Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/WikiSangamotsavam-2013 brings Wikipedians to the Venice of the East

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WikiSangamotsavam-2013 brings Wikimedians to the Venice of the East

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Mr. Sashi Kumar's speech during the inaugural session of WikiSangamotsavam-2013

WikiSangamotsavam, the annual conference of Malayalam Wikimedians, took place in Alappuzha, Kerala from 21-23rd December, 2013. The conference, supported by the Wikimedia Foundation Grants program, Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS-A2K program brought together around 200 Wikimedians and well-wishers from all over India.

The host town, Alappuzha, is popularly known as the Venice of the East because of its picturesque backwaters and canals. Alappuzha was chosen to be the location for the conference in order to bring the attention of Wikimedians to the tourist places and biodiversity of this place, and thereby increase the representation of the town on Wikipedia. The Board meeting of the Wikimedia India Chapter took place in parallel to the event. A range of pre-conference events, including a bicycle rally, a meetup for young Wikimedians and several edit-a-thons were conducted prior to the event.

Day 1[edit]

The first day of WikiSangamotsavam started with Wiki-Vidyarthi-Sangamam, the meetup of school-going Wikimedians. The digitization of ‘Sri-Mahabharatham,’ a 7- volume Malayalam epic was flagged off during the Wiki-Vidyarthi-Sangamam. Around 100 students from all over Kerala got to interact with each other and know more about Wikimedia projects in Malayalam language. There was a Wikipedia workshop for differently impaired delegates. They were introduced to various means of accessibility introduced by the DAISY Consortium. This session helped them to learn self-educating tools and also accessing knowledge platforms like Wikipedia and contributing in Malayalam online.

There was a panel discussion on ‘Malayalam and Wikipedia’ during which language and computing experts discussed with each other about the role of Wikipedia in the growth of Malayalam language. Talks and paper presentations about topics relevant to Wikimedia were held in three parallel sessions. On this day, Malayalam Wikipedia turned 11 years old. The 11th birthday of Malayalam Wikipedia was celebrated by cutting of a birthday cake. At the end of the day, Wikimedians entertained themselves by singing folk songs of Kerala.

Day 2[edit]

The second day started with the inaugural session. The event was inaugurated by Mr. Sashi Kumar, a media analyst and the founder of India’s first regional satellite television.

Dr. Thomas Isaac, former minister of Kerala, was the chief guest of the function. Mementos were awarded to the active Wikimedians who took leadership in organizing various Wikimedia events during the year 2013. Sessions to evaluate the state of the various Wikimedia projects was handled by experienced Wikimedians.

The QRpedia project was launched by Dr. Thomas Isaac, former minister of Kerala state at the Alappuzha lighthouse, one of the oldest monuments in Alappuzha. This project aims at making QR codes about the tourist places in Alappuzha from URLs of Wikipedia articles about them. By next year, all historical monuments and tourist destinations will be QR coded. If successfully completed, Alappuzha would be the first town in India to be fully digitized by QR codes.

There was a Non-Malayalam Indic Wikimedia meetup for Wikimedians who contribute to English and Indic language Wikimedia projects other than Malayalam. There was a track to discuss how various collaborative projects could be built to have content creation drives for enriching Wikipedia by bringing more common interests.

Day 3[edit]

Wikimedians on a boat during WikiJalayathra

The third and final day of WikiSangamotsavam was devoted to taking Wikimedians on a trip amid the flora of the Vembanad lake and its unique biodiversity. They experienced and explored the history by photography, narration of the lake’s past and present by Wikimedians who have done extensive research on the biodiversity of this region. The 126 acres of reclaimed wetland around the lake and its rare plant species itself is a open platform to bio-enthusiasts to collaborate and enrich the biosphere related topics on Wikipedia. Wikimedians also discussed how they could work together for a cause in saving the biodiversity of the R.Block of Vembanad lake.

The three-day long WikiSangamotsavam brought many of the Malayalam Wikimedians under one roof and enabled them to share the best practices, ideas, and visions for future plans. The photographs from the event can be viewed on Wikimedia Commons here.

- Netha Hussain, a Wikipedia contributor from India who regularly contributes to Malayalam Wikipedia, among other projects and Subhashish Panigrahi, another Wikipedia contributor from India and works for The Centre for Internet and Society

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