[Foundation-l] Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 in Chittagong

[Tanvir Rahman]

Hello everyone,

I am so pleased to announce that Wikimedia Bangladesh, with the help of
Independent University, Bangladesh, Chittagong, and Bangladesh Open Source
Network, organized the first Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 [1] in
Chittagong [2] to promote Bangla Wikipedia [3] in Bangladesh. This outreach
event was held in 2 and 3 of March and was attended by around 300
participants. It was first big-level program of Wikimedia Bangladesh and it
was outside of the Dhaka (the capital) to focus on country-wide outreach.
We called it an "unconference" to give it a less formal look and to make
the appearance more welcoming.

This two days event was inaugurated by the Chittagong City Mayor and and in
the last it was attended by the Since and Technology minister of Bangladesh
Government. It was also attended by some other popular public figures,
writers, and university professors, and media personalties. During the
unconference we had events like workshops, photo exhibition, cultural
program, seminars, article writing contest, etc. We had several teams from
the schools, colleges, and universities in Chittagong as team participants.
The unconference was hosted by Chittagong campus of Independent University,
Bangladesh. You can see the some of the images of the events in the Commons
category [4].

Because of the presence of the popular public figures and government
officials, the event got a significant amount of media coverage in national
print and electronic media. We also even had billboards in the city's main
crossings to let people know about Bangla Wikipedia which was the main
purpose of this event and current strategic priority of Wikimedia
Bangladesh.

Wikimedia Bangladesh wants to thank everyone who supported us. We want to
thank our sponsors and donors who helped us to arrange this big event. We
want thank Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner for her nice video
speech that we screened in the inaugural ceremony. And of course to our
participants, who eventually made this effort a success. And I apologize to
let you guys know about this event in late. We are still working on putting
everything on wiki.

Regards,
Tanvir Rahman
Wikitanvir on Wikimedia
Secretary,
Wikimedia Bangladesh

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_2012
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong
[3] http://bn.wikipedia.org
[4]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_2012