Wikipedia:WikiConnect/Conversations/Swatantra

{| class="plainlinks" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" style="border-left: 1px #9accf6 solid; border-bottom: 1px #9accf6 solid; border-right: 1px silver solid; background: white;"
 * style="padding: 1em;" |

Conversation at Swatantra 2014
On 18 November 2014, during Swatantra 2014 event, at 10:15 pm, we met at the 8th floor of Classic Avenue for a get-together. There we discussed the following things.__NOINDEX__

During the interrupted conversation we discussed the following things—
 * 1) A large-scale project proposed by Abhishek Suryawanshi to connect Wikipedia to rural parts of India.
 * 2) Follow-up of India Community Consultation 2014

WikiConnect
Abhishek Suryawanshi proposed a large-scale project in India that will connect Wikipedia with rural and those people who don't have direct access to Wikipedia.

He proposed to to start work in 3 or so cities in India (like Delhi, Pune, Kolkata, Guwahati). In the brief keynote speech Suryawanshi discussed the necessity of spreading the power of knowledge/Wikipedia to the remote as well as rural parts of India. He told, he had participated in a similar small project a year ago in Pune. India, where his team hosted couple of workshops and Wikipedia Summit. He told, now he is interested to do it in a larger scale.

Participants
The following Wikimedia/Wikipedia/CIS members participated in the day's discussion—
 * 1) Abhishek Suryawanshi (Chief convenor)
 * 2) Tito Dutta (Associate convenor, documentation maker)
 * 3) Abhinav Garule (Marathi Wikipedia)
 * 4) Parveer Grewal (Panjabi Wikipedia)
 * 5) Subhashish Panigrahi (Program Officer,CIS A2K)
 * 6) Santosh Shringare (Researcher, IIT Mumbai)
 * 7) Jeph
 * 8) Netha Hussain (Malayalam Wikipedia)
 * 9) Vishnu Vardhan  (Program Director, CIS-A2K)
 * 10) Rahimanuddin Shaik (Program Officer, CIS A2K)
 * 11) Nageswara Rao
 * 12) Sudhanwa Joglekar (ex-President WMIN, FOSS member)
 * 13) Pavan SanThosh (Telugu Wikipedia)
 * 14) Syed Nisar Ahmed (Urdu Wikipedia)

Rough notes from same event :

Discussed Ideas

 * Outreach to increase readership in rural area
 * Dedicated conference/Wikipedia Summit for wikipedians
 * Medical college outreach
 * North-east India region workshop and outreach

Execution

 * Dedicated staff/volunteer for better output
 * Medical college partnerships with help of WikiProject Med Foundation
 * Possible execution partners : Wikimedia India Chapter, CIS, WikiProjectMed

Community consultation follow up

 * Few community members shared update from respective communities.

Key points

 * Rural empowerment through Wikipedia
 * Medical student-teacher engagement
 * Community engagement and community creation if needed in new rural/remote area's

Flow
Abhishek Suryawanshi started by proposing by explaining the plan. Netha Hussain told that it is a good idea, but she also mentioned lack of active members.

Subhashish Pangrahi and Netha Hussain told, the project might be a difficult one to execute and suggested to have dedicated volunteers/staff for execution. Subhashish shared his personal experience with college collaborations. Netha mentioned similar project which was executed in her community and it was successful. Santosh Shingare said he will help with technological aspect and Abhinav also offered his help. Nisar Ahmad shared his own experience with university collaboration and outreach. He suggested to host regional/national level conference to gather wikipedians from various languages.