Awesome summary, Srikanth. And, thanks for putting so much work into our event
in making it a grand success.
I'm sure your next stop would flourish as well.
All the best for everything you're going to do.
Kudos to all who did their best to make WikiTen Bangalore possible.
- 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
________________________________
From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com>
To: "Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in Bangalore, India"
<wikimedia-in-blr(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>; Discussion list on Indian language
projects of Wikimedia. <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>;
wikix-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sun, January 16, 2011 12:33:53 AM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Bangalore Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebrations --
Summary
Hi all,
I am posting a detailed summary of the Bangalore celebrations, apologies for
making it long to read, but hey it was 12 hours of celebration!
It was a great start to the day with overwhelming response to see 10 volunteers
8 am at the venue willing to help and with that, the number of people coming in
very slowly but steadily increasing. Around 9:30 AM we began the days
proceedings at Lecture hall with Arunram welcoming the people with an
Introduction of the event and we had informal round of introductions of people
who were there(50 already!). We then had different Indic language wiki
communities presenting reports with Bellayat joining over Skype from Dhaka being
the first to provide an update on Bengali Wikipedia. Arjuna followed it with
Telugu Wikipedia update.HP Nadig followed with update on Kannada Wikipedia.
Sundar followed it with Tamil Wikipedia report and audience were very receptive
so much that we needed to cut short the Q&A for time constraints.Kiran Gopi
provided the Malayalam Wikipedia report followed by myself giving an update of
WP:INDIA Project of English Wikipedia.We also had a small discussion on Five
pillars,policies etc. We broke for tea around 11:30 AM and the crowd was 75 by
then. Arunram continued with Sanskrit Wikipedia report and then there was an
open discussion on way forward,future which was lively. The final number of
people who attended morning session was close to around 100 people. Each
language report contained information on stats, community, challanges, outreach
activities and way forward.
Just before breaking for lunch we took this picture
http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia-10-celebrations-Bangalore-2011…
with showing ten as theme.
We regrouped for Segment 2(Special Interest groups) around 2:15 PM and Arjuna
quickly gave the format of the event.(Collaboration with Special Interest
Groups). There was a Birds track lead by Shyamal and the bird watching community
in Bangalore. The photography track was handled by HP Nadig covering commons.
The technology track had myself presenting overview of technology / hacks
possible with Wikipedia and then Kiran providing a hands on demo on mwclient and
wiki-analysis project. Sundar joined in to give a brief session on Bots and
pywikipediabot framework. The different language groups had discussions at the
foyer area with Arjuna leading Telugu, Shiju / Kiran leading Malayalam, Sundar
leading Tamil and HP Nadig leading Kannada Wikipedias respectively. The number
of people who attended Segment 2 was around 150 people.
We broke for a tea around 4:30 PM and regrouped ourselves at the main auditorium
around 5:20 when we had a sudden change in the agenda after Jimmy wanted to have
the Skype call earlier. It helped us in a better way with Jimmy addressing the
audience and kickstarting the Segment 3 around 5:40 PM. Thanks a lot Jimmy :) .
We then had Manish explained about how Wikipedia works, community, Foundation,
Statistics, India specific stats and gave an overall Introductory talk on
Wikipedia to the larger audience(Around 200 . We then played some videos from
the WikimediaFoundation youtube channel with editors sharing their experiences.
HP Nadig then formally announced the formation of the Chapter and did an
interactive Session ''Namma Wikipedia'' with audience on How they used
Wikipedia. Around 6:30 PM there was a talk by Lawrence Liang. We had a small
break and at 7:10 PM Sundar anchored the audience session on "How I became a
Wikipedian" with editors sharing their stories on how they became Wikipedians.
Then we had a very interactive panel discussion with renowned people like
Prof.Sadagopan - Founder Director IIIT-B, Writer Madanmohan Rao, Achal Prabhala
- Wikimedia foundation advisory and Sunil Abraham - Executive Director Centre
for Internet and Society, speaking on Wikipedia and its role moderated by
Arunram. We called it a day by 8:15 PM and it was quite a day! [PS: I couldnt
update evening session in detail since i was doing some running around]
230+ people attending the event on a festive day(Sankaranti) was quite an
accomplishment and shows the amount of love people have for Wikipedia :). I
would like to thank each one of them for making this event a success.
I would like to thank Jimmy, Lawrence Liang and the panelists for making it to
the event with their busy schedules.
On behalf of Bangalore Wikipedians, I would like to thank our sponsors, National
Institute of Advanced Sciences (NIAS) for providing an absolutely wonderful
venue for the event free of cost, Microsoft Research India for sponsoring
food,refreshments, Discovery India for sponsoring the publicity materials,
Centre for Internet & Society for providing Wifi,sponsoring Videography at the
event in a very short notice, being always there for Wikipedian community in
Bangalore. [Yes most of the event is recorded and would be up on commons in a
few days!] and Wikimedia Foundation for all those tees and nice goodies :)
Last but the least the volunteers without which the day wouldnt have been what
it was. Abu,Anoop,Arjuna Rao Chawla, Arunram, Arunganesh, Gautham, Harsha,HP
Nadig, Kiran Gopi, Kiran Jonnalagadda, Manish, Melvin, Philip Tiju, Sundar,
Suma, Srikanta, Sathyamurthy, Swaroop Rao, Tinucherian, Vishal Gayakvad, Vimal,
Srinivas Gunta, Royson[CIS],Sunil,Ramesh[NIAS],Sashidharan[NIAS]. Sincere
apologies if i had missed anyone on the list.
Since i didnt have camera, there are no pictures from me, expect them from
others soon on commons :)
Let this be a new larger wave of community in Bangalore and hope our monthly
meetup participation increases folds and more importantly more people join the
movement and "edit the world".
Regards
Srikanth.L
(User:Logicwiki)
PS : This also happened to be my farewell wiki-meetup at Bangalore since am
relocating, will miss Bangalore meetups :( :(
