Just returned from the Pune Wikipedia Meetup at SICSR. A quick summary would be that it went well. The room (#707) was full, there was evident interest in the concept of collaboration, knowledge sharing and communities. The students who formed a large part of the audience had just started doing their first edits on Wikipedia and hence the experiences shared by Srikeit were timely and relevant. 

Anticipating that there would be a bit of a squeeze I reached the venue early enough to learn that the speakers were running late. With a myriad set of meetings to participate in that isn't a surprise any day. Anyways, they came in soon enough and Harshad kicked off the proceedings with a short and quick introduction of the team of speakers. Erik and Danese then took over in encouraging a participatory discussion as opposed to a straight-up speech (the room is well suited to classes but not for easy conversation in discussions :)). Anyways, the underlying concepts were repeatedly emphasized in various ways - the need to "give something back" while "coming together and collaborating". Well illustrated with videos, anecdotes and, involving other projects like Wikieducator, OpenStreetMap, Crisis Commons, PediaPress, Kiwix and so forth. The last bit was interesting because it precipitated a set of questions around off-line Wikipedia accessing devices and, the methods and means to update the content with the changesets.

As would be obvious, the discussion veered towards credibility of the articles, the process and tools of editing and administration, checking of vandalism and so forth. In between there were some interesting points made by the students who have started to discover this means to be able to contribute in every little way possible viz. editing and contributing content, contributing pictures (for example, I am always amazed that this somewhat off-the-cuff picture of aloo paratha has some use), contributing sounds and so forth.

The meeting ended a bit abruptly than expected. I guess the late hour and the schedule of appointments was the root cause. With some hurried distribution of swag and an exhortation to meet in a month's time (perhaps to organize the party celebrating 10 years), the meeting came to a close.

Pictures are uploaded to Flickr.