Hello everyone,

I am so pleased to announce that Wikimedia Bangladesh, with the help of Independent University, Bangladesh, Chittagong, and Bangladesh Open Source Network, organized the first Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 [1] in Chittagong [2] to promote Bangla Wikipedia [3] in Bangladesh. This outreach event was held in 2 and 3 of March and was attended by around 300 participants. It was first big-level program of Wikimedia Bangladesh and it was outside of the Dhaka (the capital) to focus on country-wide outreach. We called it an "unconference" to give it a less formal look and to make the appearance more welcoming.

This two days event was inaugurated by the Chittagong City Mayor and and in the last it was attended by the Since and Technology minister of Bangladesh Government. It was also attended by some other popular public figures, writers, and university professors, and media personalties. During the unconference we had events like workshops, photo exhibition, cultural program, seminars, article writing contest, etc. We had several teams from the schools, colleges, and universities in Chittagong as team participants. The unconference was hosted by Chittagong campus of Independent University, Bangladesh. You can see the some of the images of the events in the Commons category [4].

Because of the presence of the popular public figures and government officials, the event got a significant amount of media coverage in national print and electronic media. We also even had billboards in the city's main crossings to let people know about Bangla Wikipedia which was the main purpose of this event and current strategic priority of Wikimedia Bangladesh.

Wikimedia Bangladesh wants to thank everyone who supported us. We want to thank our sponsors and donors who helped us to arrange this big event. We want thank Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner for her nice video speech that we screened in the inaugural ceremony. And of course to our participants, who eventually made this effort a success. And I apologize to let you guys know about this event in late. We are still working on putting everything on wiki.

Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_2012 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong [3] http://bn.wikipedia.org [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_201...