Dear all,
I am extremely sorry that this report is long overdue but as I was busy
with my exams and other stuff, I literally did not get time to compile
this. This is related to the Wikipedia Stall I helped set up in Netaji
Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata. NSEC had their annual
techno-management fest, Avenir, 2012 from 16th - 18th March, around the
time I got back to Kolkata from Pune during my prep leave. As there was
already a WikiAcademy, in NSEC, I tried to procure a lab for an editothon,
however, Sucheta who awesomely spearheaded everything for me from her
college part informed me that labs were not available, however, a stall was.
I sent out to set up the stall for the three day fest. I contacted the
local community as well as the India Programs team as this was my first
ever Outreach that I organized. I sent a mail on both the India mailing
list as well as the West Bengal mailing list. Unfortunately, there was a
lack of volunteers as almost everyone was busy. On day 1, Sucheta
accompanied me at the stall for the whole day, however, on Day 2 even she
was busy with her own fest work.
Also Day 1 saw much better numbers that Day 2 and as I was not available on
Day 3, Day 3 was dropped completely. The pros and the cons are as follows:
The Cons:
1. There was serious lack of volunteers and hence at times I felt very
overburdened having to deal with over 10 people at one go.
2. Lack of banners/posters - Though this might not be a big issue but as
there was no large poster available. It was very difficult to inform people
about the stall. I tried my best with A4 documents I printed myself, but
the problem still remained because of the size.
3. Lack of numbers - Perhaps this might be my take, but am used to fests in
the Pune/Mumbai circuit and hence the numbers to me, seemed very less,
although I was informed this was the largest turnout, even more than last
year. Still on Day 1, about 30 people at most visited the stall. On Day 2,
the number was far less.
The Pros:
1. I was highly impressed with the amount in interest in Kolkata. The
students were not only highly interested, they had an array of curious
questions.
2. Certain students even waited for me to finish with others so that they
could get a deeper understanding of Wikipedia and even do some hands on.
3. Two students were so interested, they were coming back again and again
and I even helped them upload pics to their user profile.
4. One student, User:Sanu531 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sanu531>1 first
tried a live edit uploaded his own pic and updated his user page himself.
In my opinion, if there is this level of interest, I think, a student club
of types could do wonders here. I did not create any page on WMIN as this
was only a stall, however, I did upload pics
here<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:NSEC_Kolkata_Outreach>
2. Also as there was no flier/handout available for such I tried to make a
very rookie version in both Bengali and English back to back in one page,
here <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kolkata_Outreach_Doc.pdf>3.
Special thanks to Nitika Tandon for the Presentations which enabled me to
create the poster as well as the whole of India Teams for the support as
well as both the India and Bengali Community for the encouragement.
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sanu531
2
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:NSEC_Kolkata_Outreach
3
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kolkata_Outreach_Doc.pdf
--
Regards,
Debanjan*
- Lets make this world a better and more informative place*