Apologies for delay - this was written the day after the wiki10 celebrations hence many 'yesterdays' in report, Bishakha
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: jayanta nath jayantanth@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 10:46 AM Subject: Re: Kolkata wiki10 meetup; personal report To: "bishakhadatta (wiki)" bishakhadatta@gmail.com
Dear Bishakha
Could you please send our west Bengal and India and 10 mailing list
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com Date: Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 9:00 PM Subject: Kolkata wiki10 meetup; personal report
As the meetup ended, two law students said they had clicked the wiki10 banner on wikipedia not expecting to find a celebration in Kolkata. "We were pleasantly surprised," they said. "No one ever comes to the East."
Ok, ok, I'm Bengali and I *was* born in Cal. But even if you factor that in, it's still true: the eastern part of the country often seems cut off. In general, it gets a smaller piece of the national pie - action, attention, opportunities, resources - so much so that the 7 states in the North-east have pretty much given up on 'India'. The two students reeled off every band or concert that had made it to Del, Bom, Bang - but not to Cal.
Given this, I'm glad a meetup was held here in December. Without it, who knows if Kolkata would have joined in the celebrations? As Jayanta jokingly told one reporter, "Atleast we had a meetup in time to join the celebrations." Till yesterday, Jayanta Nath, who hosted the Dec meetup and is an admin on Bangla wikipedia, was the only community member active offline; Arnab Dutta, a student and bn:wp editor who lives in Kolkata, pitches in online.
The biggest direct benefit from yesterday's meetup was identifying three more community members: Rimi Chatterjee who edits in English, Biswarup Ganguly who is on commons, and Shankar Vishwanathan, a most charming and eccentric senior citizen who edits in English and wants to popularize wikipedia among senior citizens. Hopefully, they'll help form the core that is needed to keep meetups going (and which seems to have developed in Mumbai and Pune, among the ones I know).
The crowd yesterday was exactly what we were expecting: about 60-odd folks, the majority of whom had never made a single edit. Less than 10 said they had ever edited. Anticipating just this, and given Cal's yen for quizzes, I hosted a quiz: 10 things you may not know about wikipedia, which covered all the basics and some fun birthday stuff. Luckily, the crowd was game, so the event was interactive from the word go. The meeting was bilingual, with English and Bengali flowing in abundance; much clapping when I announced the Foundation's plans for India and the India chapter. No one had any idea of either. Media coverage has been much lower here too.
There was huge interest in Bangla wikipedia; many questions after Jayanta's presentation, including some chicken-and-egg ones: Why edit in Bangla when there are more readers in English etc? Since many editors are bilingual, one suggestion was to encourage editors to also mirror their English contributions in Bangla (only voluntarily, of course). Because of the unexpected interested in Bangla editing, Arnab did an impromptu demonstration of Bangla wikipedia to 25 enthusiasts after the official program had ended.
Rimi followed up with a fascinating talk on how the English department at Jadavpur Univ, where she teaches, knows students use wikipedia for their class projects; so instead of fighting this, they do a two-week session on 'How students should use wikipedia'! One of her colleagues also assigns students specific pages on wikipedia to upgrade, and marks them after going through the page's edit history - to assess participation. Quite unique.
There was a discussion on uploading images to Commons, including a demo of the lack of photos of Kolkata and possibilities such as Wikipedia Takes Bangalore/Mumbai, both of which happened this week as part of wiki10. Maybe it's easier to get young people started off with taking and uploading photos to Commons? asked Mr Vishwanathan. He and Bishwarup Ganguly are likely to speak with Jayanta and Arnab at a student-run half-day hands-on meetup in Feb.
Two specific requests for half-day workshops emerged between yesterday and today: -the all-male participants at the FSF workshop wanted a hands-on session; this seems a critical bridge step to becoming an editor -a few women at the event yesterday requested a hands-on session exclusively for women (so that they don't feel like dummies because of technological issues - Soma is very keen on this; let's keep for my next trip)
Today, I attended part of a two-day workshop of the Free Software Foundation, mainly to support Jayanta and to build relationships with sister orgs/movements. An aside: at wiki meetups in other cities I've been to, many people have their own laptops; here, less people did yesterday (expected) and today (unexpected). Needs to be kept in mind while doing hands-on sessions.
So three thoughts in closing: One, let's make sure we don't neglect the east or the northeast in our plans. This part of the country needs exposure to other wikimedians, to ideas, access to conferences etc, so it does not remain cut off. Language is a factor influencing the participation of Bangla editors on the India list.
Two, Jayanta and Arnab feel the biggest barrier facing Bengali wikipedia is lack of awareness that it exists; they would like media coverage, specially in Bengali newspapers, so that people start using it. No one ever became an editor without first being a user, right?
Three, of course, Cal can't lay claim to being the biggest anniv celebration or anything or anything. But give us our due: Cal could lay claim to 'Best gender ratio among panelists', since women comprised 66% of the panel. :)
Jesus, after a month here I'm already saying 'us'. Thank god I return to Bombay this week.
Cheers Bishakha