On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Nitika <ntandon@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Folks,

I was thinking of experimenting conducting online outreach.  I want to try out if we can do an effective outreach event using a google+ (video) hangout.  Virtual outreach has a number of advantages:

* No investment of time/effort/cost in travel
* Personal attention to each participant (because of individual video/screenshare facilities.)
* No complications of no laptops available at the venue or a limit on creating user names from a single IP address during the event
* Lower dependency on institutions/college fests to organize an event for us.
* Not limited by physical presence. Sitting in Kanyakumari,  one can conduct outreach for interested folks in Kashmir!

This is just a trial to test if online outreach is effective, doable and manageable. This could be one of the ways forward!  (Potentially, we could have more community members doing more events with a more diverse audience.)

Hello all,

Adding to the list of advantages, the entire session gets automatically recorded and is available on Youtube. (So 1 good session will reach much more people than participants) I recently participated on one such hangout and happened to talk about Tamil Wiki projects, Translatewiki etc(though as stop gap arrangement) and can be watched here[1]. It would be great if this mode of outreach can be tried again. IIRC the first one did not go all well due to connectivity issues, but we can always try again!

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwmGhQFgH4

--
Regards
Srikanth.L