Dear All,

One of the main issue relating to this is understanding of the common platform where all assemble. All the members should be taught it and should be advised to have a test and trial. And confirmation of that test gone successful sould be sent.

The meeting platform should be ought to be simple and accessible.

More over the other issue is the time. such meetups should have fixed per-planned agenda and time. In such meeting there should always be some element of education. to keep participants interest.

apart from this community members should be in touch by other modes such text messages, call and all that. this will help community grow strong.



Sushant






On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:46:55 +0530 wrote
>Hi Swaroop, This is quite common phenomenon for the new beginings. I have started online meetups/sessions for Gujarati Wikipedia since the begining of this new Year. Have held 4 sessions so far. Had similar experience in my firstever planned event. Users are showing interest, and I am sure, if we continued it as a regular event, people will be regular to attend as well. Those who couldn't join the meetups/events online, have shared their apologies and have regreted for it, which shows that they genuinely missed, and that is enough for me to carry it on.
 Simply wanted to say that you are doing a nice job, please "Keep Calm and Carry On". People will join and number of participants will increase slowly. All the best!
Dhaval

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 3:59 PM, Deepon Saha wrote:

Thanks swaroop, you really have done a brilliant job.. Lets hope next time we get more participants..:)
Deepon

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Swaroop Rao wrote:



Hello everyone,




You've probably heard about the online "Wikiacademy" that Nitika announced around a week ago; we recently conducted that session on Saturday (10 March 2012) on Google+ Hangout.





Six participants signed up  - one informed day before about her absence, two did not show up at all, one could not log into Google hangout, one was able to attend the first part of the session but then lost his internet connection and eventually we had only one participant who attended the entire session. That's what happened at the online outreach event organised last Saturday, 10th March.








It wasn't particularly an impressive session in terms of turnout - we were expecting all six guys to show up and take part. But even if these 2 participants show interest and edit on regular basis I'd call this event a success - a success rate of 33%.








I'd like to discuss few things that we should definitely keep in mind before we organize similar events:



1. Request only those people to register who are sure to have a stable internet connection. Some students were trying to log in for the session but their hostel/school connections was extremely unstable. Im not sure if there is a way for making sure that they have stable connections but it is really important. (I can also see where this might be difficult, because not many can give any guarantees on the reliability of their net connections)






2. Invariably we'll have few people who'll drop out at the last moment or are not able to join leaving room for someone else to join in. Hence for such events we should probable overbook a session. If one drops out, another one could attend the session instead. This will make sure that we're utilizing our resources and time to the fullest.






3. Ask the participants to do a test google hangout a day or two before the actual event. This will make sure that the participants are not facing any technical issues and can attend the session seamlessly.






4. Maybe at the time of registration we need to ask participants for their phone numbers. We sent reminders to the participants by way of email but yet 2 of them did not show up. It could be that the didn't not read the mails well in time. If we had their phone numbers we could have messaged/called to send them a gentle reminder.






5. We could also send across some useful links and videos for the participants to go through before the session. This way participants will be warmed up and more informed for the session. It will also give the participants enough time to jot down all their queries and get them clarified during the session.








>From my personal opinion, online outreach is something that can definitely work. Sitting in Bangalore I was able to train guys from Nepal & Mangalore. I'm hoping that they'll become active editors in English and in their respective native languages. Im really happy to note that at least one of them has already edited several articles in the medical space - which is his field of study.







I'd also like to thank Deepon - he'd put in a lot of time and effort for helping us conduct this session.


Many thanks of course to Nitika, who requested me to conduct the session, and who was omnipresent throughout the session, and took over from me whenever my net connection gave way (Another point: we need to somehow make sure that the instructors themselves have a good net connection).







Hoping to conduct more sessions like these.



Thanks

Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch)


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