On Mar 13, 2012, at 7:19 PM, Swaroop Rao wrote:
I'd like to discuss few things that we should definitely keep in mind before we organize similar events:
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5. We could also send across some useful links and videos for the participants to go through before the session. This way participants will be warmed up and more informed for the session. It will also give the participants enough time to jot down all their queries and get them clarified during the session.
A risk in online outreach is that folks tend to come in "cold" to the session. In a physical outreach session, there is usually posters, mentions of the workshop on the event website, word-of-mouth etc. The beauty of online outreach is that it is so easy to inspire and motivate them prior to the session - using purely online resources - and that should keep them charged up, which should help increase attendance. (The pitfall of online outreach is that it is so much easier for someone to drop out at the last minute because they haven't made the physical investment of traveling to a location and mentally blocking out x hours for an outreach event.) We need to work out these issues - but I think they are fixable.
From my personal opinion, online outreach is something that can definitely work. Sitting in Bangalore I was able to train guys from Nepal & Mangalore. I'm hoping that they'll become active editors in English and in their respective native languages. Im really happy to note that at least one of them has already edited several articles in the medical space - which is his field of study.
This is magic! A Sanskrit & English (amongst others?) Wikipedian sitting at home (I presume!) in India is helping establish a Nepali community in Nepal!
The potential is amazing. Imagine a situation where we have a regular series of online outreach sessions happening with a rotating set of community members who can conduct whenever they are free.
Another benefit of online outreach is that it affords the opportunity of existing editors who do not do outreach and might want to do so but don't know how to attend a session and see how it's done without having to move out of their homes. We could then have new folks who will conduct outreach from the existing community from all over the country (and world!)