Dear friends, A wikipedia introduction and editing session was held at SNDT Pune on 01 March 2011. Ádvance notice could not be given to other members of the Pune wikipedian community due to short notice and yours truly being extremely busy with academics - this is deeply regretted. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------ *WIKIPEDIA SESSION AT SNDT, PUNE (01 March 2011)* The Department of Communication Media for Children, SNDT College Of Home Science, Pune, recently organised a film workshop called "Filmi Chashma" in conjunction with the Comet Media Foundation on the College premises. I came to know about it from an email from Bishakha Datta, Trustee (Wikimedia Foundation) asking Pune wikipedians to please respond to a request from Comet Media Foundation's Chandita Mukherjee to conduct an editing session for the particpants. The aim apparently was to get the participants, mostly students of the department and locals of Pune, to edit in Marathi Wikipedia. The session was to last one and a half hours and was scheduled for 01st March 2011, a Tuesday. Since I am the only "unemployed" member of WikiPuneri, being on a sabbatical, while my fellow friends are busy earning their living, I agreed to take on the assignment. I was also happy to earn some brownie points with my spouse, an SNDT alumnus, albeit from the Mumbai college. So I happily went to SNDT following the accurate directions given by Dr Radha Misra, HOD and landed up in time for a sumptious mid-morning snack with the workshop participants. :-) Mandar Kulkarni, our local Marathi Wikipedia enthusiast had promised to try to make it in his lunch break but was unable to do so due to the distance his office was from the location. I was warmly greeted by Dr Misra and two members of Comet Media Foundation - Lajpat Dhingra and Suresh Dhadave. We then moved to a computer lab in the Education department. There a Ubuntu :-) laptop was connected and my presentation materials were loaded. One of Dr Misra's colleagues, Ms Payal Khombhadia, project officer for Filmy Chashma, introduced me and we were off. The presentation began with the three-minute W10 video created by JESS3, followed by a short presentation made by me! Which reminds me that we need some really good presentations for introduction to newbies! Strangely, that doesn't seem to be around! We really need improvement in this! The presentation was followed by an editing session. We had to close on time though people wanted to go on as another academic event was scheduled in that lab. One of the motifs put forth was the utility of Wikipedia in the sphere of activities of the workshop participants - children. Few people realise that how lacking the internet is in interactivity. Wikipedia allows children, like it does all people, to edit and the difference made to the encyclopedia is not only tangible and highly visible; moreso, it is immediately reflected back to the editor. This instantaneous response acts like a gratification - a primary reason why wikipedia can be addictive. So editing in itself can be rewarding for children, especially today when they have short attention spans. The important point that one should make to children is that this is one program where you can actually change the world; by making more information available one edit at a time. There was not much chance to mention schools and wikipedia, or the relevant resources on the web, as the thread of discussion drifted away to how editors got to learn new skills through editing on Wikipedia. I was able to mention the skills I learnt, that a lifetime of education including a B.Sc. (PCM), B.Tech. (Electrical), M.Sc. (Defence Studies) and now an M.Phil. (Def Studies) had not or did not teach me - namely, writing accurately, neutrally, skilfully; with proper citation of all kinds of resources, to avoid copyright violation; rewriting to avoid plagiarism; how to interact in online communities; learning the niceties of English grammar, punctuation, and issues pertaining to copy-editing and desktop publishing. The editing session, I have found, is the most exciting for people new to Wikipedia. People like to be shown how to edit. We looked at a typical Wikipedia standard article, the left-hand panel links, the tabs, navigation by links, categories and by using search. Featured content and good content were discussed. We then edited an article first anonymously, undid it and repeated the edit under my login. We then created a stub about the Pune campus of the SNDT. Then we ran out of time. Though the session was scheduled for an hour and a half, activities such as meeting people, introductions, moving to a classroom, etc takes time and effectively the session had lasted just about an hour. The lesson learnt is a session needs to be at least two hours long, especially if its the only session to be scheduled. We then moved to the tea-room where I addressed the audience for a few minutes, mainly acquainting them with details of activities being undertaken by the Puneri wikipedian community, exchanging contact details and distributing W10 swag - I am pleased to tell you that I was able to give away twenty tee-shirts to the participants, an unlooked for treat which brought out happy smiles of all. I would like to close with this note - that the participants were mostly women; there was only one male particpant and we three "faculty" guys were male. I mentioned the gender gap and how important it was for the health of the community that we get more women involved. After returning home, a thank you email was sent to each participant with an invite to the Wikimedia-IN-PUN list and to WikiPuneri group on Facebook. My deep gratitude to Chandita Mukherjee of Comet Media Foundation and Dr Radha Misra of SNDT College Of Home Science, Pune for giving this opportunity to me and the WikiPuneri community.