New subject: [Wikimedia-in-chn] [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia workshop in Carte Blanche, Chennai

14 Feb 2011

      A preliminary update about the Carte Blanche event:
1. Feb 5:
I delivered the inaugural address as chief guest. I spoke about what all 
constitute free software and content, why anyone should care (more in the 
context of underserved needs of groups of people without market strengths and 
fragmented markets like Indic users), and how all one can contribute. I pointed 
at the "non-mainstream" projects which are relatively small and needing 
contributors as opposed to well-known projects like GNU and Linux.
2. Feb 6:
There was a stall for Wikipedia and one for Wikibhasha. Surya Prakash mainly 
volunteered at the Wikipedia stall and Mahir and others helped with the 
logistics. Saravanan from Microsoft Research helped with both the stalls.
We had workshops in the afternoon with a very good infrastructure provided by 
MIT. However, attendance at the workshops were not as good as for the stalls 
(perhaps due to the OS workshop that ran in parallel). Tamil Wikians Surya 
Prakash, Manian, Sengai Podhuvan, Mahir, and Paridhimathi and I spoke as well as 
provided hands-on tutorials to the participants. Almost all participants created 
accounts and made their first few edits there. One ILUG member invited us to 
post projects for FOSS enthusiasts 
at http://wiki.ilugc.in/index.php?title=Projects_List. Saravanan demoed a 
special (yet-to-be released) version of WikiBhasha for Tamil and took our 
feedback.
Some photos at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_CB_Chennai
Tamil wiki page: http://j.mp/eLOVOy
Special thanks to go to Srikanth for connecting us with the organisers and 
making all this possible. Thanks to Tinu who drove to deliver the wiki banners 
to me.
I request the other volunteers to add further information on this thread.
- Sundar
 "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for 
the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
----- Original Message ----
...
From: BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.com
To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. 
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: wikimedia-in-chn@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thu, February 3, 2011 3:09:15 PM
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia workshop in Carte Blanche, Chennai
Hi,
As part of the FOSS event called Carte Blanche (http://cb.csmit.org/)  to be 
held
at the Madras Institute of Technology, a Wikipedia workshop is  being conducted
on February 6 between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm. Following is the  proposal, the 
exact
timings will be finalised soon.

English  Wikipedia - general introduction for participation (Sundar)
தமிழ்  விக்கிப்பீடியா பயிலரங்கு (Tamil Wikipedia Workshop by users Manian,

Sengai  Podhuvan, Paridhimathi, Surya Prakash, and Mahir)

Hacking with Wikipedia  (Srikanth's  previous presentation will be used +

Sundar's introduction  to  pywikipediabot and a few bot examples + Mahir's talk
about  templates and  other things)
The organisers have kindly agreed to  give us a stall as well. If any of you 
can
participate or, better still,  conduct sessions, you're most welcome.
On a sidenote, I've been asked to  inaugurate the event on Feb 5 at 9:00 am. 
All
are welcome.

Sundar

"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not  merely a medium for
...
the expression of thought, is a truth generally  admitted."

George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award  Lecture

Wikimediaindia-l  mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikita-l] [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia workshop in Carte Blanche, Chennai