Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Consumer Reports October 2013

This meetup page is an archive of a past event. Please do not edit the contents of this page.

There will be an open house for the general public at Consumer Reports in Yonkers on Saturday, 19 October with doors opening at 9:45am. Lane Rasberry, user:bluerasberry, will be hosting any Wikipedians who join this public event. The attraction is that Consumer Reports is an organization which wants deeper relationships with the Wikipedia community and that it has engineering laboratories to tour. Photographers are encouraged to attend! Very few public pictures of product testing exist.

The Consumer Reports announcement is on their site.

Background

Lane Rasberry, user:bluerasberry, is serving as Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports. Read about the projects there at WP:Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is a research facility, publisher, and advocacy organization. Most of the organization's scientists and engineers work in any of the 50 laboratories at the Yonkers headquarters. Almost all of the publishing work happens here also. Wikipedians are invited on a tour of this place to ask questions about Consumer Reports' interest in Wikipedia and what this could mean for Wikipedians in the area and internationally.

Consumer Reports is best known as a product testing organization. Staff here review dozens of every kind of household appliance, household product, and consumer good. The tour will include visits to several laboratories and the engineers who manage them. Most things in laboratories can be photographed. In addition to the tour the staff here is curious to meet Wikipedians and would like to talk with any who visit.

Getting to Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports is at 101 Truman Avenue in Yonkers.

Persons who come to the end of the 1 Subway line at 242nd and Broadway will find some gypsy taxi drivers hanging out on the west side of the street immediately outside of the subway station. They can take you to Consumer Reports. Tell them it is off Executive Boulevard. A limited number of taxi fares can be reimbursed from this location - carpool if you can and please let user:bluerasberry know if you are expecting to come by cab from here.

Call Lane at 206.801.0814 if there are any problems getting here!

Agenda

9:15, and 9:30 - anyone arriving at 242nd and Broadway at the end of the 1 line around these times should check around to see if other Wikipedians are there. On the west side of the street there are cabs. Anyone arriving around this time can share a cab with anyone else around. Cabs leaving at these times are reimbursed by Consumer Reports. Pay the driver $15 and bring your receipt to Lane, or just tell Lane if they do not have receipts.

• 9:45am - doors open; some tables with presentations will be on display
• 10am - annual meeting. Consumer Reports material was censored in the 1930s-40s and since then the organization has been run as a member organization, because members could choose to see censored materials. It is a bit of a legacy but it is still a member organization and this is the annual meeting.
• 11:30am - lab tours. Consumer Reports has about 50 active engineering laboratories. 5-7 of these will be part of the tour. Pictures are welcome.
• If we hang out after the event it will not be in Yonkers. Anyone attending can go to the city with Lane, probably by Metro North to Grand Central but as we all decide.

Sign up

Photographs