[Wikimediaau-l] A quick report on TINA

[John Vandenberg]

We were not added the printed program of TINA, however Leigh found out
that they were adding inserts into the program. Jutta and I dropped
into the Octopod.org office on Saturday.  They kindly provided us with
a printer and a computer, and Jutta created a poster while I drove one
of their volunteers around town to deliver equipment.  We printed 100
color A5, which were added to the programs that were available at the
venues in the afternoon, and 10 color A3 posters were placed in
windows and on walls around town.  The regional library, bookshops in
the mall and used bookshops in the cafe strip were very happy to put
up the poster.

The day started very slow until the first person arrived after 11am,
which was good because we had some fundamental technical problems.  No
Internet.  We were provided with unlimited wireless which we couldnt
connect to in the venue, and wired internet which we didn't have a
cable for.  To begin with I used my dongle, however we only had a
cached version of the visualation because my dongle and the projector
both use USB, and my laptop only had one USB slot, so it was one or
the other until that was resolved.

Ten people turned up.  Some only watched the visualisation on the
screen, talked briefly and left, however three hung around and talked
for about an hour each.  One gentleman is involved in http://wik.me/ ,
which is built from Wikipedia data, and we talked at length about
data, natural languages and dbPedia.  The other two were writers who
wanted to understand Commons, Wikipedia and free licences better and
ultimately they wanted to give back to Wikipedia.  Both created a
Wikipedia account and made their first Wikipedia edits on the day
(Stdragon04 and lakelady2282).

One article was created on the day:

http://enwp.org/Ostrovo_Unit

All three want to be part of a Newcastle user group.

While the turn out was low due to limited exposure, these three
attendees made it worth the effort, and I think we should do it again
next year, but bigger!
Thanks for Jutta and Leigh for helping make it happen.

We also announced the Photography competition at TINA, with Laura
creating the poster.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Proposal:Wikipedia_loves_..._my_town

--
John Vandenberg