Grants talk:PEG/Jayanta Nath - Kolkata Wiki Community/Kolkata Book Fair 2014/Report

Good job getting media attention

I am glad to see the press that this event was able to attract. I was also happy to see the pictures at Commons:Category:2014 Kolkata Book Fair -Wikipedia Stall. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Blue Rasberry for your kind support. Jayantanth (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks good

I second Blue Rasberry's comments. I wonder whether the GAC members can learn of your retention metrics in six months' time, as mentioned in your report. Thanks and well done. Tony (talk) 14:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Tony for your comments. We got some news report from local language Bengali newspaper. Jayantanth (talk) 20:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Report comments

Congratulations on your successful participation in the Kolkata Book Fair! We are very impressed with the amount of volunteer involvement in the event and the amount of press received. We have a few questions regarding the report and would appreciate your response:

1. Please provide more details on "new contributors added". Are these folks that registered usernames at the fair? How many people? If you did collect the usernames, please run a report on WikiMetrics to measure their retention rate so far. You can run the report again 6 months after the fair. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
2. Please proivide more details on the 1,200 people intereseted in Wikipedia that "signed-up". Did you collect their emails? If yes, what are the plans for follow-up? It would be great to organize 3-4 events targeting new editors in the coming months and to send them soft copies of the Bangla FAQs and other materials included in the bookset. We definitely want to follow-up quickly and get them engaged in the community. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have any questions. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

1. Hi Alex Wang (WMF), thank you for your valuable comment of my dram project. We had not encouraged to registers directly to any Wikipedia on spot, because we were using one IP on site at book fair. For "new contributors added" ~ we had got some core volumteers come contributor like user:Sujay25, user:TechnoAyan, user:Bodhisattwa, user:Pasaban,User:Schwiki, User:BengaliHindu,User:Sukanta Pal. All are now core volunteer and contributor of Bengali Wikipedia & Wikisource project now. I should submit a report from WikiMetrics, but we need some help to generate the report.
2. We have already followup with mailchamp with sending with thank you for visiting and requested to sign up Wikimedia project. We have already give them all books , Bengali and English Wikipedia FAQ, Chapter brochure, Cheetsheet. And I am very happy if you send them a them a thank you mail. We will invite all of them to coming workshop.Jayantanth (talk) 13:57, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

• Do you guys have capacity to follow up with 1200 people, organize 3-4 events, and send out soft copies of books? How much time, energy, and resources do you have? Is there an established Wikipedia community in Kolkata or was this book fair just an experiment with a group of fans? I work with the New York chapter and I was thinking that doing all these things are something that would give us trouble, and I am curious what Kolkata was expecting to do for follow up. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Hi, Thank you for your queries. It is true that we have no capacity/resource to follow up 1200 people. But we have some plans with next meetup and workshop to follow up them. This bookfair project our initial attempt to the educated people of Bengali elite society. We should organized workshop to coming months with the help of India Access To Knowledge programme. You can check my proposal at Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Bangla#Suggestion_by_Jayanta_Nath. So we can followup with the professional way with the help of CIS. Our kolkata communiy is very small, but we are growing day by day. Jayantanth (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Report Approved

Hi Jayantanth. Thank you for the update. It's great that you've followed up with everyone. We will definitely be interested in hearing how additional outreach goes in coordination with India Access to Knowledge. Please let us know if you need help with Wikimetrics. This report is approved. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

1200 people

1200 people interacted with? That's unthinkable for e.g. Italy's fairs, these South-East Asia events are incredible. :) What sort of interaction did you manage to have with them other than distributing printed material and taking names? Even managing to talk 5 minutes about Wikimedia projects to 1200 people would be very significant in my book, while effectiveness of printed material varies wildly. --Nemo 10:21, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The population of Kolkata is 14 million, and Italy is 60 million. Just imagine if 1 in 4 Italians came to your city to bring its population to 14 million. I also would like to hear any stories about how volunteers responded to the crowd or how the crowd responded to Wikipedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:10, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Milan metropolitan area has arguably 8 millions inhabitants, it's not really a significant difference; the Milan Fair has 5 millions visitor per year and is the fifth largest in the world. It's not about size. --Nemo 16:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Dear all,User:Nemo_bis & User:Bluerasberry, averagely we 10-12 volunteers (including me) attend each visitors, only we had registered their names, who were shown their interest about Wikipedia. Actually in our stall everyday visited more than 1200+ people. approximately each day more than 200-250 visitors visited. --Jayantanth (talk) 18:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)