The Rochester Wiki has launched!

Yes, the city of Rochester now has an official Wiki; an unofficial guide to the City created, edited and expanded by it's citizens.

What's a wiki you ask?  It's a website that everyone contributes their respective knowledge to, most famously Wikipedia.  By everyone sharing their knowledge, a central depository of information can be created and is constantly being revised.  

It was after an event last year regarding a new micro-loan program and I wrote  about creating a wiki for all the business resources in Michigan.  In short, I realized there there were far too many organizations, both public and private, trying to do far too many things and that there was no central place to find all this information.  Unless you had a rolodex of all these websites, you'd never know what resources were at your disposal!

This idea then slowly crept into my own personal knowledge of the city I live in: Rochester.  I've lived in the area now over 13 years and never really invested the time to learn about the City unless I had some specific need to, like which block exactly Sumo Sushi was located.  This came to light after reading  about the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm and their exhibit "Lost Rochester".  The solution was to build a wiki for the entire city.

And then my wife and I had our first baby.

It's been about a year now and the idea has continued to claw at my creative-side relentlessly, so I finally built it.  First, a little disclaimer: this is something that I've put together in my free time that does not exist except for my insomnia.  I have grand ideas on how beautiful it will eventually look, but for now it's just the basics.  Secondly, it only has the bare information required, if that.  I've put together some information on how to create an account, the basics of editing and submitting information, but I haven't gotten deep into specifics.  This where you come in!

There is literally so much to now about the City there's no way any one person could assemble it.  The Rochester Wiki is the people's guide to the city, created and maintained by it's residents.  This a great opportunity to share what you know and love about Rochester with the rest of the world!  I've simply put the very (see: VERY) basics together to give some direction as to how it should grow.   After that, it's up to all of us to determine what it looks like.

So take a look, visit the Rochester Wiki and take a look around.  If you want to be part of this awesome effort, shoot us a request for an account.  There's no requirements and no commitment to join; just share what you want when you want.