Grants:PEG/Kannan Shanmugham - Malayalam Wikipedia/10th Birthday Celebrations/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2012-13 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Kannan Shanmugham - Malayalam Wikipedia/10th Birthday Celebrations.

• 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 grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

YES

Is your project completed?

YES

Did you use any of the grant funds?

YES (Additional request for Reallocation of Balance Amount of Wikisangamotsavam 2012)

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

The Malayalam Wikimedia Community celebrated its 10th birthday/anniversary with much enthusiasm and wide participation. There were at least six events conducted between December 8, 2012 to February 8, 2013 in various places at Kerala and Bangalore. These events were all formulated each independently and in its own format, at various cities and locations within the logistically wide geographical target and reach of Malayalam community. Three of these events (EKM -Ernakulam, KKD- Kozhikode and KLM - Kollam) were directly funded and assisted by this Grant Amount.

Notable Events:

1. Wiki Knowledge Expedition December 8 Kannur
2. Wiki Jungle Expedition December 9 Kannur
3. WikiFacePlus December 15 Thrissur
4. Wiki Meet Bangalore December 22
5. Wiki Meet Kollam December 22
6. Wiki Meet Kannur December 23
7. Wikipedia Birthday Celebration Major Ernakulam (Kochi)

Lessons learned

What went well?

The idea of conducting and celebrating an important Wikimedia milestone such as the tenth anniversary went very well with its stakeholders. The set of events opened up an opportunity for the Wikipedia editors, readers, outreach proponents and well-wishers to meet together and share their excitation and vision. That the functions were conducted in a geographically distributed multi-nodal series of events facilitated more people to participate reducing their travel and time costs. Once again, Malayalam Wikimedians proved that significant outreach, media publicity and mass penetration can be accomplished by simple and cost-effective off-line activities.

Publicity & News Coverage

All the events were covered very well by print, air and online media channels. The news reports which came in multiple editions on several days distributed over a few weeks helped the brand identity "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia" to get imbibed very well into the minds of common people who are exposed to the knowledge world mostly off-line and casually on-line. Subsequently, there has been a surge of activities, edits and new user entries into our projects.

Public participation

A team participating in a two-day knowledge interaction session (as part of Malayalam Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebrations in December 2012) hosted by the Palayathu Vayal school. This was a collaboration of local Wikipedians, forest ecologists and experts from other fields exploring with the rural and tribal communities of the village

Two veterans share the sweet moments of 10th anniversary Malayalam Wikipedia: K.Venu, the well known revolutionary social reformer of yesteryears offer a piece of cake to the most senior Malayalam Wikipedian (by age) during the EKM celebrations on December 24th.

The series of celebrations also brought up many individuals and communities who were so far generally extraneous to Wikipedia environment. At the Wikiexpedition and Wiki Knowledge Tour (Kannur), a group of people highly enthusiastic in environmental, biodiversity and organic agricultural issues joined us. Many of them has eventually become active contributors to Wikipedia or Wikimedia commons by way of subject matter expertize and multi-media uploads. We were also able to introduce Wikipedia to an entire village and a very special school there, predominantly belonging to the original ancient tribal community. (Although we were able to harness the funding for this particular event through other channels, this was originally planned to be conducted by the advantage of grant. We have used part of stationary and printing materials funded by the grant to help boost this event.)

Other events were also much exposed to the public. For eg: the EKM event was patronized by many members of the free software and open knowledgeware culture. Participation by some of the well known erstwhile political and social reformers brought the event to news media's limelight.

Participation of Chief Guests

We had not solicited guests of extreme popularity in order to add glamour and attraction to the functions. Most were academicians and people from knowledgeware and open source circles. However, several among them were eminent subject matter experts and reputed social activists. Unexpected participation of K. Venu was a pleasant surprise and an added feather to our day's success at the EKM program.

Better Event Management

We had not sought professional assistance from any event management agencies. Yet, the events were conducted rather meticulously. This was a good indication that our earlier experience in conducting various Wikipedia Workshops, Wikisangamotsavam and other outreach programs have helped us to gradually evolve and mature into reliable levels. We are now much more confident of planning, organising and executing events of much larger scales.

The distribution of events into several distinctly separate and independently organized events had mitigated the quantum of efforts to several groups and persons. A single large event for the whole community would have taken much more preparatory work and also overloaded a few persons much more. Besides, the participation would have highly limited due to geographical constraints.

What did not go well?

Participation from Community

We feel that the participation from active Wikimedia community was moderately satisfactory but should have been better. Lack of enough prior notices, personal and professional engagements due to an imminent year ending and relatively long transportation distances could have effected this factor.

Infrastructure including technical support was poor

As usual, we have always tried to be cost-effective with minimal contract assistance for event management and infrastructural facilities. Most technical equipment (such as computers, internet connections etc.) were provided by the community members themselves. Naturally, at times, this had resulted in minor shortcomings.

Learning from such minor shortfalls, we are now pondering upon the idea of investing in some basic event-related infrastructure if strong financial and moral assistance can be provided by the WMF. This will facilitate us to have a set of consistent and reliable equipment.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Even within a celebration-like event, We noticed that the participants were not just experienced wikipedians, but quite a number of curious fresh Wikipedia aspirants. This implies a need to always include some Wikipedia training oriented towards real time hands-on demonstrations and tutorials. Such tutorial sessions should always be an integral part of any Wikipedia event open to public participation.

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/Kannan Shanmugham - Malayalam Wikipedia/10th Birthday Celebrations to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.

• Commemorate the tenth anniversary of creating Malayalam Wikipedia.
• Use the occasion as a vehicle for massive outreach through public events
• Introduce new readers, users and editors to Wikimedia projects
• Enrich Wikipedia content by learning from subject matter experts attending the events
• Acquire, gather and upload photographs and media available during the events to the Wikimedia commons.
• Reinforce the belief and trust in Wikipedia among its chronic users.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.

We could organize more than six events within our state and one at Bangalore. This state-wide campaign was a great achievement in the history of Malayalam wikipedia. Each one was organised as public events and number of general public participated in those events. During this period a number of new users, readers attracted into Malayalam wikipedia and considerable amount of new edits and pages were created. More than 140 media files were included into commons in connection with this incident. A good cohesion developed between our editors and persons from different walks of life were joined with us.

Some important books were offered to ml.wikisource.org from the eminent personalities who attend the events. Newbies especially from young including engineering students participated this events with much enthusiasm and they were eventually became active users in wikipedia. A separate project page of the entire event can be found here. (We are extremely sorry for the non-availability of an English translation of the same)

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

• Number and quality of participants in the events.
• Reflections and waves of the event in mass media reports and other channels of outreach
• Enhanced number of active users (both readers and editors)
• More uploads and content addition to Wikimedia repositories
• Reflections from the participants by way of blog posts and other social networks
• Added participation in each succeeding events of tenth anniversary celebrations of Malayalam Wikipedia.

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.

This celebrations provided a new era to Malayalam Wikipedia. Academic community of our language who were reluctant to accept the importance of wikipedia, give more attention after this events. Our state Government also consider wikipedia a prominent tool to protect and develop Malayalam language which is facing threats from English language. This celebrations created more enthusiasm and oneness among the community also.

If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.

The next programmes will be focused on more hands-on experience to participants and more focus on quantity and quality in articles.

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.

Stabilize infrastructure

Increase participation

Improve quality

Increase reach

Encourage innovation

During the last several years, Malayalam Wikipedia (and its sister Wikimedia projects) have been gradually getting popular among common public through our continuous outreach efforts. The impacts have been rather invisible and unmeasurable initially. However, it has now started giving indications of crossing a critical threshold. The anniversary celebration events have obviously impressed us with greater public involvement, that was often even unsolicited.

During these weeks, a number of new users, readers were attracted into Malayalam Wikipedia. Considerable amount of new edits took place. New articles were created and developed at an increased rate. On Dec 21st, we had the maximum number of Wikipedia edits and other activities during our on-line Wiki event "Birthday Gift". Apparently these were the best ever numbers ever accomplished among all editions of Indian language Wikimedia projects on a single day.

Edit parameters for ml.wikipedia.org for a single day (Dec 21, 2012) as pat of "ml.wiki BirthDay Gift" edits

Measure	2012 December 20 11:59:59 PM	2012 December 21 11:59:59 PM	Difference
Articles	27,475	27,651	176
Pages (including talks, redirections etc.)	1,86,554	1,87,338	784
media uploads	2,815	2,831	16
Total Edits	16,47,550	16,51,724	4174
Average edits per page	8.83	8.82	0.01
Number of users	42,742	42,959	217
Active users (calculated from the previous 30 days)	331	331

During the project period, at least 140 media files were added into commons in connection with a single event. Repercussions of the out-door programs have resulted in consistent article creation and development ever since in pages related to flora and fauna, mainly pursued by acclaimed subject matter experts in the field. The trend is still continuing. Strong cohesion and binding were developed between our editors themselves. In addition, fresh persons from different walks of community joined our collective mission.

Some important and valuable works were impulsively offered to ml.wikisource.org from the eminent personalities who attend the events. Many fresh aspirants, especially from the young generation including engineering students participated in these events with much enthusiasm. Many of them have eventually become active and promising users in wikipedia.

Associated with the events, we managed to create and print a quick reference flap sheet (Cheat-sheet) showing editing tips and basic wiki syntax in Malayalam. This has turned out to be an excellent outreach material. Many new ml.wikipedia users can be seen now with one of these sheets fixed conspicuosly near their home workstation! In addition, we also prepared and circulated hundreds of stickers with Wikipedia logo and the word "Wikipedia" in Malayalam. They now gently decorated the school bags and bicycles of many school children in the villages of Kerala.

• Besides this perid that is between Dec. 2013 to Feb. 2013, Wikipedians who edited at least 10 times since they arrived were increced as 5 than in the previous quarter statistics of 2. Increase in wikipedians who edited at least 10 times since they arrived, Wikipedians who contributed 100 times or more in this month etc. are also increased likewise. Number of new articles per month also increased average 20.6 in these three months as agaisnt previous three months count as 14.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

YES, Today (17-07-2013)we have dispatched every details of our expenditure to wikimedia dot org from Kannan Shanmugham's email. All the details of table bellow with all bills, vouchers and invoices from three centers, including the scanned copies of the same were attached separately in that mail. The detailed breakup of all expenses in each center can be found along with it.

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

Please see the Table C below for details.

SEE INSTRUCTIONS AT Grants:Index/Create financial report.

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)

A. Malayalam Wikipedia 10th Birthday Celebrations: Estimated Expenditure

No	Item	Amount (INR)	Amount (USD)	Remarks
1	Publicity	5000	92
2	Printing	4000	74
3	Photography	2000	37
4	Projector & Internet	1000	19
5	Transportation Charge	1000	19
6	Hall Rent	4000	74
7	Food	10000	184	200 Delegates
8	Unforeseen Expenses	1,000	19
	Total	28000	499

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

B. Expected Source of Income

No	Source	Amount (INR)	Amount (USD)	Remarks
1	Grant From WkiMedia Foundation	25,949	477	(Reallocation of Balance Amount of Wikisangamotsavam 2012
2	Local Sponsorship	2051	38

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above)

C. Details of Expenditure

No	Item	Centre-1 (Ernakulam) (INR)	Centre-2 (Kozhikodu) (INR)	Centre-3 (Kollam) (INR)	Total (INR)	Total (USD)	Remarks
1	Publicity	3160	250	-	3410	63	-
2	Printing	4540	-		4540	83	-
3	Internet & Projector	1000	-	-	1000	18	-
4	Hall Rent	1000	-	-	1000	18	-
5	Food	11563	1275	750	13588	250	-
6	Transportation	-	1800	-	1800	34	-
7	Postage, Courier	-	-	800	800	15	-
7	Unforeseen Expense	-	67	59	126	2	-
	'Grand Total	21263	3392	1609	26264	483	-

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

Our expected estimate for the event was USD 499 (INR 28000). But we could contain the expense as USD 483. Out of which USD 477 used from the grant fund.

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

Balance USD 6 (Rs. 326) was arranged by contributions from Wkimedians.

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.)

NA

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

NA