Hi Srikanth,
If you get laughed at doing something voluntarily, just return a friendly smile, that might in due time be remembered better than any well verbalized rationale.
If you're looking for some inspiration yourself, here are some thoughts, and I willfully take the risk of sounding bombastic, which I hope at least puts a smile on your face :-)
You might be interested to read about Maslow's theory of self-actualization. I first read about it as a student decades ago, as a metaphor it grabbed me and it keeps coming back from time to time. Wikipedia tells me there is a large cultural component in his ideas. For me finding a balance between different needs always remains a challenge, but certainly it is not either/or, selfishness or altruism. Even more, how to draw the distinction? Sometimes altruistic motives will bring you personal rewards, and vice versa. I'm not sure even much of what I do is altruistic at all, I just have fun doing it.
John Adams said " I am a revolutionary so my son can be a farmer so his son can be a poet. ... " We are marching in the front rows of a digital revolution. [2] Later people will listen to our stories, and envy us, if they don't already.
If you haven't read Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" on open source movement, I can heartily recommend it to you. Best section for me was "Homesteading the Noosphere" [3] [4] which discusses how selfishness and altruism can both be served at the same time by contributing in a 'gift economy'.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Revolution [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homesteading_the_Noosphere [4] Essay online: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/
Cheers, Erik Zachte
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediaindia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaindia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Srikanth Ramakrishnan Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 6:02 PM To: Wikimedia India Community list Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] What's in it for me?
Sorry guys, looks like Google chopped off the bottom of my mail again. What I said was, when I asked my friend to contribute to the Tamil Media Contest, he told me- when I'm not getting paid for all my photos, why should I upload? Anyone who's gone thru similar experiences and can help me out?
On 12/16/11, Srikanth Ramakrishnan rsrikanth05@gmail.com wrote:
Heya all. I just wanted to share this quick mail with you and get your feedback. Over the past two years, I've actively been part of Wiki outreach efforts. Thru meetups, volunteering for the Bangalore Samskrit academy, trying to convince friends, classmates etc. I've had a lot of negative experiences with people askin me- What's in it for me? Mere liye kya hai? Ennaku enna kadaka porthu? I get laughed at when I say I'm doing gu voluntarily. Infact recently, when I tried to get a friend to contribute to our
-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan, Sathyamangalam-Gobichettipalayam Star Gazers Gang, Ukkadam, Coimbatore. My Commons uploads, now exceeding 75. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Rsrikanth05
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-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
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