Wikicamp Nepal 2018 started at Lahan, Nepal

Wikicamp Nepal 2018, The national event of Wikimedians of Nepal, has started in the lahan city of Nepal yesterday. Wikimedians of Nepal user group and Maithili Wikimedians user group, the local Wikimedia Affiliates User Group are the co-organaizer of this event. This event is going to happen on 22nd, 23rd and 24th of November in Lahan, Siraha.

Pankaj Deo in his inaugural speech welcomes all the participants at Lahan. He also addresses the main aim of the event. He gives emphasis on bringing experienced and new Wikipedians of Nepal together to share their Wiki-knowledge and best community practices to boost the Wikimedia movement in Nepal. The organizer groups have panel of skilled volunteers for minimizing and overcome the risks.

The organizer groups have divided and formed various committee and team such as Program committee, Scholarship committee, Finance Team, Support and Safety Team etc. for the smooth workflow and handling the risks and problems occur during the event.

Altogether 30-37 participants are selected to take part in the event on scholarship that cover round trip travel, shared accommodation and event registration fee. The scholarships are overseen, and recipients chosen, by a committee of volunteer editors in which they have selected the participants via three phase round and tough selection process alike Wikimania process. The participant represents major Wikipedia communities of Nepal. The major Wikipedia communities of Nepal are Nepali, Maithili, Doteli, Newari (Nepal Bhasha), Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, Santali, Marwari and Awadhi.

This camp focuses sessions of four tracks: Technical, Outreach, Community Engagement and Others. Technical consists of Phabricator, Bot and Auto Wiki Browser, Wikimedia tools, Wikimedia Scripts and Gadgets, Mediawiki and so on sessions.

Outreach consists of Focused community outreach, Social media, print, visual media strategies, Offline solution, Community best practices sessions. Community Engagement consists of Improvement for the existing Wikipedia Community in Nepal (Strength), Interaction within Wikimedia Communities (Communication), Gender Gap, Community Best practices, Live more language from Incubator (Strategy), Diversity, Safety and security sessions. Lastly, Others track consists of Main section of Wikipedia (FA, QA, ITN, DYK, FP), History of Wikipedia’s of Nepal, Wikimedia Movement Strategy session. For more, Read Call for Participation.

Out of 30 received submissions, a list of experienced volunteers has accepted 23 submissions based on the four tracks. The program committee has already finalized and public the program schedule.

Edit A Lot

The organizers of the  the second day of Wikicamp Nepal 2018 encourages all users of nine Wikipedias of Nepal to edit and make contributions. Pankaj Deo in his inaugural speech welcomes all the users and requested them to take part in the wikipedia movements in Nepal.

Pankaj Deo requested again to the users to attend in many different types of works in nine major Wikipedia communities of Nepal. The major wikipedias of Nepal are Nepali, Maithili, Doteli, Newari (Nepal Bhasha), Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, Santali, Marwari and Awadhi.

Suresh Mandal, the minister of the province 2 of Nepal thanks all the organizers for choosing Lahan for this distinguish event. He presents that Maithili language has a long history of its own. He addresses that all the languages are equal and we need to respect all the languages of Nepal simultaneously.

Wikipedia Founder member Jimmy Wlaes in his message requested the wikipedians of Nepal to share their dreams. Satdeep Gill, one of the founding members of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group,  told users to reach wikipedia to all the people as soon as possible. He also requested to learn at first and then use the experiences later.