Hi All,
Welcome from Bangalore Wikipedians!
The 33rd Bangalore
WikiMeetUp was organised at 3 PM, CIS, Domlur, Bangalore attended by 19 Wikipedians including Wikimedia Board of Trustee member Bishakha Datta, Hisham Mundol from India Programs, Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia India Chapter Executive Committee members.
Here is a brief summary of some of the major talks and discussions.
Hisham introduced the ongoing programs of Foundation focused on the outreach of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects to masses and bring out potential editors for both English and Indic Wikipedias. The primary structure of new projects for India includes creating awareness through various media with a prime focus on Digital Media (Central Notice, Social Networks, Video Editing, etc) and campus programs like Pune Pilot Project. The present campus program also encompasses on educating students as well as teachers about the importance of Wikipedia and Potential of Wikipedia in Classrooms. The model structures from US campus programs which gave rise to a huge some 962 good quality articles could be also a beneficial factor to be imparted with an Indian context. He also insisted using repeatability impact of core messages during the outreach programs like [Edit] India!. And also during this sort of campaigns a student-teacher correlation and collaborative effort will give birth to not only a handy, easily searchable modern tool but also an imperative knowlegde base for various age groups and professions. These campus programs will also make a student-teacher relationship better to join hands and produce authentic, reliable source of information and make conventional education easier rather than creating cracks in the existing education system, the mission is to bridge the gaps, not expanding them. The campus program will also facilitate extensive support for training on editing, motivation for both student and teachers, monitoring the strategic implementation by campus ambassadors. The Pune Pilot project will be a learning sessions and infancy of future outreach campaigns for India.
The 2nd Talk of the day was by EC President Arjuna which started by introduction of the EC members Gautam, Anirudh, Arun to the attendees. He shared the following points
a) Formulation of several guidelines of the approved India Chapter membership. The chapter has opened a bank account and will soon be opening the membership. All Indian nationals of/above 18 with contact address in India can become members. An online form will be made available, which needs to be filled and then printed. The printed form after signing can be sent to chapter office along with payment details. He shared the benefits of membership and encouraged all the participants to become members once the membership is open.
b) He also shared the idea of designing Wikimedia Chapter brochures in English and native languages. He shared a sample brochure to explain the key expectations from the brochure.
c) He said that city/language subcommittee is being launched soon and invited community members to propose Wikimedians to serve on the same.
Finally WMF Board of Trustee member Bishakha Datta shared a brief talk about her current role with the foundation and possible major goals, involvement of Women Wikipedians, socio-economic strategies and progressive growth in the field of Art, Culture and Communication.
(Report prepared with support from Hisham and Arjun. Guidance from Tinu Cherian)
