Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] MATHSYA MELA 2011 KARNATAKA

Ralph, We had shared a stall with Akruti Books (many thanks to publisher Guruprasad D N for his help) and did as much we can to tell people about Kannada Wikipedia and Wikipedia. However, putting up a stall at Kannada Saahithya Sammelana was a bad idea. Much of the audience there were not even familiar with computers or Internet. Plus the whole event was more like a fair. There was huge crowd that was almost like a stampede for most part of the three days. People just pushed others around - nobody could just stand at one place. We spent the entire day Thursday working with the organizing committee trying to get a stall. It helped that I had friends there. However, there were tens of publishers who had come all the way from places like Bidar, Mangalore with their huge consignments of books that didn't get to put up a stall. There was too much demand. I saw some publishers devastated on not getting a stall. The stalls were primarily meant for publishers. The entire national ground was filled with dust that children collapsed, puked at times. Adults were holding handkerchiefs to thier nose to avoid the dust. Evening were worse when the sprayed mosquito repellents as much to kill people. It was crazy. Also, you were one of the volunteers who had expressed interest in participating. You had received notifications off-the-list. However, I didn't see you around there anytime. On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Ralph <work.well.done.in(a)gmail.com> wrote: Could be. Feel free to engage volunteers and take up the initiative. -- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net | http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig