Greetings Everyone,

I am back from Chandigarh after attending one of the two amazing sessions at British library. The session on day 1 (24 August) was held by Subha and the session on day 2 (25 August) was held by both of us. We are writing a summary of the two events.

Day 1 (24 Aug): Introductory Session
There was a news coverage in Hindustan Times (https://plus.google.com/111646825844146884911/posts/Yy9xGd9kV14) regarding this session. The members of British Library were informed (members above 16 years) by British Council's mailing list (http://www.britishcouncilonline.org/events/besuccessful_event_details.aspx?EventID=776). We had 32 participants for the first day. There were people of all different age groups and various different backgrounds, surprisingly more elderly people than youngsters! People came from Ludhiana, Mohalli and Panchkula (Mohalli and Panchkula are two nearby cities) have joined for this session. Subha asked all of them to introduce and speak about their Wikipedia experience and interaction as a user. Many of them asked questions in the beginning itself which was beneficial with spending some time to know each other. The participants were taken through the presentation by questioning about "Who edit WP and why they edit". They were asking a lot of questions in between so the intro session was longer. Most people still were not believing that Wikipedia articles could be edited by people like them. So Subha decided to do some vandalism ;-) One of the participants volunteered for creating her user account and we changed the year of Chandigarh declared as being the "cleanest city" of India. Then she corrected it and Subha explained how experienced editors correct such mistakes. The participants were showed only few formatting like Bold, Italics, Linking and Heading and showed the "Help" tab from which they can learn more. Majority of them had doubts about credibility and they brought examples of many articles having wrong information. So the rest half of the session was spent discussing about the low visibility is one of the reasons of articles with wrong information and how more editor contribution is essential for articles of Indian context. They were also shown articles with cleanup/"More citations needed" maintenance tags and how they could be improved.

Day 2 (25 Aug): Editing Workshop
Day 2 saw 10 participants from the previous day (including a sports-blogger, a techie, 4 students, a ELT trainer, a pediatrician and a lady from Ludhiana who created her user account on Day 1 and brought her father for Day 2) and 4 new student participants. Subha and me talked briefly about what is intended for the editing session. All of them created their user accounts, some of the participants helped the new participants to create their user accounts. They chose various different articles including articles of local importance (Banka Bihari temple, Chandigarh, Paratha (few raised the question why it is not spelt as ParaNtha!!)), Assam tea, etc.

The audience were really patient and asking more questions about "What is there for me", "What are we going to do next". So we all gathered for a photoshoot and discussed about setting up a wiki club so they stay connected. They were excited to hear that Chandigarh British Library Wikipedia club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Chandigarh) will be India's 3rd Wikipedia Club.

We all shared ideas and about how they will be continuing editing after the session is over. Now a facebook group has been created (https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikiClubChandigarh) to guide the new editors with editing.

Meeting with Christina and Varinder:
After the session got over we had a meeting with Christina (Manager) and Varinder (IT Head of Brit Lib). One of the Tribune columnists (Renee Singh) and a participant also joined us. We explained how the wiki club will function and would help them also. Being a Library they could involve many of their members in this. A new lady editor from Ludhiana has shown interest for conducting workshops in her town. There was a sports-blogger and a techie who explained how the local blogger community (over 125+ bloggers) meet up regularly and blog actively. This is a community we could explore more to promote Wikipedia amongst techies. What we found is British Library is quite open to ideas and showed interest for this collaborative model. The participants were asking can we define positions for the wiki club also so that people having different interest could take up lead for different activities.

Post event steps:

- Emails with thanks and appreciating their interest were sent to the participants.
- Formal opening of the club is done on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Chandigarh) and participant new editors have been informed about this.
- Help/Support desk on facebook is set to provide online support. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikiClubChandigarh)
- Press reports are being prepared to be sent to newspapers
- We are working on distributing responsibilities among new editors.
- Discussion for next meetup and keeping them updated in a regular basis.
- Hand-holding


Meeting with the curator, Chandigarh Museum:
We have met the curator of Chandigarh museum. After explaining about GLAM projects she showed interest and asked to send a proposal. As there is no active community we are currently focusing on building a community in Chandigarh. But, this could run as a good GLAM project in the future.

Meeting with Shital Parkash, former Prof. in Public Administration, Panjab University, Chandigarh:
We met a former Professor of Public Administration of Panjab University, Shital Parkash. He is also an author and is known in the city Professor and Academician community. He could help us with reaching out to Punjabi media, Professors for a community building exercise for Punjabi Wikipedia.

Best!
Piyush and Subha

_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l