techfests-in-india

The following mail is a bit too long but please do read it, its fantastic. The chronological order is as following,

Firstly in October I tried sending some emails to few Heads of The Department of Faculty of Engineering and Tech, MSU Baroda, no one replied. And to my surprise few of the mails bounced back. Their site needs to be updated and faculties should check their mails regularly :D

Then on One Fine Day in November I receive email from Ankur Sorathia, the head organizer of Footprints 12 that they are interested in knowing more about WP so asked me to write more about it to him.

Then once I wrote to Ankur about what exactly I plan to do during Footprints 12 regarding Wikipedia and how they can be benefited from this, he asked me to get in touch with Dhwani Shah (apparently some other organizer of Footprints)

I got in touch with Dhwani too with all same details, and one day she dropped a bomb on me with one long mail stating some interesting(silly) points like.

* We are keen to have a link of wikipedia on our official website so that whenever anyone visits it we have a page of FOOTPRINTS on wikipedia showing every detail of FOOTPRINTS.

* We are very much interested in associating with wikipedia as a sponsor and so we would suggest you to sponsor the events of Cybernetics which include events related to computer and IT dept. PFA the proposal for association with FOOTPRINTS as a sponsor.

* Also we would like FOOTPRINTS to be platform through which you can have many more campus ambassadors, so that more awareness among student community about this initiative of wikipedia is created. Do let us know how is it possible from your end.

* If we can get some coupons or stuff then we can conduct some small on the spot events at Jam-pad( on the spot events' zone) and distribute it among the winners so that they can avail some special benefits.

So it was clear to me that they know nothing about open source communities, Wikipedia or anything, but its fine, since even I didn't know anything about these 2 or 3 years ago, but I was always willing to learn.

Then I replied her back saying that you can use the official logo of WP on your site if I take a workshop or something, but you can't expect me to write an article about Footprints on WP, because it does not qualify any criteria. And I told her that WP itself runs on donations, how can I even ask Wikimedia Foundation to sponsor you :p

I told her that WMF people are ready to support this event by all possible means but can't sponsor it. I also told them that I would bring some goodies like Tshirts, stickers and badges which I intend to distribute freely among the participants of my event. Then I said her that my motto was just that a strong open source community should build up in Gujarat and nothing else.

Then she got back to me saying that their maximum lab capacity is of 30 people and I should specify what type of internet connection I ll need :o and all other minute details and they want some more goodies :p and she also said that they can't (or won't) pay me :D. I also said that I don't expect anything since I am just a volunteer.

Then after few conversations with her and giving her all details and saying that I ll just need good internet which attendees can browse and use to edit during workshop. But then she said me to have next all conversation with Siddharth Bhattbhatt(again some other Footprints organizer)

Now my entire conversation of workshop with this guy happened over Facebook messages :D (450 conversations until now :p). This part is damn interesting.

I started talking to him since late november and repeated all same stuff which I already told to Ankur and Dhwani, and once he said to me "Honestly, I have a lot many more proposals for workshops but why I am interested in this is because it does sound interestingly new and exclusive too"

So I was like fine, go ahead, but at least hear me out first, then I told him little about Wikipedia and communities and such stuff, but this guy from day 1 was interested in exclusivity only. Once during our conversation he alleged that same thing is coming up in SVNIT Surat too, so why should we keep it ? I have my sources there too :D so I cross checked but nothing was going to happen in SVNIT.

Firstly this guy was simply going after EXCLUSIVITY. Then he asked me for some content to display on their website and I gave him some excellent stuff which had examples of few US universities collaboration with WP and how students can benefit from this. And later this guy dragged me to "Registration fight" whether to keep it or not and if yes then how much to charge ? I was like do anything, this does not matter me since I am not earning out of it. He was interested in creating Geonotices on WP and publicize in Gujarat, this can be done but the problem I later found out that most of the ISP's IP range back to Mumbai, Maharashtra and can't go much local into Baroda or Gujarat specifically. I told him this is not possible because if we did it, it would become "Advertisement" (he wanted this, but I can't do this). Then he was confused again on what to do next.

Then in late December WP Takes ahmedabad came in press and this guy told me that now our event is not exclusive. At this point I got damn furious and for once I thought of leaving all this and tell him to screw up. I told him that we are just volunteers I can't control anyone doing any volunteering stuff, I told him in fact I helped Noopor and other users online with WP Takes Ahmedabad, but again he was crying for exclusivity.

Then started the quarrel of SWAG, I did tell them that I ll try my best to get some good amount of swag which I intend to distribute freely. Then he started asking me numbers, like what exactly will you give? how many tshirts? how many stickers and badges? Can't we sell those ? :o I told him that even I can't say or know how many would I get, but one thing is sure I ll get something and you won't believe Kartik I already had a talk with US office and Delhi office of WMF regarding this and both were ready to support me with good stuff, but only if I go public with it.

And Hisham Mundol the Lead Consultant for India Projects of WMF was ready to fly down to Baroda during this event, since something of this big scale was going to happen for first time in Gujarat.

But the progress bar was stuck at the number of tshirts only, I made very clear to them that I can't say exact number, and they wanted it. Then they launched the site and other workshops and lecture details and I was surprised and shocked to not to see WP thing in it. I already provided them relevant content and stuff to put on site, but it wasn't there. So I asked them what's wrong now ?

And I was ultimately shocked by his answer "
See, the prob is that we cannot actually announce a FREE or Low charge event this early...This can seriously hamper other workshops which cost over 1000 bucks...
So, we are thinking of announcing all this in the last week of Jan...
25 odd days should be enough to get in entries..."

I was like WTF !!!! I really didn't expect this out of any institute. I have been doing outreach activities long enough in Pune, but encountered this sick stuff for the first time.

WMF was ready to provide me many things, even printed material and tshirts and a lot, but as one of the many volunteers even I have got my limits, I can't tell them anything that send these many things, I happily accept whatever they send. I tried to convey this to Siddharth, but he couldn't understand this any how. And my entire January and early February was spent in conversing with him daily about this again and again, but he was not ready to leave his rut.

Then I only stopped contacting them and didn't talk about this, and again on fine day Siddharth told me that someone named Ajitesh(again some other Footprints organizer) will contact me.

By now I did sense something is wrong, and thankfully didn't ask about anything from WMF and Hisham and all. Once again I repeated same old story to Ajitesh regarding Wikipedia and stuff, but I knew it was not going to work.

And yesterday Ajitesh called me and said that they somehow couldn't manage the internet connection for this workshop so they are planning to call it a off. And I was like "Thanks, at least you have courtesy and courage to call me"

But I did tell him that I was planning this stuff from November and since DAY 1 I said that the only thing I would require is Internet connection, and if you can't manage this, screw you, this is hopeless.

They did not at all have a chain of command and a single point of contact. They were doing iski topi uske sar in simple words.

Kartik I did learn many many things out of this sour experience of mine, hope you find some interesting input for your blog too out of this.