Quite heart warming to hear about this... hope we have something like this in Delhi soon :)
On 26 December 2011 14:01, Sudhanwa Jogalekar <sudhanwa....@gmail.com>wrote: > Report on Wikipedians participation in CMDA IT Expo, 2011- (15 to 18 Dec. > 2011) > > > About CMDA: > CMDA, Pune is an association of Computer and Media dealers in Pune. It is > a registered organisation and is ISO 9000 certified. Recently, it is > declared as the best Computer dealers association across India by DQ Week > magazine. Website: www.cmdapune.org > > *About IT Expo: * > CMDA organises IT expo every year. This was 14th year of the expo and was > held during 15-18 Dec 2011. As per CMDA organisors, the no. of visitors > this year was about 40000. > > About our activities: > CMDA gave us a 2m X 2m stall. The usual cost for the stall is about Rs > 25,000. However, considering that we are not doing any business activities > and are working for a social cause, this was given to us GRATIS. The stall > allocation was confirmed at a very late stage. As such, the call for > volunteers was also sent very late and we were running short of people to > man the stall. > > On day 1, (15th Dec), user:Mahitgar, Sudhanwa, Hisham and Nitika started > the activities in the morning session. Flex banners were put up and the > printed handouts were ready to be distributed. Hisham and Nitika came all > the way from Delhi for this. They also got some T shirts for distribution > to the right people. Our stall was the last stall in the expo and was > adjoining the seminar hall. After the inauguration, people started visiting > our stall. The chief guest was visiting all the stalls and he visited our > stall also. He was pleasantly surprised to see our activities > (non-commercial, social cause) in the expo. > > On day 1, second half was handled by Ashwin and Mahitgar. We had printed a > handout to create a generic awareness about Wikipedia. This was in English > on one side and about Marathi Wikipedia on the other side. Initially, we > had about 200 handouts printed as the response was not known to us. > Ultimately, we had to make many copies many times as the response went on > increasing day by day. > > Day 2 (16th Dec) was managed by Mahitgar, Ashwin, Abhishek and some other > CA volunteers. For the CAs, it was a great experience to interact with the > people face to face and answer all kinds of their queries. This was totally > different from the usual CA activities where they interact with people who > are already much aware of Wikipedia and editing and may be other projects > too. Abhishek and some others managed the stall till afternoon and later on > by Sudhanwa and some others like Pratik. In the evening, Mahitgar gave a > talk on the topic “Marathi Wikipedia- Challenges and Future” in the seminar > hall which was received very well. > > Day 3 (17th Dec) was a hectic day being Saturday, the weekend. Mahitgar > and Sudhanwa handled the 1st half. Ashwin joined with his spouse for a > couple of hours. Mandar joined in the 2nd half till the day ends. There was > really an energetic crowd who visited the stall and asked many many > questions. > > Day 4 (18th Dec) Mandar handled the stall since morning for whole day. He > was alone there till lunch time when some more volunteers including Ashwin, > Mahitgar came to help him out. > Being a Sunday, the fourth day was very hectic and most crowded. Some more > volunteers like Lochan Makheja (Hindi Wikipedian from Pune) were also added > but it was still difficult to address all the visitors to our stall. Even > with 4 volunteers at a time, we were not able handle the running crowd at > peak hour on Sunday evening. > > We had kept a notebook at the stall and noted down names and contact > details of the people who were interested in further Wikipedia related > activities. During the 4 days of expo, we have collected names and contact > details of the interested people and that number is about 250!! That is big > enough to have multiple wiki-academies in Pune in the next few months. Our > guesstimate of the no of people visited our stall is about 3000. > > While many visitors knew what Wikipedia is, most were not aware that it is > also available in Indian languages, especially Marathi. The few who were > aware of both were not aware of other projects like Commons, Wikisource > etc. People were mostly unaware of the implications of copyrighted and > freely licensed information.The expo gave a very good opportunity to > interact with the people directly and get a feel of what the common people > understand/know about Wikipedia. Here are some USUAL questions that we > faced in the expo. > > 1. What is the price of Wikipedia? I want to buy some copies. :-) (to be > specific - Wikipedia kitne me bech rahe ho.... ) > 2. You are not selling anything here? !!! Then why are you in the expo? > 3. You are not getting anything from Wikipedia, then why are you standing > for whole day on the stall? > 4. If anyone can edit Wikipedia, what is the assurance that the content is > correct and authentic? > 5. Can you edit Wikipedia in Marathi/Hindi? How? > 6. If I write any article on Wikipedia, will there be my name on the > article? > 7 If I type some search string in Marathi (Devanagari), you get search > pages in Marathi/ Marathi Wikipedia?? !! > 8. If I type in English (Roman) on English Wikipedia,can I get pages from > Marathi Wikipedia? > 9. When and where you meet? I want to join your activities. > 10. What? You can directly edit content on the Wikipedia? > > > Apart from this, in the expo we could interact face to face with Marathi > Wikipedia users and the activity helped in explaining Marathi typing in > more easier way.This interaction will help in improving related help pages > on Marathi Wikipedia. (Marathi Wikipedia sandbox has a good number of > trial and error edits of people trying to type in Marathi using phonetic > facility and still not succeeding in their effort) > > It was also observed that the number of visiting women was good but at > times the stall being small, it was crowded and they could not come forward > to listen amongst the jostling men. Next time we should give a thought to > request and hopefully get additional space (and also women volunteers) for > addressing women. > > The happiest experiences were when school children were stopping their > parents saying “Papa Mummy Wikipedia Stall !!’ and that naturally made > those parents stop at our stall and see what it was all about. it would be > great if we are able to get academic fraternity and more volunteer support > as many such expos will be forthcoming in the near future. It would be > great to arrange such expos in bigger education campuses too. > > Remarkably, this was a second consecutive year for the expo having a > Marathi Wikipedia seminar. Last year’s talk was given by Abhay Natu and > this year Mahitgar spoke on “Marathi Wikipedia: Challenges and Future”. > Mahitgar used the opportunity to focus on areas where Marathi language has > scope to provide significant knowledge. Mahitgar opined that all the > technology is available and volunteers are there to support the activity. > The real challenge is to bring back the confidence of the people that they > can avail all the knowledge in their own language by cooperating each other > through projects like indic language Wikipedias. Thanks to Wikimedia > projects, the key of the future is in their own hands. > > *Expenditure:* > We had asked for a grant to GAC on almost the last minute and it was > sanctioned very quickly. (Money yet to be received in the account) We have > asked for about 11000 INR that includes printing, stationary, CD/DVD > burning, etc etc. Out of this, we spent about 5000/- Rs. (Expenditure > details yet to come from the volunteers) Remaining money was not utilised > as additional activities like CD burning, making some goodies like > stickers, key chains etc. could not be done as all the volunteers were > stuck up at the stall itself. The amount will be used for the given purpose > but for/during our further activities like Wiki-academies. > > *Pictures:* > Abhishek has already uploaded some pictures and will be uploading some > videos also. Sudhanwa is uploading some photos in the category "CMDA IT > Expo 2011, 15-18 Dec" on commons*. We will also try to get some pictures > from the expo organisers.* > > *Conclusion:* > With the kind of manpower we had and the time and money in hand, the kind > of outreach we achieved is extraordinary. Almost 3000 people interacted and > of these 250 showed interest in future activities!! Some of them are very > useful people like librarians. We met some editors also in the expo. Some > of them are from rural area and are doing work in Marathi!! All of them > were unaware of the presence of the Pune Community and we were able to get > some dedicated new members to the community. > > Probably, considering the outreach we had and the response we got in the > expo, it is even worth paying for the stall next year!! > > We can do much better next time if we get enough time span for planning > and execution of activities > > -- > > ~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~! > web: www.sudhanwa.com blog: www.sudhanwa.in > Twitter: sudhanwa Check on FB, Linkedin for more. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > >
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