<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">Awesome, Bala! Seems like a wonderful workshop.<br>Thanks to all those who helped.<br><br>- Sundar<br><div> </div>"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."<br>- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture<div><br></div><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Wikimedia India Community list
<wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> Nivash S <balanivash@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Mon, February 21, 2011 9:34:19 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Wikimediaindia-l] A report on the Trichy wikimeetup/workshop<br></font><br>
<b>The NIT-Trichy Pragyan Workshop report:</b><br><br>Just got back from an awesome two days at NIT Trichy. This is only my second evangelism/outreach event. I have been uncomfortable shedding my semi-anonymity and showing up in public for a long time, but these two days have taught me what i have been missing. The following report is written in an anecdotal first person perspective and naturally feature me prominently :-). <br>
<br><b>Day 1:</b><br><br>On day 1 we (Tinu and me) opened the Wikipedia stall at around 11.30 AM. Srikanth joined us sometime later. We had been allotted a 12X10 Ft stall. Students started trickling in soon after. The first day we made our pitch to around 100 students or so. We also met four or five guest speakers / panelists like Ajay Agarwal, CMD of Maxx group, Narendra Shenoy, director at Unimold, Vice Admiral SKK Krishnan and Stefan Engeseth of Detective Marketing. The response was overwhelmingly positive with students saying that they will edit in the future. Most of the students we met claim they a) know they can edit wikipedia and b) have made some minor edits. Some admitted they didnt know they could edit and some believed they contribute only to articles on academic subjects etc. We gave them the standard - give back your knowledge to the world + participate in an exciting world wide project pitch. Except one wikiskeptic who cribbed about the 16
million dollar budget, rest were appreciative of Wikipedia and its work. We also distributed a flier (attached as an odt file - commons doesnt support office office documents) to the people visiting the stalls. The flier was designed by me and Srikanth and. I believe it will work well for other indic wikis ( a small customisation effort is required to replace Tamil with the relevant language).<br>
<br>The day wound down and we were thinking about packing up around 6, when we met the guy who made our day. We saw this bespectacled kid staring at us curiously and pointing out our banner excitedly to the adult who accompanied him. We beckoned him to come over and asked him patronisingly has he heard of wikipedia. The kid says yes. Have you edited wikipedia, we ask. He says yes for that too. We look at each other meaningfully and say.. "what did you do? correct spelling mistakes?". "No", he replies seriously, "i correct wrong facts". He is an eighth standard student from Coimbatore and has been editing wikipedia for a couple of years now. It took some time to get over our shock and get his user ID. He says he does not use it much and edits logged out most of the time. He was also not aware of that a talk page exists for each user id and people can communicate with him. We showed him how talk pages can be used and asked him to edit logged-in
in the future.<br>
<br><span>And thats the story of our run-in with [[en:User:Bvajresh]] and the youngest (serious) Indian wikipedian, i have come across. Here's picture of us with him (<a target="_blank" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trichy_Wikimeetup1_2060.jpg">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trichy_Wikimeetup1_2060.jpg</a>) There was one more surprise on day 1. While we were having dinner at the hotel, a father and son pair wandered up to our table and introduced themselves. They had seen our T-shirts and said they liked wikipedia very much. (Brand appeal!) We invited them to next day's workshop, but they were leaving Trichy the very night and couldnt accept the offer.</span><br>
<br>Day 1 had definitely ended on a high.<br><br><br><b>Day 2:</b><br><br>Day 2 began at 10 with the workshop/presentation in the NIT computer lab. It had a seating capacity of around 100 and was filled up completely. Apart from NIT students who had registered and were selected to attend the session (yes they had more people registering than there were seats!), there were also students from other colleges around Trichy who showed up for the session. Three middle aged wiki enthusiasts also attended to hear about Tamil wikipedia. One of them was a HOD of the Computer science department at an arts and
science college near Trichy. He was impressed with our workshop and
said from now on he will encourage his students to edit wikipedia.<br>
<br>Tinu started the presentation with a general introduction to Wikipedia, the foundation, its history, the various projects languages etc. In the Q&A session that followed, someone asked how someone without paypal/credit cards can donate money to the foundation. We explained the cheque mailing method and assured him that there will be more options in the future.<br>
<br>I did the second session. We went through how a typical wikipedia page looks like, what is a talk page, how to view revision history and practised editing in the sandbox. I took up the Sachin Tendulkar page in en wiki and showed them how the content is sourced and how a page gets updated when facts change. There were the usual doubts about reliability, who will monitor disruptive activities and who will ensure the accuracy of the content. Next i switched over to Tamil wikipedia and explained how easy it is to contribute using the typing tool. (A big thanks to Junaid, Shiju and our other ml wiki friends). Here we took up the example of the 2011 assembly election article and learnt how to write neutrally without our prejudices getting in the way. There was again a brief question session, which featured some insightful questions about our external links policy, handling regional language variations (srilankan Tamil vs Tamil Nadu Tamil), using
Wiktionary, the difference between Wikibooks, wikisource and wikipedia. Srikanth took over next and the third session was about wikipedia hacking - bots, mediawiki, programming tools, databases, scripts, software - stuff that usually frightens me. This was again followed by a brief question-answer session. <br>
<br>While Srikanth was answering the questions, i discovered that someone from the room had edited the ta wiki article i used as an illustration to correct a grammar mistake. And also someone from the crowd had done what he termed later as a test edit (something cluebot in enwiki would label as "vandalism?"). The second edit had been reverted 12 minutes later by ta wiki Admin Kanags (editing from Australia). We were able to use this as a sort of real time demo how edits are monitored and accuracy/integrity maintained in wiki projects. (We got lucky with that :-)). There was an loud gasp of surprise from the audience when we showed how the vandalism was reverted within minutes. The session ended with Wiki 10 celebrations - cake cutting and photographs. Unfortunately the T-shirts from the foundation have not reached the organisers and they weren't able to give them out - we had to make do with chocolates, pins and laptop stickers. The entire
workshop lasted from 10 to 12.30 and was well received. (I have an invite from Amrita University, Coimbatore to do a similar workshop there :-)) Microsoft Wikibasha's Saravanan attended the session and we all had a long and deep discussion with him about how important it is for the corporates/outside orgs to speak to the community and get involved at the project level to avoid misunderstandings and getting better results. After the presentation was over, it was back to the stalls. This time we shifted to a open air stall near the food court to be nearer to the crowd thronging the food court. The stall remained open till 3.30 PM and had another 50 more visitors. <br>
<br>Another good thing that came out the stall was we were able to convince the members of the NIT photography club to CC/SA licence their work and upload it to flickr/commons. There was an exhibition of their works in the same area where our stall was situated and featured several high quality images, that can be used to illustrate articles on Indian subjects. They have promised to set up flickr stream for their works with appropriate licensing. <br>
<br>So there ends the long story of my visit to Trichy. A special thanks to Tinu and Srikanth for egging me on come out and face the crowd and enlightening me about the necessity for outreach work. And another special thanks for student organiser Nivash and his team for their outstanding hospitality and giving us a chance to connect with such an enthusiastic audience.<br>
<br>Here are some photos from the event -<br><span><a target="_blank" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tiruchirappalli_Meetup_Feb2011">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tiruchirappalli_Meetup_Feb2011</a></span><br>
<br>regards<br>Bala Jeyaraman<br>[[en:User:Sodabottle]]<br>
</div></div></blockquote>
</div></body></html>