Grants:Project/Rapid/Odia Wikimedians User Group/Odia Wikipedia's 16th anniversary/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Odia Wikimedians User Group/Odia Wikipedia's 16th anniversary.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

The Odia Wikimedians User Group organized a two-day event during July 7-8 in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 16th anniversary. The goal of the event was to reflect on the learning from successes and failures from major past activities, identify the current and future needs, and build a strategy for the next couple of years. 15 Wikimedians participated on the first day, and 18 participated on the second day of the event. When the larger portion of the financial support came from Wikimedia Foundation, the other part came from CIS-A2K. This segment of the report gives a brief account on the spending and outcome from the support.

Outcome

A recorded version of a Facebook Live session where Wikimedians participated and shared about the use of Odia Wikipedia as a aggregated source of authentic information in Odia. The live video reached out to about 17,000 people.
This teaser was created to promote the then upcoming Facebook Live chat with the wider Odia-language community with a focus to engage with the social media users.
Message from Jimmy Wales, co-founder, Wikipedia.
Message from Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons.

When the detailed notes of the event (mostly in Odia) can be read here, below is a short excerpt of the discussions and impact of the event:

A short talk by Wikimedian Subas Chandra Rout on the second day — these talks were organized to provide training to relatively new Wikimedians.

About 20 Wikimedians participated in person in both days and participated in brainstorming about a strategy for next year, and a couple of years ahead based on the experiences from several outreach and other engagements. The discussion notes in Odia can be found here.
The pre-event preparation also included creating a short tutorial on Wikipedia editing which will be published on Commons after editing and other post-production
Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Catherine Maher, and Creative Commons' CEO Ryan Merkley were requested by the organizer ahead of time and they all sent recorded messages. These messages were showed to the participating Wikimedians to encourage them for their contribution to the movement, and will be used for various public engagements and potential partnership meetings to showcase the value that the User Group is imparting
A Facebook Live session was conducted where Wikimedians participated and shared about the use of Odia Wikipedia as a aggregated source of authentic information in Odia. The live video reached out to about 17,000 people and a great amount of live Q&A happened during the session

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Number of events = 1	1	We did a two day long event for the community members, which included training, workshop and 1:1 mentorships for different community members.
Number of participants = 30	22	Some participants were not able to attend both the days, all together we were able to have 22 participants from different parts of Odisha and one from Kolkata.
Number of new editor = 5	0	Though we initially targeted for 5 new editors, the event was one of the advanced Wikimedia training event. So we didn't get new participants.
Number of articles improved= 30	17 on Wikipedia and some pages on Wikisource	Most of the sessions continued till late evening so it was difficult for participants to work on-wiki. Most of the articles were improved during the demonstrations of tool like Citoid, Advance Wikidata training

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Bringing Wikimedians together worked really well, a lot of things or projects were discussed during the event and some of the challenges were also identified in the event. During the five different Wikiprojects were started by different community members, related to Odia Cinema, Archaeology, Computer Science, Law and others. Citoid tool was activated on Odia Wiki and was demonstrated to the community members, there were other sessions for Wikidata and Wikisource too. Live sessions from Odia Wikipedia Facebook account also helped us to spread awareness about the project.

What did not work so well?

A lot many sessions were scheduled for both the days, we had the problem in time management and had to skip some sessions.

What would you do differently next time?

A better-planned schedule for the next event, not to keep a lot of targets for the event and focus mainly on mentorship related activities.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Expenses: CIS-A2K

Expenses from the CIS-A2K
Sl. No.	Particulars	Amount (in INR)
1	Lanyards (30 nos) for name tags	1359
2	T-shirts (30 nos) for Wikimedians	7756
Total		9115

Expenses: WMF


Sl. No.	Particulars	Amount (in INR)
1	Air Travel (4 Tickets)	19817
2	Community Equipment (Projector and Accessories, Standee)	36662
3	Community Hall Booking (Includes Lunch and Tea)	20475
4	Accommodation (2 Rooms for 3 nights)	16179
5	Foods and Snacks (Breakfast, Dinner and Snacks during Travel and Community Program)	10108
6	Birthday Cake	1800
7	SWAG (Paper Sheet, Stickers, Badges, Vinyl)	1935
8	Petrol and Diesel (by Anugul Wiki Tungi)	2231
9	Local Travel (Taxi, Cab and Bus invoices of community members travelling to Bhubaneswar)	4173
10	Miscellaneous (Banner, Stationaries, Local Transport, Snacks and Tips)	3000
Total		116380

Remaining funds

Remaining funds are retained by the grantee with WMF's permission until after the report review has been completed and report has been accepted, at which time the WMF program officer will also provide instructions regarding the grantee's reallocation or return of the unspent grant funds.


Fund Received	Total Amount Spent	Balance
119327	116380	2947

Anything else

The event was very fruitful and we are happy that our Odia Wikipedia community came together and discussed about to do something for our language with help of Wikipedia. Thank You.