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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you know this person with me? He is our Sambeet Das, who draws the cover photos for Shubhapallaba e-magazines.  He was there with his daughter Trisha and his wife Leena Bhauja.

Since the plan for the end of the meeting of the Advance Wikidata Training by 5 pm of that evening, but it took some more time. So, I miss the last session which was an informal session with some personal discussions. Since Mrutyunjay Kar bhai was there, I just left to meet him.

Sambeet bhai with family came to the Inorbit mall which is near to this hotel. Actually, it's on the backside of the hotel. Before that, I haven't entered such a big mall, so I was confused about which side I have to enter. So, Sambeet bhai had come and taken me from the entrance gate.

Since it was Sunday, the life for the food court was really huge. Sambeet bhai had gone to bring something and we three had some conversation. Then, we all went to the Crossword for some comic book, but unfortunately, we didn't find which one we were looking for.

For Christmas, the hotels and malls are decorated with the Christmas Tree with attractive lights. So, we took some photos there too. Then, I returned back to the hotel. Sambeet Bhai also left for Navi Mumbai.

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.

From my childhood, I love to eat everything except 2/3 things (vegetables). I never wish to waste food. Even I throw foods just 3/4 times in my life, I mean after my 3rd class and that for some food which we couldn't eat. Before that I haven't remembered. But, the main thing is, there are lots of people who couldn't able to prepare their food for one time and we are wasting lots of food.

And when I got a chance to prepare some food, I've tried my best to prepare good food in taste, look, everything. And everytime, I've tried to prepare as much as we need. In these 23 years of my life, I've seen lots of things but not experienced everything. I saw this world in my point of views, I wanted to see the good things in my life, not ignoring the bad things, but by destroying bad things only good and positive things. 

In our 10th class, there was a chapter named "A hunger free world", where everybody could eat only once in a day. Before that I had seen things, but never realised the importance of those small things, the importance of those silly mistakes we are doing in our life. 

It's Diwali season and lots of people are busy in doing lots of shopping and some are wasting lots of money in different fields just to show our status, power to others. It's their life, their wealth, so they should do what they wish to do, but from those, everything is not their only. They should take care of those things. I had never opposed to crack bomb, but I have a fobia with loud sound, loud music and if somebody makes a loud noise, in that point my mind stops working and I know how I control it. It's a free countery, you have all the rights to do, but you don't have any right to distrurb me. 

You have lots of money, so you could waste lots of food and the municipality has the power to through them out of the city i.e. the entrance of the city. Have you ever feel that bad smell? Have you ever see those people who don't have a home to stay? They started staying on a open field and the Government started throughing garbage on that field. They are doing lots of projects for them and making their home a garbage hill. 

In my life, I couldn't help any poor people, just because of my problems, but I wish I wouldn't be the cause of their problems. In this Diwali, make a promise to make someone happy. Just try to make someone happy and see the magic. You have lots of cloths which are going to waste, just give them to some poor people and then see that happiness on their face. You have enough money to distribute sweets, just buy extra two packets (not the expensive one) for them, who couldn't get food for one day. You have enough money to buy fire crackers, in that money, buy one stree light or something for them who couldn't afford for the electricity. 

And if you do something like this in Diwali, then go and watch the sky at 11 or 12 pm in that night after the Diwali evening and you could see the starts. I'm saying this, because last year I hadn't see the starts in the Diwali night, on which night the starts glows the most. I wish this year I may see the stars on the sky and I wish that smile would come again on MY FACE when I see the sky.

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. 

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.

Today, i.e. on 2nd November 2018, I went to Puri to meet some of my friends there. After meeting them, I went to the Jagannath Temple. Tapas bhai was there with me, but he didn't go inside. So I went there alone. 

To go inside, now devotees have to go through the Dhadi Darsan (Go By Line) and just went in and then returned quickly. Due to Dhadi Darsan, I couldn't return by the Sindha dwara, the east side of the temple. So, I came out through the southern side of the temple and couldn't bring the Boga from the temple. So, we bought some from outside. 

Then we took some photos of Srimandinara. Previously when we had visited Puri, we left our phone, camera, etc inside the car, but this time we had our mobile phones with us, so captured some beautiful photos. There are lots of photos of Jagannath Temple captured by a number of people, but I had to click some. So clicked some and here are those.