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Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Report


Hashtag: #WCN2018
Flag of Nepal.svg
Wikicamp Nepal 2018

Wikicamp Nepal 2018 (WCN) is a three day event for experienced and new Wikipedians of Nepal. The main objective of the event is to increase the Wikimedia offline activities in Nepal, develop skills of the new Wikipedians and bring together experienced and newbie Wikipedians. This brought together Wikipedians from Nepali, Maithili, Doteli, Newari (Nepal Bhasha), Bhojpuri, Sanskrit and Santali Community as well as 2 emerging Incubator communities - Awadhi and Marwari.
This is first event of its kind being held in Nepal and is intended to become an annual national flagship event for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the country.

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Logo designed by Bijay chaurasia, cc-by-sa-4.0


22 – 24 November 2018 | Hotel Simrik, Lahan, Nepal

HEADER
Hashtag: #WCN2018
Flag of Nepal.svg
Wikicamp Nepal 2018

Wikicamp Nepal 2018 (WCN) is a three day event for experienced and new Wikipedians of Nepal. The main objective of the event is to increase the Wikimedia offline activities in Nepal, develop skills of the new Wikipedians and bring together experienced and newbie Wikipedians. This brought together Wikipedians from Nepali, Maithili, Doteli, Newari (Nepal Bhasha), Bhojpuri, Sanskrit and Santali Community as well as 2 emerging Incubator communities - Awadhi and Marwari.
This is first event of its kind being held in Nepal and is intended to become an annual national flagship event for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the country.

Main Page


Event overview

Background

Wikicamp Nepal 2018 was an event held from December 22 to 24, 2018 in Lahan, Nepal. The event gathered experienced and newbies Wikipedians from different cities of Nepal as well as from neighboring countries, India and Bangladesh to discuss about the future of Wikimedia movement in Nepal and bring them under one umbrella to exchange their wiki related knowledge and skill. This event brought together Wikipedians from Nepali, Maithili, Doteli, Newari (Nepal Bhasha), Bhojpuri, Sanskrit and Santali Community as well as 2 emerging Incubator communities - Awadhi and Marwari. It was an experience for most of the participants, who never participated in conference to feel the conference environment, interact with fellow Wikip(m)edians and learn the activities and built up their skill.

Group photo - Image by Bijay chaurasia, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Program

As per initial plan for this project was a much larger one, it has been reduced for the effectiveness as it was the first project of its kind being held in Nepal and also considered to become an annual national flagship event for Wikim(p)edia in the country. The built in Program committee has received 31 submissions through Call for Participation and among them the committee has qualified 23 top most program submissions as per the tracks decided for this project i.e. Techincal, Outreach, Community Engagement and others. The accepted programs can be seen at Category:Wikicamp Nepal 2018 submissions/Accepted.

Yoga session

Across the Wikimedia event(s), this is the first time that Yoga session was organized considering the importance of physical, mental, and spiritual health of participants. The session has aimed and helped the participants to get relieved from stress and also keeping their mind calm during the hectic schedule of the event.

One of the core goals of the Wikicamp Nepal was to offer attendees the opportunity to build fellowship, strength, awareness and harmony in both the mind and body. Yoga is a great way through which we get in tune with our body and inner self to stay focused during the event.

The start of morning with Yoga session definitely brings positive vibes among the attendees which helps in increasing enthusiasm during the event. We have a certified Yoga Trainer and one of the organizing members of WCN PANKAJ DEO for the session, who takes the charge to guide the participants to do Yoga in proper way. Ultimately, this session made Wikicamp Nepal a great experiment and a real success.

Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 Yoga Session at Wikimedia Commons

Main workshop

Day 1

It's all about arrival of participants, meet, greet and interactive session. In detail, Participants from entire Nepal, also from neighboring countries, India and Bangladesh had arrived at the venue during the time and registered themselves on the Registration desk where swag items were distributed. Later after freshen up, we all gathered under one roof for introduction session which helped in creating an atmosphere of friendship, mutual cooperation among us. After that, we proceeded to Dinner and finally we all went to our respective rooms for sound sleep, to remain active and energetic for the next day.

Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 - Day 1 at Wikimedia Commons
Day 2

We began with opening ceremony which is inaugurated by State Minister for Industry, Tourism, Forest and Environment, Suresh Mandal, Province No. 2, Nepal. After opening ceremony, The first official session, Featured Contents in Wikipedia was taken by Nirjal stha as decided by Program coordinator Tulsi Bhagat and the program committee of Wikicamp Nepal 2018. There was a combined session of Gender Gap and Outreach by Sushma Sharma and सृजना in which they covered the problems of gender discrimination and their various solutions. There were various major sessions such as Inspiring Young Contributors for Outreach activities by Innocentbunny, Community evolution, organization framework and leadership by Ganesh Paudel and in context of Nepal, We are lagging behind in automation and technology field so that we came up with Installation and configuration of Pywikibot on Windows session by Tulsi Bhagat.

Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 - Day 2 at Wikimedia Commons
Day 3

Yoga session, a great initiative and experiment of WCN2018 which was appreciated by all the participants, kicked the final day forward. After short duration of freshen up, we began with Anup Sadi's session Improvement of the depth of Wikipedia. Following the schedule, SGill (WMF) jointly presented his Introducing Wikipedia to New Readers session with Biplab Anand. After this, सरोज कुमार ढकाल proceeded his workshop based session Wikipedia Education Program in Nepal, originally devised by NSaad (WMF). The idea of panel discussion with the representative of Nepali, Maithili and Doteli Wikipedians, brought by सरोज कुमार ढकाल, was implemented successfully by the organizers of WCN. Moreover, we also supported an online session Best Practices of Event Organizing by KCVelaga as he was not able to attend the event due to exams.

Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 - Day 3 at Wikimedia Commons

Social events

Due to cancellation of flights from Rajbiraj Airport, we decided to change the planned location for social events to Janaki Mandir, which is considered as the most important model of Koiri architecture in Nepal. On 25th of November, participants left the hotel early in the morning and reached the location before 12 noon. Participants were divided into small groups, each having one volunteer guide. The motive of the cultural tour is to make participants familiar with the Mithila culture, food and people. We requested all the participants to take photographs and upload their images to Wikimedia Commons.

Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 Cultural Tour at Wikimedia Commons

Venue and Logistics

From the beginning we are looking for a venue where participants can reach safely and enjoy the conference environment. Initially, we conducted a site visit for the event venue and short listed three hotels in Lahan where we can organize the event- Wikicamp Nepal 2018. Finally, the venue for the event was chosen by unanimous support of the WCN team member. We locked Hotel Simrik, which is located in the central part of the Lahan municipality and well connected with Mahendra Highway (also called east-west highway). We tried our best to provide good internet connectivity to the participants, but there were some issues with the connection including poor speed and connectivity issues.

Special Cuisine

We decided to offer special Mithila cuisine to the participants at Dinner time. We offered them Taruwa[1]- The popular dish prepared for guests usually in Mithila at the Day 1, we offered Paan[2] on second day of Wikicamp Nepal 2018. At the final day we offered Fish curry and Peda[3] to the participants.

Notes

  1. A type of appetizer made by deep frying vegetables which mixed into the batter of rice flour or gram
  2. A popular sweet type cuisine
  3. The Peda of Baramajhiya is very popular in Eastern part of Nepal.

Efforts

Team's Effort

To make this event success and risk free, we decided to make an open call for Committee Members for Wikicamp Nepal 2018. We received 15 responses from experienced and few newbies Wikimedians, who committed to give their time for monthly meeting as well as for other work arrangements. We started smoothly by arranging online meetings with the committee members to discuss regarding the agenda's and work plans. We arranged our monthly meeting calls initially on bluejeans but later it was arranged on hangouts after the decision of majority committee members. We have formed Core Organizing Team, Program committee, Scholarship committee, Finance Team and Support & Safety Team. In each committee group, we include more than 5 persons to face the specific challenges and reduce the work load.

Committee Member participation in Monthly call

WCN 2018
Names Aug Sep Sep
(Special)
Oct
(Special)
Oct Nov Meeting at WCN 2018
Benup A P P P P P P 86%
Bijay P P L A P P P 71%
Biplab P P P P P P P 100%
Janak P P P P P P P 100%
Jitendra A A A A A P P 29%
Keshav A A A X X X X 0%
Kiran A P A A A P P 43%
Nabin A A P P P P P 71%
Nawaraj P P A A P P P 71%
Nirajan P P P P P P P 100%
Nirmal A P P P P P P 86%
Pankaj P A A A P P P 57%
Saroj A L A P A P P 43%
Tulsi P P P P P P P 100%
Nirjal X X P P P P P 100%
Committee Participation 50% 64% 47% 53% 71% 93% 93%
Committee Member Count 14 14 15 15 14 14 14
L = On Leave (does not count as absence when officially on leave)
P = Present on call
R = Reviewed recording/notes
A = Absent
X = No meeting for this person

Volunteer's Effort

The effort and display by the Volunteer team members throughout the WCN 2018 was magnificent. They make their presence everywhere at event venue to assist the participants. The volunteer team consists of 13 youths from Rajbiraj, Lahan, Janakpur and Biratnagar. They successfully received the participants from arrival location and leave them at departure location. They closely work with the Organizers and Hotel supporting staffs.

Risks and Challenges overcome

To execute the event successfully, the organizers always work hard to mitigate the challenges and risks. We have participants from different parts of the country as well as from outside the country. We formed a team of volunteers to receive the participants from the Airport as well from the Bus Station to the event venue.

Documentation

Goals and outcomes

Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation ++
30 participants

46 participants

  • Scholarship participants - 23
  • Resource Person - 5
  • Female opportunity participants - 2
  • Organizer - 2
  • Online participation - 1
  • Volunteers - 13
  • As per the allocated fund for the travel and participation, The scholarship committee decided to increase the number of scholarship participants after having a monthly meeting and online conversation. We also accommodate our resource person from India and Bangladesh as well as our volunteers group.
  • We have successfully managed to accommodate all our participants and resource persons.
5 female participants

6 female participants

  • Scholarship participants - 2
  • Resource Person - 1
  • Female opportunity participants - 2
  • Organizer - 1
  • Overall 6 female participants were participated in Wikicamp Nepal 2018.
  • 2 female participants are comes from special Female opportunity scholarship campaign.
Feedback about conference experience

28 responses

  • Scholarship participants - 21
  • Resource Person - 4
  • Female opportunity participants - 2
  • Organizer - 1
  • Among 23 scholarship participants 21 participants submitted their experience report of Wikicamp Nepal 2018.
  • Each Resource person submitted their WCN 2018 participation report.
  • 2 Scholarship Participants didn't submitted their WCN 2018 experience report with the community.
Meeting with Community and UG representatives

Successfully organized

  • Participation - 30
  • At the end of Day 2, we have organized a meeting at late night with the participants of Wikicamp Nepal.
  • The discussion was focused on Community engagement and active participation in online Wikipedia discussion.
  • UG representatives of MWUG and WMN sit together and discussed about the future of Wikimedia movement in Nepal and further collaboration between two UG's.
Blog

Completed

  • We promoted the event via official WCN facebook page.
  • 6 online news portal published news about Wikicamp Nepal 2018.

Achievements

S.N. Purpose Achievement
1 Increase the Wikimedia offline activities in Nepal. Participants are aware of need to offline activities and methodologies to conduct offline activities in Nepal through various session.
2 Develop technical and leadership skills of the new Wikipedians. During the program technical and leadership sessions provide technical skills to

participants like pywikibot and leadership skills to emerging leaders.

3 Build a positive community by sharing session from established User Group representatives/executive members. Knowledge sharing from experienced user to aspire new readers and introduce new editors in Wikipedia.
4 Bring together experienced and newbie Wikipedians. Interactive sessions during the program provide enough opportunity to discuss and share know-how of experienced Wikipedians and resolve problems faced by the newbies.
5 Discussion on strategies for offline Wikimedia activities. Discussion is conducted to create integrated effort of Wikipedians for the betterment of the community.
6 Discussion on Development of new language projects (Incubator projects) of Nepal. Participants from new languages (Santali Marwari) discussed on the problem faced by them to expand the Wikipedia or during Wikipedia in incubator.

Participation

Participant's Reports

  1. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Aasish Shah
  2. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Anisha Maharjan
  3. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Anup Sadi
  4. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Bijay Chaurasia
  5. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Biplab Anand
  6. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Bishaldev100
  7. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/BRPever
  8. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Ganesh Paudel
  9. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Hari Paudyel
  10. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Innocentbunny
  11. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Janak Bhatta
  12. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Kiran Kumar Sah
  13. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Nawaraj Ghimire
  14. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Nilam Karn
  15. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Nirajan pant
  16. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Nirjal stha
  17. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Nirmal Dulal
  18. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/PANKAJ DEO
  19. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Sandeep Raut
  20. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/SGill (WMF)
  21. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Shibu Murmu
  22. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Sushma Sharma
  23. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/पर्वत सुबेदी
  24. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/श्रेष्ठ भूपेन्द्र
  25. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/सरोज कुमार ढकाल
  26. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/सृजना
  27. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/हिमाल सुबेदी
  28. Wikicamp Nepal 2018/Participation/Tulsi Bhagat

Participants traveling via Flight

We have around 15 participants traveling from Kathamandu via flight. From the very beginning, we plan to entry all the participants to Rajbiraj Airport in order to attend the Wikicamp Nepal 2018. We received 4 participants from Rajbiraj on 21st December, who already shown their interest to help the Organizers. We are expecting rest of the participants to entry at the same airport but unfortunately the scheduled flight was cancelled and we are notified a day ago before the event. Then we adjusted the flight booking to Biratnagar Airport, which is around 125 km from the event venue. The flight was on time but due to roadways strike in Duhabi and Inaruwa made situation worst for the Organizers. Safety is the biggest concern at that time for the organizers. We have 3 local and experienced volunteers at the Biratnagar Airport to receive the delegates from Airport and make them reach the event venue safely. We finally arranged a private Toyota HiAce and contacted the local police station for the safety of delegates to reach the event venue safe and sound. We took long route from Biratnagar to cross the blockage area and reach the event venue. Delegates also appreciated the performance of the volunteers for their kind support and hospitality.

While going back home, we arranged flight booking from Janakpur Airport because we changed our social events from Saptari to Janakpur. It was really exciting journey for all the delegates as well as for the organizers.

Participants traveling from India

We have to receive 3 resource persons in different venue who are traveling from India. We have 1 resource person traveling from Train (Jogbani Railway Station) and 2 resource persons traveling from flight (Bagdogra Airport) to the nearest India-Nepal Border. We hired a private car with a volunteer to receive the 2 resource persons who are willing to reach the Kakadvidta border. We also managed a volunteer to receive the resource person at Jogbani and make him comfortably reach to the event venue. We managed their travel schedule according to their travel plan and made their journey comfortable.

Participants traveling from Roadways

The event venue is attached to the Mahendra Highway so participants reach to the event venue with no hassle. We fixed banners and hoardings to reach the venue very comfortably.

Documentation

Greetings

Media coverages

Learning

What worked well during the event?

  • Participation: We were able to manage more than the expected number of participants from all over the Nepal and also from neighboring countries, India and Bangladesh.
  • Gender gap: We didn't receive any scholarship applications from female therefore we managed to invite female participants on our own. We managed to organize a session on gender gap jointly presented by female participants from India and Nepal.
  • Diversity: There were more than expected participants from diverse and under-represented Wikipedia communities of Nepal at the event.
  • Support & Safety: The formation of SuSa team and the Friendly space policy worked well during the event to tackle various contingencies.
  • Venue and logistics: Although organizing the event in Lahan was challenging, we managed to make the camp a great success by all means.
  • Miscellaneous: Instead of feedback(s), all the participants were requested to submit their reports here on Meta-Wiki, which helped us to understand and evaluate how each participant felt about the whole project. They are listed at a later section on this report.

What did not work so well during the event?

  • Wi-Fi connectivity could have been better.
  • The Electricity fluctuation could have been eliminated through the use of powerful automatic generators.
  • We could have managed session(s) time more effectively.
  • Media coverage(s) could have been more effective by inviting local and national level media persons.
  • We could have tried to bring in initiator wiki[m/p]edians.

What would we do differently next time?

  • We will be encouraging more female participation.
  • We will define some other tracks and themes for the programs.
  • We will be engaged more in WMF-issue(s) through defining programs.
  • We will be focusing more on Sustainability Initiative next time.

Gallery

  Media related to Wikicamp Nepal 2018 at Wikimedia Commons

Financial records

S.N. Particulars Code Head Amount
Event Facilities and Management Expenses
1 Stationery Event Facilities and Management Expenses 10,510.00
2 Internet (Event WiFi) Event Facilities and Management Expenses 5,000.00
3 Electricity Venue light and stage Event Facilities and Management Expenses 19,000.00
4 Cultural Program (Musical night party event) Event Facilities and Management Expenses 19,800.00
Food, Accommodation & Local Transport
1 Hotel Lodging & food Food, Accommodation & Local Transport 482,769.00
2 Transportation expenses for WCN team & Delegate Food, Accommodation & Local Transport 77,000.00
Swags, Publicity and Informal Dispersal
1 T-Shirt Swags, Publicity and Informal Dispersal 36,000.00
2 Diary, Booklet Printing & A3 Poster Swags, Publicity and Informal Dispersal 20,000.00
3 Flex, Print & fitting charge Swags, Publicity and Informal Dispersal 37,200.00
4 Hoodies (1650 Per Piece) Swags, Publicity and Informal Dispersal 99,000.00
Guest
1 Miscellaneous Items Guest 20,000.00
Travel Expenses Reimbursement
1 Reimbursement of Wikicamp Nepal Participants Travel Expenses Reimbursement 39,658.00
2 Airfare of Wikicamp of Wikicamp Nepal Participants Travel Expenses Reimbursement 122,500.00
Featured Events
1 Music System & Lighting for Musical Night Party Featured Events 18,050.00
2 Flower Decoration for Event venue Featured Events 35,900.00
Post-Conference Event
1 Food during outreach program to Janakpur Post-Conference Event 19,450.00
Video Documentation
1 Videography & Mixing of 3 days event Video Documentation 37,500.00
Fiscal Sponsor
1 Internet charge - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 4,500.00
2 Printer - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 16,500.00
3 Scanner & UPS - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 14,700.00
4 Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 67,000.00
5 Room Rent - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 15,000.00
6 Electricity & Water - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 863.00
7 Auditor Charge - Administrative Charges Fiscal Sponsor 12,100.00
Total 1,230,000.00

Summary of funding

Total funding
Source Amount (NPR) Amount (USD)
Grant Proposal 1035000 $9855.00
Budget extension 70000 $550.00
USD to NPR Rate Fluctuation 125000 NPR
Total (from WMF) 1230000 $10405
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project
Source Amount (NPR) Amount (USD)
Total expenditure 1230000 $10405.00
Total WMF Grant fund spent 1230000 $10405.00


Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.
No

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?
NO

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
NO

Next steps

Follow-up after WCN2018

Throughout the event, we encourage people to create participation reports about the Wikicamp Nepal, to share what they learned during the event. We received more than 25 reports. We also encouraged people to upload their photographs on Commons. We also follow-up each and every individual through social media(s).

During the application phase, the scholars agreed to our terms and policies in which they have committed to provide a follow-up of the event to share their experience and knowledge they acquired with their local community. After the event, we created a format to make easy for them to describe their plans or what they already did.

The future of WCN2018

From the very beginning of organizing the Wikicamp Nepal 2018, to the actual event happening, we couldn’t miss the huge enthusiasm of the nine different communities for this event that would bring them together and allow them to share knowledge, ideas, affection among them and ofcourse to celebrate. The total number of people who wanted to attend, despite the maximal capacity of our venue and the very positive feedback during and after the event, convinced us to renew the experience, enlarging and improving the concept.

In 2019, we plan to organize the second edition, expecting the great enthusiasm and the exponential growth of the Nepalese communities.

Anything else

 Thank you for reading this report! If you have any questions, feel free to contact Biplab Anand and Tulsi Bhagat.

Citations
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