Grants talk:IdeaLab/Bringing Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia Editathons to Indian university campuses

Comments / questions from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Carries mum, and thanks for your idea to introduce Ada Lovelace Day to Indian universities as a way to both introduce students to Wikipedia and encourage them to read about women in STEM. I'm Chris Schilling, a community organizer with the Wikimedia Foundation who is supporting this Inspire Campaign, and I want to help you with this idea. Here are some questions and comments I have on your idea:

• It's great to hear about your past experience organizing edit-a-thons and developing Wikipedia-based assignments for your students. I'm sure this past work will help inform your decisions in planning and running this workshop.
• An edit-a-thon that is themed on Ada Lovelace Day has important benefits for the project, but the focus of this campaign is to bring new readers into Wikipedia, especially people who may not be aware of or use Wikipedia. Are there students who are not familiar with Wikipedia who might benefit from this workshop, or are there others in the community around the university who might benefit from participating in the workshop?
• It sounds like you have students who might be interested in helping to promote or others help out with this workshop. Do you anticipate needing any funding to run this event, such as for food / transportation / rental equipment / promotion? If so, I can help you get started with a grant proposal.

I'll be contacting you via e-mail so we can discuss more, but I like the idea you've offered and hope I can help support you. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:41, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Inspire Campaign Rapid Grant applications due March 15th

This is a final reminder that the deadline for Rapid Grant applications for ideas submitted for the New Readers Inspire Campaign are due today by March 15th, 2018 (23:59 GMT). If you think you need funding for you idea, please review the following instructions:

If you haven't drafted your Rapid Grant proposal: Click on the Expand into a Rapid Grant button at the bottom of your idea page and fully respond to all the questions. Once you've answered the questions and are ready for your proposal to be formally reviewed, submit your draft proposal and change the status=draft to status=proposed in the {{Probox}} template.

If you've already drafted your Rapid Grant proposal: Be sure to fully respond to all questions regarding your activities, measures of impact, and budget, and then change the status=draft to status=proposed in the {{Probox}} template.

If you're not sure you know how to change the status of your proposal or aren't sure if you've changed it properly, please contact me at cschillingwikimedia.org or on my talk page and I can make the changes for you. Thanks, User:I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I overcame the main bottleneck to organizing a Wikipedia Editathon in rural India -- reliable internet access

Dear I_JethroBT_(WMF),

apologies for not being able to get back in touch. I have had such variable, unpredictable internet since I got to India in early January. I didn't need a grant for stage 1 -- which was simply to organize and hold a successful Wikipedia Editathon. I brainstormed various ways, and in the end, was granted access to the Visva Bharati central computer classroom with ethernet. This was an air-conditioned space with desktops and reliable internet, though, on the day, the main internet line went down twice!

25 students and faculty showed up and had a great time. I embedded my poster here, since it lists the goals and we did them. We got through all of the tasks. The attendees all now know how to create Wikimedia commons content. I had taught 2 earlier Science Communications workshops in late January and February 2018, which included how to find and use Creative Commons licensed images from Wikimedia to use in powerpoint and other science comms things, like blogs.

I also found information about 3 previous Ada Lovelace Day editathons that were held in India. This gave us existing pages on Women Scientists to work on, but I don't know if the idea continues or has spread here.

Most importantly, I have delivered proof that the concept is popular and that IMO, it has a future here. I will work with enthusiastic students to develop further Editathon ideas, even though my 3 months here as visiting professor is nearly up.

Poster for our mini Wikpidia Editathon