Hi Everyone,
We were about 28 people together in Kolkata celebrating Wikipedia's 11th Anniversary. :)
We started the meeting with a general introductory round. There were students from
Jadavpur University, IIFT, Neetaji Subhash Chandra Bose Engineering College, some people who had joined us for the Wiki Kolkata Photo walk, a reporter from Times of India, an editor,
Neelanjan Dasgupta,(User:Ne0Freedom) who has been contributing to Wikipedia since 2005 (but it was his first Wiki meet ever), a lot of newbies who wanted to know more about Wikipedia and our various projects amongst several others. It was great to see that about 50% of the people were new to Wikipedia family and joined us on this special day.
Then Nitika (We are very proud where she have came first time in kolkata and motivate us) spoke about various programs that the Trust is currently involved in. Some of the new participants wanted to know more about Wiki Loves Monuments competition, Chapters initiatives on GLAM projects, Offline Project etc. Then Bishakha introduced herself and spoke about SOPA.
The introductory talks were followed by me giving a small presentation about the various programs, Wikimedia India Chapter, Bengala Wikipedia, initiatives taken by the Bengali community members etc. There were some questions about using translation tools for Wikipedia articles.
We then celebrated Wikipedia 11 by cutting a yummy cake. :) This was followed by Kalyanda giving a hands on training to newbies regarding how to upload pictures on Commons, how to use a picture from Commons on Wikipedia and basic Wikipedia editing. There were lots of questions about how to add a reference, how to edit and Kalyanda addressed all these questions.
We have collected names and email addresses of all the participants so thats its easy for us to follow up with them and invite them to other Wiki activites that will take place in Kolkata.
Next Steps:
1. We are planning to organise a Kolkata photothon on the Chinese New Year, 23rd January. As you know Kolkata has the biggest China Town in India where there will be lots of celebrations on this particuylar day. Hence we have decided to go down to China town and click pictures that can be uploaded on Commons.
2. We'll try and organise a full WikiAcademy for all the newbies who joined us for the celebrations to inform them more a about Wikipedia editing.
3. We'll soon organise a Kolkata Wiki meet up for Feb and invite all the participants as plan of every month wiki meetup/workshop at Kolkata.
4. We want to start with WP: Kolkata where we all will do collaborative editing and improve/add articles about the pictures/monuments/buildings we had clicked during the previous Kolkata photo walk. Just for information, we contributed over 450 pictures on Commons as a result of this photowalk.
5. Sucheta is organising a WikiAcademy in her college, Neetaji Subhash Chandra Bose Engineering College on the 25th Jan. Over 70 students have already registered for it. Jayantada and Kalyanda are supporting her for this event.
6. Deepon is also speaking with professors/Chairman at Jadavpur University to figure out the possibility of conducting a WikiAcademy there.
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With Warm Regards,
Jayanta Nath
Calcutta,West Bengal