A preliminary update about the Carte Blanche event:
1. Feb 5:
I delivered the inaugural address as chief guest. I spoke about what all
constitute free software and content, why anyone should care (more in the
context of underserved needs of groups of people without market strengths and
fragmented markets like Indic users), and how all one can contribute. I pointed
at the "non-mainstream" projects which are relatively small and needing
contributors as opposed to well-known projects like GNU and Linux.
2. Feb 6:
There was a stall for Wikipedia and one for Wikibhasha. Surya Prakash mainly
volunteered at the Wikipedia stall and Mahir and others helped with the
logistics. Saravanan from Microsoft Research helped with both the stalls.
We had workshops in the afternoon with a very good infrastructure provided by
MIT. However, attendance at the workshops were not as good as for the stalls
(perhaps due to the OS workshop that ran in parallel). Tamil Wikians Surya
Prakash, Manian, Sengai Podhuvan, Mahir, and Paridhimathi and I spoke as well as
provided hands-on tutorials to the participants. Almost all participants created
accounts and made their first few edits there. One ILUG member invited us to
post projects for FOSS enthusiasts
at
http://wiki.ilugc.in/index.php?title=Projects_List. Saravanan demoed a
special (yet-to-be released) version of WikiBhasha for Tamil and took our
feedback.
Some photos at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_CB_Chennai
Tamil wiki page:
http://j.mp/eLOVOy
Special thanks to go to Srikanth for connecting us with the organisers and
making all this possible. Thanks to Tinu who drove to deliver the wiki banners
to me.
I request the other volunteers to add further information on this thread.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for
the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
----- Original Message ----
From: BalaSundaraRaman <sundarbecse(a)yahoo.com>
To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia.
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: wikimedia-in-chn(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thu, February 3, 2011 3:09:15 PM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia workshop in Carte Blanche, Chennai
Hi,
As part of the FOSS event called Carte Blanche (
http://cb.csmit.org/) to be
held
at the Madras Institute of Technology, a Wikipedia workshop is being conducted
on February 6 between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm. Following is the proposal, the
exact
timings will be finalised soon.
* English Wikipedia - general introduction for participation (Sundar)
* தமிழ் விக்கிப்பீடியா பயிலரங்கு (Tamil Wikipedia Workshop by users Manian,
Sengai Podhuvan, Paridhimathi, Surya Prakash, and Mahir)
* Hacking with Wikipedia (Srikanth's previous presentation will be used +
Sundar's introduction to pywikipediabot and a few bot examples + Mahir's talk
about templates and other things)
The organisers have kindly agreed to give us a stall as well. If any of you
can
participate or, better still, conduct sessions, you're most welcome.
On a sidenote, I've been asked to inaugurate the event on Feb 5 at 9:00 am.
All
are welcome.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for
the expression of thought, is a truth generally
admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l