meeting is next Sunday at 11am at Hopworks, RSVP on Upcomings.

We plan on making this a working social hour. Get involved today by adding content or hanging out at your next event.

Cheers


Kerry

Portland Beer Wiki at Hopworks

Yesterday, We have a meeting of the minds and beers at Hopworks in SE Portland. Angelo M. De Ieso II a fellow Guest on Tap Beer Writer, Mark Dilley our wiki guy from About US and I drank beer and worked on the portland beer wiki. What a great way to spend a Sunday.

We talked about how the breweries page should look. The starting example for a good page I believe is Alameda Brewings which lists a description of the brewery, the head brewer, the beers, seasonals, the location and a google map link to their location. There are also links to the BeerAdvocate and Ratebeer about that particular brewpub and their beers.

Mark let everyone know that editing a wiki is easy and just putting up the content is the most important part. Don't worry about formatting because other people will go back and fix it. We are just looking for the content now so we can create this valuable resource. If you are willing to learn then about wiki's then we will help out. Mark also showed us a great video about what a wiki is and how it works.

I talked about the project as a whole and how I want to start out in Portland and create a good model then move from city to city.

AboutUS is working on a new skin or look to customize our portland beer wiki. I hope that will be done in the next week or two.

A few of the PAGES updated
Hopworks
Alameda
Amnesia

The next meeting will be on Tuesday April 8th at the Green Dragon from 6:30-8pm. This will be a social hour/ work party so bring your laptops. RSVP on Upcomings.

RSVP for the next event

RSVP for the next Portland BEER WIKI event on upcomings

Portland Beer Wiki Tools

Last Night I added a window into the portland beer wiki. This widget allows content to be displayed on this blog or another website. If you want a list of breweries in town with links to their page on the wiki, then this tool is for you. It is still a work in progress and does not list all of the breweries yet. I am still trying to figure out how to get all of them listed. I hope this is handy and will help spread the word about this project.

I all ad an rss feed through feedburner so you can subscribe to this blog via your rss reader. If you don't know what an rss feed is or prefer email, then enter your email in and subscribe to receive the latest posts and updates about this project.

Cheers

Kerry

Our Next Meeting 6:30-8pm April 8th 2008

Our next meeting will be at the Green Dragon during meet the brewers night from 6:30-8pm. Bring your laptop come for the portland beer wiki, but stay for the Beer from Beer Valley of Ontario Oregon. We plan on having our meetings during meet the brewers night every Tuesday at meet the brewer's night. Stop by, talk and help out on this community beer project.

The first Portland Beer Wiki meeting was a success

Last night was our pre-kick off meeting for the portland beer wiki. We had a good turn out including fellow beer writers; the Oregonian's Beer columnists John Foyston, the Oregon Brewers Guild's director Brian Butenschoen, and enthusiast. Everyone was excited about the project and wants to get involved. We are initially getting people interested and creating a workflow for how we should scale this project. I teamed up with local Wiki company AboutUS to help us build this community based project. Mark Dilley was on hand last night to answer wiki question.

While anyone can contribute now to the Portland Beer Wiki, we will be making a lot of changes in the next few weeks. Once we feel like we have a good start we will then release it to the world and get everyone to start talking about this great project and promoting it. The excitement and commitment that local beer writers, enthusiasts, and the Oregon Brewers Guild have expressed will make this a great local beer resource.

Stay Tuned