[Wikimediaindia-l] WikiConference

[Nikhil Sheth]

Great idea!

I suggest that in parallel with planning for a real-life all-India meetups,
we also start doing Skype audio (or other platform a/v) conferences. They
can be planned similar to the city meetups, with participants putting in
their skype id's and the meeting's organizer placing the group call.

We can keep a google/other shared doc open in parallel where we can all
write in as the conference progresses, hence co-creating documentation
during the meeting itself instead of burdening one person after. Google docs
has an added benefit of automatically opening a chat window on the right
pane so that can serve as a backup in case anybody drops out of skype or the
skype call crashes.

In our seminar in NERIST, we had people from elsewhere in the world coming
on Skype and giving presentations. Here, we had to scroll through the
presentation while the wikipedian dictated; I've recently found a better way
to do it : Zipcast on slideshare : here the presentation is in control of
the person giving it and everybody else watches on slideshare website
without having to download anything. That also has group chat feature. And
free of course. (There are also other solutions that give screen-sharing but
they need to be downloaded; and in Skype, screen-share isn't possible for 2+
way conferences last time I checked plus it's a live stream so badder
quality whereas slideshare is browser-based vector flash)

Another potential I see with web conferences : We can have an edit party
co-create an article on google docs (here it's all live and you can see the
other person's cursor inputting stuff real-time), and then one person can
copy-paste the whole thing to wikipedia once we're ready. This way we can
avoid latency periods and edit conflicts in an edit party, and involve a
much larger number of people in. And you'll have to attend one to see how
much fun it is, with multiple cursors moving all around the place! ;)

Of course, I'm zero on content suggestions - just suggesting methods with
which we can work together and do something more productive than just a
meeting, using the web and bridging the distances that divide us.

(I'm going to be out on coming weekends else I would have pitched for a
particular date for a pilot conference! And apologies for completely missing
the Pune meetup, guys!)

Cheers,
Nikhil Sheth
+91-966-583-1250
Pune, India
Teach For India <http://www.teachforindia.org/> Fellow, 2011-13
www.nikhilsheth.tk
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On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>wrote:

> Love the idea and hope it happens,
> Bishakha
>
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:10 PM, <wheredevelsdare at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Hi,
>>
>> I think it might be a good time to start an annual WikiConference in India
>> on the lines of what Wikimedia UK has (
>> http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_UK_2011).  We are starting
>> afresh, talks on a setup are still progressing and the future beholds. It
>> will be a wonderful opportunity for all of us to put a face to names as well
>> as to interact with each other and pave the way forward for Wikimedia in
>> India. Any thoughts?
>>
>> Regards,
>> User:AroundTheGlobe
>>
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>>
>>
>
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