Hi,
Telugu Wikipedia Community, in association with Wikimedia Foundation India Chapter, Telugu SIG, CIS-A2K and Theatre outreach Unit of UoH celebrated this Ugadi, the Telugu New Year festivity as a Wikpedia celebration. Celebration of completing 9 years, more than 50k articles and increasing users both in terms of readers and contributors.
Once the program was planned, we had hardly a month's time left. So, whoever from the Telugu wikipedia community at Hyderabad, was invited and meetups were held at Golden threshold, Abids on every sunday till the event date.
There were a lot of discussions that happened in these meetups, we could clarify each others' doubts and even take up small wikipedia learning sessions at these meets. A budget was prepared and roles were assigned. We started preparing invitations, and other logistics were being calculated. Almost for all of us, this was the first time to be on board for organising such an event. So, there were obvious worries and apprehensions about smooth conduct of event. Here, I should say that without Vishnu's efforts, we could not have organised this event to such a level. Right from convincing Rama Rao garu of TOU, UoH for venue to the post event tasks, he was always with us for support and help.
We called on other Telugu wikipedians living in other cities to join the pre-event meetups to handle pre-event and event tasks. T. Sujatha garu from Chennai made herself available for the meet on 31st March. Her presence made people more confident.
When the event day came, Arjuna garu arranged a wikiacademy at Centre for Good Governance(CGG) which me, Arjuna , Vishnu and Pavithran organised.
This wikiacademy happened on 9th April.
On the event day, that is on 10th, morning, a media meet was organised. It was intended for media people to know about wikipedia. It was attended by media heads from 4 different media houses. A panel discussion headed by Bhandaru Srinivas garu was organised. Key points on improving telugu wikipedia from a perspective of a media person was revealed in this discussion.
Post lunch, we visited HMTV media office to know about the internal working of a television media news channel and press. Here we had the opportunity to get to know about how various programs are recorded and telecast.
By the team, we returned to the venue, it was late in night. Then, we had a discussion where the next day's program and future resolutions for Telugu Wikipedia were discussed.
Next day morning was the festival of Ugadi. The main day of the event.
It started off with introductions, this pre-lunch forenoon was entirely meant for Wikipedians to interact with each other. But, Arjuna garu had something else in his mind.
He arranged a talk from a person from
indg.in, C-DAc and a live interaction over Google with Ravi Vyjasatya, one of the senior most Wikipedians.
Post lunch, all the participants were divided into 2 groups, one of them were those who were entirely new to wikipedia, the others were the fello telugu wikipedians.
For the newbies, a wiki academy was organised. And simultaneously, a discussion session where most problems and hurdles of wikipedians were discussed. Some of these discussions still are on at the forum at tewiki.
Sowmyan was busy interacting with wikipedians and taking up memberships.
We asked him to address the gathering after the discussions.
By 5 we were done with most of our planned activities and were ready for the best part of any program, the public meeting.
M Aditya Prasad garu, from AIR headed the event with Samala Ramesh babu garu and Kodanda ramayya garu from Telugu bhashodyama samakhya prresiding over.
Sujataha garu, Rajasekhar garu and other senior wikipedians were fecilitated.
The evening ended with certificate and momento distribution.
On behalf of Telugu Wikipedia community, I thank one and all who were directly or indirectly involved in this event.
Media coverage :
Images at commons :
With thanks & regards
Rahmanuddin Shaik