Tewiki Pandaga-2024/Report

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The Telugu Wikimedia community celebrated the 20th Anniversary of its Wikipedia on January 26-28 2024 in Visakhapatnam at Dolphin Hotel. The Telugu Wikimedia community celebrated the event with the financial and administrative support of CIS A2K. 30 Telugu Wikimedians and five guests from outside Wikipedia participated in the celebrations. The event was specially named after Tewiki Pandaga (means Telugu Wikimedia Festival) and a logo has been created for this celebration.

The 26th to 28 were holidays: the 26th of January was Republic Day and the 27th and 28 were Saturday and Sunday. The highlights of the Tewiki festival are-

The Day 'Zero'[edit]

January 26,2024 Republic Day[edit]

Travel, Introductions, Greetings, City Visit and Recreation

Wikimedians started arriving in the morning and by 11 O'clock almost all had arrived. A special train from Hyderabad was late, causing further delays in reaching the venue for some participants.
After Lunch, all the participants set out at two o'clock in two minibuses on the Visakhapatnam heritage trip. First climbed Ross Hill, and visited the church, dargah, and Venkateswara Swamy Temples. The heritage narrator Ms.Jayashree Hattangadi volunteered to tell the colonial history of Visakhapatnam from the viewpoint of Ross Hill to all the Wikimedians.

Wikimedians with Heritage narrator
After the guided trip, the Wikimedians reached Ramakrishna Beach and spent a happy evening, They reached the venue at 8 pm.

After the dinner, all the participants gathered at the hotel meeting place for fun chatting. The organizers discussed the next day's program. Wikimedian Kashyap gathered all the Wikimedians together and played a little game, where they were asked to graphically represent their opinion about Wikipedia and later explain the same.

The Day 'One'[edit]

January 27,2024 Saturday[edit]

Sharing of Opinions, Ideas and Discussions with Guests

Guests, Wikimedians group in front of Dolphins Hotel
  • In the morning there was a registration program for Wikimedians.
  • After that, they took group photos, and pictures on the Hotel premises.
  • Wikimedian V.J.Suseela welcomed the participants and guests. Further briefly explained the code of conduct to be followed by Wikipedians in meetings.
  • Wikipedian, Meena Gayatri,S. hosted the next part of the event, i.e. The introduction of the following guests.
  1. Sri Mannam Venkata Rayudu
  2. Smt Kakarla Sajaya
  3. Sri Mamidi Harikrishna
  4. Sri Kandarpa Aditya
  5. Sri Veeven
  • After that, there was a presentation about the rise of Wikipedia from the beginning of the Wikimedia Foundation, various Wikimedia projects, various Telugu projects and their status etc. In this presentation and also later in the subsequent day the audio snippets of over 30 Wikimedians have been made into Word images (పద చిత్రాలు) and played, which was received by all the Wikimedians with a lot of joy and huge applause. (On the day 'Two' of the event, the book published of all these 'word images' was given to Wikimedians. The title of the book is "Endaro Wikipedianlu . . .")
Guests on the dias
  • The honourable guests who excelled in their respective fields were brought to the dias. The guests who participated in the discussion were Mamidi Harikrishna, Mannava Venkata Rayudu, Kandarpa Aditya, Kakarla Sajaya Garlu, and Viven Garu as a moderator, discussed their efforts in content production in Telugu.
  • After the lunch break, all the Wikimedians were divided into 5 groups and discussed with each guest - the knowledge creation going on in different fields, the support they can provide to Telugu Wikipedia from their fields etc. At the end of the program, the groups collated the points that emerged from their discussions and presented them in the meeting.
    Tewiki 20th Birthday Cake
  • Sri Tallavajjhala Patanjali Shastri, the Winner of the Central Sahitya Akademi award addressed the gathering, speaking about his efforts in environmental protection and his writings. All the Wikimedians were to have a fire-side talk in the evening with Prof Shastri according to the program, but was not possible as Shastri needed to go back quickly. In the place of fire-side talk with Prof Shastri, there was a brief discussion held by Telugu Wikimedians Pavan Santosh and V.J.Suseela about his works, studies in Pune and other experiences.
  • At 7 pm. the 20th Tewiki Anniversary Cake was cut to celebrate the event. T-shirts were distributed to the participants.
  • The day 'one' completed with Dinner at the end

The Day 'Two'[edit]

28.1.2024 Sunday[edit]

Quick Reviews and Future Strategy

  • The day 'Two' began with the release of reviews by independent observers on Telugu Wikipedia programs and content.
    • Telugu Quora: Pratyusha Garu released an abstract of the review done by her team of four people on the language and quality of articles online. She emphasized that the quality of the language in Tewiki needs to be improved. Some Wikipedians reacted to the report. They felt that the report was good.
    • CIS/A2K: The review report was prepared by Ms Nitesh Gill and presented by Nivas.
  • It continued to play the remaining audio snippets of word images of Telugu Wikimedians'.
  • In the post-lunch Session - all the Wikimedians shared their experiences with Wikipedia and their thoughts on future development according to the template supplied to them by the event organizers. Wikimedian's talks were noted and video-recorded.
  • A letter was written addressing the prominent Wikimedians who did not attend, with the signatures of all those who came to the anniversaries.
  • on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Telugu Wikipedia, Calendars were published and distributed along with "Endaro Wikipedianlu" books to everyone.
  • The program is completed with a Note of Thanks by the Program committee.

Thanks to[edit]

  • Tallavajjhala Patanjali Shastri, Mannava Venkata Rayudu, Mamidi Harikrishna, Kandarpa Aditya, Kakarla Sajaya, and Veeven who spared their time on our invitation and participated in the event at Visakhapatnam and shared their thoughts on knowledge acquisition and dissemination.
  • We are all thankful to Pratyusha Garu, Muppalla Apparao Garu, Kondubhotla Chandrasekhar, Alok Nanda Prasad and Sasidhara Reddy who agreed to review the quality of the articles in Telugu Wikipedia and gave a good review report when asked.
  • Jayashree Hattangadi who volunteered to narrate the history of Visakhapatnam from Ross Hill premises to the Wikipedians on the first day of their visit to Visakhapatnam.
  • The CIS/A2K organization - A major contributor to the success of this event - financial and intellectual contributions. They suggested the program design and the logistics required for organizing these celebrations in Visakhapatnam. Acknowledge the contribution of Sri Tanveer Hassan for being thorough with the program committee and Niwas for travel, venue arrangements and printing of the Tewiki Pandaga 2024 Calender for the Telugu Wikimedia Community.
  • Trinity Academy, Bangalore for their design and printing of the book "Endaro Wikipedianlu"
  • Dolphin Hotel, staff for their accommodation, food arrangements and excellent hospitality.

All the Wikimedians safely reached their homes.

Other Features[edit]

  • The hotel rooms were allocated on 4, 5, and 6 floors with twin sharing.
  • Some Wikimedians come as families.
  • The ground floor has a meeting space and an adjoining dining hall
  • Early morning breakfast arrangements were made in the restaurant hall on the hotel's ground floor.
  • Wikimedians brought a variety of edibles to the gathering and arranged a sweets table.
  • About 35 people participated in the event maintaining discipline and no disturbances were reported.
  • Some Wikipedians visited Goddess Kanakamahalakshmi in Visakhapatnam, Simhachalam, beaches and also to Andhra University
  • Some took pictures of various places in Visakha and uploaded those pictures to the Commons in the Wiki Loves Vizag contest.
  • On behalf of CIS A2K, their officers Tanveer Hassan and Niwas actively participated in the event.

Media Coverage[edit]

The media coverage was done by the local newspapers Andhra Prabha, Eenadu, and Sakshi Vartha regarding the event and the "Endaro Wikipedianlu" book release.Newspaper Clips can be seen here.

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