Blogs by Sangram Keshari Senapati
Showing posts with label Wikimedia Blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikimedia Blogs. Show all posts

Wednesday 7 September 2022

We organized Wikimania 2022 at Bhubaneswar

Sangram Keshari Senapati September 07, 2022 0
We organized Wikimania 2022 at Bhubaneswar
We organized Wikimania 2022 at Bhubaneswar

Wikimania is the Wikimedia Foundation's yearly celebration. After the COVID19 Pandemic, it was not physically possible, so we were given the opportunity to organize it locally in India this year. There were four events held in India, and we were one of them.

How it was started?

It was started on the 3rd of June 2022 with a call from Sailesh Patnaik. In the afternoon, Sailesh called me and asked me to apply for a grant to organize an event on behalf of Odia Wikimeidans User Group and he sent me two references.

There were just two hours to write, review and apply. So I just copied the budget from the 2018 event organized by Diptiman Bhai and increased it a little bit and sent him for a quick review. Then changed the status from draft to proposed.

Grant Approval:

It was the 4th of July, Sailesh messaged me to check my e-mail and also told me that, someone from the WMF team would contact me regarding the grant.

Immediately, I checked the e-mail and yes, our grant was approved. Then the process of conversation started and we started calling our fellow wikimedians of Odia and Santhali community.

The whole process took such a long time and by that time, I went to Delhi for some work. I was in Delhi, and at that time I got another e-mail and also a message from Rachit for a small meeting with the media team of WMF. 

I was unable to attend that meeting at that time due to my work time, so I seek help from Chinmayee Mishra (Chinu) and Subhasish Panigrahi (Subha bhai). They both saved me that day and within two to three days, we got the grant amount in the bank account.

Meeting with the Media Team of WMF

Event date Finalization:

After the approval of the grant, we had an online session with each other on Bahuda Yatra and finalized the date for the 13th and 14th of August. Most of us agreed on that day and the venue was decided for Bhubaneswar.

After receiving the grant amount, there was not much time for the event, and in the meantime, I was not here in Odisha. So, again Chinu was there to rescue me. She came to Bhubaneswar and started looking for the venue and after looking for more than 12 places within two days, we were confused with that exact place as per our budget.

During that time, I got another message from Rachit, that Dr. Manavpreet Kaur from the WMF would join us during the event. I met Manav in 2018 for the 1st time and then we met two more times. So, Manav helped us during the whole event.

They both decided on the venue and Chinu also called everyone to confirm their arrival. The next of our event was Independence day in India, so most of our friends couldn't come. So, we had planned for an online session for them also.

In the meantime, we took help from Subha bhai for the T-Shirt design, and Chinu also shorted that tension. Gyana bhai was also there in Bhubaneswar and they both had fixed almost everything.

The Day before the Event:

Everything was finalized for the event and Manav mam was coming in the morning on the 12th of August. Almost all was going well, but heavy rainfall started. That day Manav and Chinu did lots of work in that heavy rainfall.

I reached in the evening and by that time they both had finished almost everything. And I met both after almost three years. There were some other works to finish, so Chinu left for that and I joined Manav for to buy some gifts for the Guests. After that, we walked a few (kilo)meters and returned after roaming around.

Manavpreet Kaur tasting Odisha Gupchu in Bhubaneswar

That night, we were working up to 2 AM I think. Ramjit Tudu who worked both for Santhali Wikipedia and Odia Wikipedia came at around 4.30 that morning. 

Day 1:

Day 1 of the Bhubaneswar Wikimania started with heavy rainfall again. We had planned to start the event by 9.30 am, but due to heavy rain, most of our Wikimedians couldn't come in time. Mrutyunjay bhai and Sashank bhai reached by train and then others also joined and we started the meeting.

After the introduction session, the guest for the event, Manoj Kumar Mishra, the IT Secretary of Odisha joined us and we discussed lots of things and proposed some ideas for some collaborations with the government of Odisha.

Bhubaneswar Wikimania Cake

He was present for the cake cutting ceremony where the youngest wikimedians like Prateek Pattnaik and Ramjit Tudu cut the cake and Manoj sir left.

Wikimania Bhubaneswar

After that, we had our lunch and then discussed on the Community and some other kinds of stuff related to the Odia Wikimeians User Group.

Manav had discussed the Wikimedia Movement and described her role at the WMF. Some wikimedians also shared their experience. And the day 1 ended with a group photo for the news distribution.

After finishing everything it was my duty to contact the media persons for the news publication. Mrutyunjay bhai and Sashank bhai helped me to write news in Odia and then circulated the news for publication. It was published on two news portals like Dhenkanal Updates and KNews as well as in Prameya newspaper.

I met Nasim bhai after 7 years and Aditya bhai after 6 years. So, that night we had a long conversation with all.

Day 2:

The rainfall had increased as compared to the previous day, so the other wikimedians who promised to come on Sunday, couldn't join us. But Dr. Subas Chandra Rout joined the event for while with his son Sithikantha Rout, who is also a Wikimedian.

Before starting the sessions, I recorded a podcast with Murtyunjay Bhai for Gapufy, and you can listen to it on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavanAmazon Music, and on YouTube.

Subas sir shared his experience and then, we took a group photo with the Wikimania T-Shirt and also recorded the "Happy Birthday Wikidata" video. Sir left within an hour due to his health issues and the meeting continued. We discussed the issues we're facing on Odia Wikipedia and Snthali Wikimedians Ramjit and Durga shared their issues also.

Sangram Keshari Senapati with Mrutyunjay Kar and Dr. Subas Chandra Rout at Wikimania 2022, Bhubaneswar

As per everyone's approval, we got another admin for Odia Wikipedia, Soumendra bhai. Then, discussed the future plans as well as the community strategy.

After finishing lunch, it was time to end the session. And our local Wikimania ended with the same format followed by the Global event. Some of the Wikimedians joined Manav mam and ended the event with some steps of Odia Folk Songs. And we took another group photo before leaving the room.

Wikimania Bhubaneswar

After grabbing everything from that conference hall and saying bye to everyone it was time to distribute the news again. Manavpreet helped me to draft the news in English and Subha bhai shared the mail id for the newspapers. It took almost 3 hours to send and had a chat with them over call. But, nobody had published the news, because on 15th August, they got lots of ads and for news, there was no space.

Somehow we managed to contact some other portals and some digital news channels published some news videos on Social Media.

Any event couldn't finish without Rasagola and Chhenapoda. So after dinner, Chinu took Manav to the market and grabbed some Baked Rasagola for us. Manav was happy about the event and for the taste of Rasagola.

After the Event:

On the 15th of August, in the morning we joined the flag hoisting ceremony of the hotel, and then it was time to say bye to Manav. Chinu and I accompanied her to the Airport and she left for Chandigarh. Then, we both left for our home.

Manavpreet Kaur, Sangram Keshari Senapati, and Chinmayee Mishra celebrating Indian Independence day at Bhubanesawr

Thursday 5 November 2020

My Experience Mahatma Gandhi 2020 edit-a-thon

Sangram Keshari Senapati November 05, 2020 0
 My Experience Mahatma Gandhi 2020 edit-a-thon

This year CIS-A2K has planned a mini edit-a-thon on 2nd and 3rd October in 2020 for the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Here is my experience with this edit-a-thon.

My Experience Mahatma Gandhi 2020 edit-a-thon

The main objective of Mahatma Gandhi 2020 edit-a-thon was to improve content related to Mahatma Gandhi on any Wikimedia project, so I've participated to created articles on Odia Wikipedia and also added Odia labels of some related items on Wikidata.

I got a message about this edit-a-thon from a friend Nitesh Gill, who is now working with the CIS-A2K team. So, I signed up on 25th September.

Within these 2 days, I've created 5 articles related to Mahatma Gandhi. I had translated the articles of the family members of Mahatma Gandhi from English Wikipedia.

Before this, I don't have much idea about his family, who are his son, who are there with him in South Africa or India during the Independence movement, etc. But through this, I gain a little bit of knowledge about all these things.

This mini edit-a-thon on a specific topic actually helped to read more and create more number of articles about that place, thing, or person. And if I'm getting 30 days, I use to think, I've lots of days, but at the end, I could create 3 to 4 articles, but this time, I had just 2 days and the beginning of the month means to cover all the news, messages, reviews about the recent edition of Shubhapallaba Magazine, but still I was able to create 5 articles which is greater than the number of articles I've created in last Wikipedia Asian Month in 2019.

On Odia Wikipedia, Priti Ranjan Tripathy Bhai, R Ashwini Banjana Murmu Bhai and I had created a total of 7 article including my 5 articles. You could find the list of article here on this link below.

https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1ioa

Saturday 15 August 2020

The Experience of GLOW, The Project Tiger 2.0

Sangram Keshari Senapati August 15, 2020 0
The Experience of GLOW, The Project Tiger 2.0
The Experience of GLOW, The Project Tiger 2.0

Project Tiger, a collaboration of Wikipedia with Google to add and improve the Indic Wikipedia articles. After completing this edit-a-thon successfully in 2018, the CIS-A2K again started the 2nd round as GLOW which abbreviates as Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.

During the 1st time, I got the Chromebook, so this time I had applied for the Internet. Nitesh Gill and Suswetha Kolluru, the Project Tiger Co-ordinators from CIS-A2K had helped me a lot from the beginning.

Before starting this project, I had participated in Project Tiger Community Consultation at Chennai in March 2019, where we had planned for this edit-a-thon.

This edit-a-thon started from the 10th of October in 2019 and ended on 10th January 2020. This time, we got the chance to choose the articles for this edit-a-thons from which we had created just 155 articles.

Dr. Subas Chadran Rout had created 76 articles, Aliva Sahoo had created 48, Harihar Satpathy had created 24 articles, and I had created just 6. In those days I had an issue with the company where I was working, so couldn't create many articles, but overall we had improved from the previous edit-a-thon.

In 2018, I was in Bangalore and had participated in an offline edit-a-thon at CIS-A2K office, Bangalore, where I had created 4 or 5 articles in one day, but at this time, we couldn't conduct any offline edit-a-thon, which might help to create more articles.

The overall experience is good and for this edit-a-thon, some new and good* articles are created on Odia Wikipedia. I couldn't participate more in this edit-a-thon, but the internet support is still on, which is definitely helping me to create articles every day for the #100wikidays.

I must thank all the co-ordinators from Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K, Local Jury members, all the participants, and the Google team for this project.

Tuesday 7 April 2020

Mission #1000wikidays Accomplished Successfully

Sangram Keshari Senapati April 07, 2020 0
Mission #1000wikidays Accomplished Successfully

When I started editing on Wikipedia, I never thought to write more than 10 articles, but now the count is increasing every day. From the past 1000 days, I was writing at least one article every day and finally, the mission for #1000wikidays completed today.

On 8th March 2017, when I started writing 100 women articles in 100 days, that was quite difficult because of traveling and the internet shutdown at my place for the communal violence. But when it was completed, that day I was too excited and with that excitement, I hadn't continued that, but form 13th July 2017 again I started writing with an aim to complete the #1WikiYear challenge and yes completed that by writing articles related to Odia Film Industry. But the sad part is from those 365 articles 24 articles have been deleted and one article recovered.

But, when I completed the 1st Wikiyear, I aimed for #500Wikidays which were completed by Pranay Raj Bangari and Nitesh Gill before and that too completed and today another 500 days completed. These 1000 days and the previous 100 days went just like a few days, but those were not so easy.

In those 1000 days, I got calls from friends as well as from fellow Wikimedians to quit; some suggested there are lots of time, but you have to prove yourself with a well-paid salary; some suggested not to waste time with such things when a work of at least 4 hours deleted within a few seconds. But these 1000 days taught me lots of things; Now I have good knowledge about our own film industry, I know lots of people from this industry, I learned lots of things about the political history of my state, and the hidden thing is some political things which you may face everywhere in life.

I was afraid of failure; if someday I couldn't write; if I met some accident for which I couldn't write, but thanks to that hidden support I see this day without any failure. On the wedding day of my sister, I was also writing article on my mobile next to the marriage mandap. In that communal violence, I went to the nearby district just to get the internet to write the article for that day. Yes, those days helped to complete this thing.

I wasn't sure to continue, but there are lots of political articles left, which I should read to know about the political history of Odisha and this may help me to achieve easily. I don't know up to when I could continue this, but I would aim for #2000wikidays. At this present scenario of the world, anything may happen at any time, but I wish I could write to the end of that. And if I survive, then the future may be different.

- Sangram (user: Ssgapu22)

Thursday 20 December 2018

Advanced Wikidata Training

Sangram Keshari Senapati December 20, 2018 0
Advanced Wikidata Training

Advanced Wikidata Training 2018 or AWT2018 was a residential training workshop for experienced Wikidata editors in India to be conducted on 15-16 December 2018 held at Grand Hometel, Malad West, Mumbai.

For this training, I was selected by the organizers and from Odia Wikimedia user group, I and Mrutyunjay Kar had selected for this. So, on the 14th December, I joined Kar Bhai at Biju Pattnaik International Airport, Bhubaneswar to Mumbai.


As usual, we were flying with IndiGo and for the first time in my travel history, the takeup delayed for 2 hours, so we reach late. Gyan Bhai was there to drop Kar Bhai, but by that time, I was inside, so I couldn't meet him.

We reached Mumbai late and by that time, Tito dada's aircraft on its runway, so we wait for him and we three headed toward the Hotel. It was evening and the traffic was huge. Though I have more traffic in Bangalore, so it was okay for me. But it took more than one hour to cross just 12 kilometers.

We reach around 6.45 pm and we had exactly 15 minutes to start the Introduction, meet and greet. So quickly, put my bag in my room after check-in and then joined with others. There I met some wikimedians from different communities for the 1st time.

There were Krishna Chaitanya Velaga, Tito Dutta and Tanveer Hasan, Loganathan whom I knew and met before. Balaji J, Bodhisattwa, Thamizhpparithi Maari, Ranjith Siji, and Arun Ganesh were there, whom I met for the 1st time.

Balaji did some fabulous work, so, Asaf gave him this T-Shirt.

After 7 to 9 discussions, where we came to know about each other. There we had a general conversation on Wikidata such as recent global developments in Wikidata. After that, we went for dinner. 


The main and best discussion always happens on food tables. But this was not like that, we were discussing about some random problems with Wikidata and all were listening from this handsome guy with the beard. I would tell about him later.


And here is the dinner plate. Yes, I was hungry, so grabbed lots of things on my plate. All were busy with their conversations and I was busy with finishing all these things and listening to them.


After finishing the dinner plate, while I was looking for the dessert, Tanveer da was there, so while having these we talked about lots of things like why I left Bangalore, what I'm doing, how was my exam, about his life, about his next seminar, everything.

Day- 1

Our day 1 started with some good and delicious breakfast. But before that, I went to the gym with Balaji J, my roommate. He did some of his regular exercises and also taught me some basic things and introduced me to some machines and the type of exercises. 


Then I went for breakfast. There Mrutyunjay Bhai joined me and as usual, we discussed about those deleted articles which I had created during the #100WikiWomenDays and later during my 1st WikiYear.


Then our meeting started where I found this "Meeting in progress for Tito". Everybody came to the meeting room by 9.30 am. Again after a formal introduction about the program of the day, Asaf started the discussion.


At the beginning of the meeting, Mahir joined us over a video call. Since he is staying abroad, so couldn't join us physically but joined us over calls sometimes.


I came to know about Wikipedia in 2013, then in 2014, I started editing and later knew about Wikisource. And last year came to know about Wikidata when Asaf did the WikYatra. Since I was staying in Bangalore, I couldn't join the training at Bhubaneswar and unfortunately, I didn't have any idea about the Mangalore training, so I couldn't join there too. So, this year, when I attended the TTT, Gopala Krishna had taught me some basics of Wikidata, but I could learn it properly.

But in July when I was at Bhubaneswar for OdiaWiki16, Mrutyunjay Bhai had taught me how to edit on Wikidata and then I  love to edit there. During Wikidata Label-a-thon, I did around 4000 edits. But at this meeting, I came to know about a new project Lexeme.

The Lexeme is a new project on Wikidata to add a word on Wikidata which is like Wiktionary, but here it is open source. He taught us the contributing process to Lexeme and the future prospects of Lexeme.


The 1st section of Day 1 completed with the Lexeme part around 11.15 am. It's an interesting project. After the 1st section, we took a tea break of 15 minutes, but it became 30.

After the tea break, around 11.45 am we started Intermediate SPARQL. SPARQL is a query language like ORACLE used on Wikidata for the search process. For the pre-work, we had watched some videos on SPARQL, but here we revised that one with some hands-on examples.

The coding process for this language is not so hard, it's quite simple and easy. Though I never read ORACLE except for the insert, search and delete table queries, but this seems to be simple and would be easier with some more practice. The 1st part of SPARQL completed by 1.30 pm and we all went for lunch.


As I had mentioned before, the food table is the perfect place to discuss lots of internal things, own community discussions. So, we were discussing the issues we face with edits, local language contributions, etc.

After lunch, we continued the SPARQL part which was finished by 3.30 pm. And again took a tea-break for 30 minutes. From 4 to 6 pm, I learned about Tabernacle, Tools for Sheets, and SQID. And then the meeting was over for the day. But the meeting room was open, so others could practice things there.

Arun Ganesh

I was talking about this handsome young man, Arun Ganesh. I met him here for the 1st time, so I thought he is a Wikimedian like us. But when Asaf introduced him to us, I feel really proud of him. In 2009, when the Wikidata project was in a planning stage, Wikimedia Foundation was looking for the perfect logo for this project and he is the man who had designed the Wikidata logo.

Wikidata simplified lots of things now and when I learned about this project, it helped me in lots of things, but when I came to know that the designer of the logo is an Indian, it is the next level.

After a day with lots of learning activities, we all discussed lots of things from Project Tiger to local language projects and many more things during that evening and then all had our dinner together.



Day- 2

On the morning of day 2, I and Balaji woke up late, because we were discussing the experiences with the project tiger and his works up to the late night.

The meeting for this day was planned to start by 9 am, so we hurried up to the breakfast table. At the breakfast table, I met Mrutyunjay Bhai.


All these choco flakes and fruits I brought with him because all these things are the secrets of this good looking and healthy lifestyle.


But, I realized, I'm different, so ordered this Masala Dosa. Now it feels like my type. Since we had to finish the meeting at 5 pm, we have to start as quickly as possible. Somehow we start sharp at 9.00 am.

Another big part of this training after SPARQL was Open Refining. Open Refining, a software that matches the data with existing items and adds the values if it is available and creates a new item for non-existing items.

From 9 to 11, we had learned to arrange the data on a sheet, which Asaf calls Data Massaging. Then with half an hour of tea break, we did the Mix'n'Match process on Open Refining and learned its automatic scrapers. Though this software doesn't support on Chromebook, I joined Mrutyunjay Bhai and saw the whole process.



This process was really time taking. We just tried with very few data, but the leaning process would help to update lots of data with less time. After finishing this session we went for lunch at 1.30. We were running out of time but happily took one hour for lunch.

File:Advanced Wikidata Training Mumbai December 2018.jpg

Before Lunch, we took the group selfie. Someone for the hotel staff had taken this one from the 1st floor and we all were there holding a bag with Wikidata Logo.




At the Lunch table Tanveer da and Krishna had joined me, so here the cakes and sweets with Tanveer da's choice. It's not a choice, we tasted one dish each, so it looks much on plate.


After lunch, we discussed about the Wikidata project in India and it's future. And then Asaf had shown some good and interesting things about Wikidata; how people are using wikidata for their websites, how some games were designed with Wikidata. We had to finish by 5, but we took little more time.


After the meeting, I went to meet a friend there and when we reached for dinner, Asaf was about to leave, so I requested him to sign on that bag of mine. Then we took some photos with him.



Finally, Asaf left for his room and in the night he had his return flight. After that, we had our dinner together.


Return Time:

It was our return time from the event. I woke up early in the morning and then made some tea for me. I called Kar Bhai and decided to leave by 9.


By that time, the breakfast was ready, so we quickly had our breakfast and say bye to those, who had late flights.


Our take up time was at 10.30 am, so I and Mrutyunjay Bhai had left the hotel by 9 am. But before that, we took some photos there in front of the hotel. 


There is a running water system falling from the top on the front glass, where I took this photo of Mrutyunjay Bhai. You could see that on the video below.



Tuesday 4 December 2018

1WikiYear on Odia Wikisource

Sangram Keshari Senapati December 04, 2018 2
1WikiYear on Odia Wikisource
In 2014, I add one article in English Wiki, then translated them to Odia Wiki. In those days, I didn't have much idea how to write properly in Odia and I had a bad typing speed. So Subhashish bhai had advised me to write one book on Wikisource.

That book helped me to know more about my language and now I could type with my hands only. Again he added me to this group and I started the #100wikidays from 8 March 2017 on Wikipedia.

On 3rd December 2017, we celebrated the 3rd anniversary of Wikisource and I saw I wasn't active since May. So decided to write at least one page every day and started writing from 5th December 2017. At that time I used to type one old Odia book which was in the old script which is not supported by OCR. 

Then finished that book and continued it for proofreading one book with the new script which was written by OCR. Till now I'm doing this for Odia Wikipedia and Wikisource every day.

Today, on 4th December 2018, I had completed the #1wikiyear on Wikisource too. This Wiki year on Wikisource is not that much attractive, but it was like a commitment to edit at least one page every day. Now, this thing became the part of my life. Every day before my sleep I check and recalled whether I have written the article on both the projects.

Saturday 3 November 2018

Finally Met La Krizolina and Armin at Puri

Sangram Keshari Senapati November 03, 2018 0
Finally Met La Krizolina and Armin at Puri

La Krizolina, a friend from German Wikipedia. In March 2017, when I started writing for 100wikidays challenge in Odia Wikipedia, I saw her id on the Facebook group and sent a request there. From that day, we became friends and then we started our conversations through messengers and I have shared lots of things with her. I have one wish to meet her and it came true when she informed that she is coming to India with her hubby. 

So, we planned to meet at Puri during their 5 days stay. So, on 2nd November 2018, I went from Bhadrak to Puri and Tapas Bhai was also there with me. Since I hadn't gone puri alone, so I called Tapas Bhai to reach there. Around 12.30 pm I reached the bus stand and Tapas Bhai was waiting there. Then we went to the sea beach, where they were staying.

Yes, I forgot to mention about Isabella, one small cute penguin, the member of Wikimedia cuteness association traveling with her. After our 1st meet at Puri sea beach, we went for our Lunch to the nearest restaurant. They love to eat our local foods, so ordered some basic veg thali. 



After our lunch, we went to the sea beach and planned to go to the nearest park, Gandhi Park. At the sea beach, we clicked some photos and then tried to find the way to the park. 

But the park was closed and we found one gate, which was under construction and one closed from Inside and the previous gate was closed by bricks. 

Look, how they closed it.
After lots of trials and we walked around 20 to 30 minutes to find the way we all were sweating like hell. So, we drop the plan to go to the park and went to the nearest coffee shop. 



In that coffee shop, we had good conversations and they show their coins. After that, we had to leave because we were running out of time. I had to return home on the same and day and also before time. So, rush to the temple and then we returned back.

It was a great time with them and of course, I love to meet them again and in some time, I would invite them to my home.