I know i m writing my second post after long time. Since i am a amateur blogger , i am unable to invest my time to blogging. But, I am sure as days pass by i will be blogging frequently sharing my experiences. Today, i wish to share my experience with Jimmy Wales. Those of you who dont jimmy, he is the founder of the knowledge sharing portal - > Wikipedia . Most of us rely on wikipedia to get quick and accurate information on everything we want to learn about. Let me tell you how it all started.

The Knowledge Foundation,  A NGO started by group of passionate entrepreneurs and community oriented people , has been successful in organizing around 19 events in last few years in India. To name a few of the events like Proto , Wikicamp , Blogcamp , Failcamp , Barcamp, Mobile Monday and list goes on and on. I am one of the passionate member of this group and i have been associated with them for last two years in organizing proto, wikicamp , barcamp etc.

Syed, one of the founding member of TKF , invited me to be part of the meet with Jimmy Wales. The Meeting was scheduled on December 12th,2008 at The Park.Agenda was “coffee with jimmy” to discuss the synergies between wikimedia foundation and TKF. So, i started exploring more about wikimedia foundation and their recent initiatives to spread awareness on wikipedia. I was astonished to read the page of jimmy wales on wikipedia. It reflected the power of Wikipedia. First few paragraphs about his personal life talks about his relationships and only then can you read about his achievements. By this time , i was completely interested in exploring more about wikimedia and read the annual reports of the foundation. I jotted down the goals of their initiative to raise $6 million funding for successful operation of wikipedia. With little knowledge of marketing i gained from my venture, i listed down few strategies which can be implemented to spread awareness on wikipedia and raise the funds. I was all set for the meeting.

I reached The Park at 8:45 AM. First thing striked me was effects of mumbai terror attacks. A security guard checked me and asked for identity proof. I was happy that atleast now the people are concerned about the security of citizens. So,  i entered the The Park and met my friends of TKF -> Sukumar(Old man of our army) , Narain(Entrepreneur) and Varun(Mobile Guru). We had a chit chat about the recent market trends and exchanging updates about each other. In some time,  rest of the team joined us for the meet. Meeting started with a quick intro about TKF and its  successful events. Sue ,Executive Director(Wikimedia Foundation) briefed us about the initiative undertaken by them to spread awareness on wikipedia. Some of the key points were local wikipedia chapters in different countries , fund raising activities etc. She was very interested to know about spreading awareness on using vernacular languages in wikipedia. Wikipedia has many articles in indian languages like hindi, tamil , kannada etc but articles written in these languages are very few compared to english. It is required for us to contribute to wikipedia in terms of writing articles in our known languages and sharing knowledge.

Now started the most interesting part of the meeting ->”Rapid fire round of questions from Sue to TKF Team”. She was all prepared with a list of questions to ask us. Some of the interesting areas discussed was starting a local chapter in india , local student club in colleges, corporate fund raiser events etc. TKF Team shared their willingness to help wikipedia by conducting a corporate fund raiser and starting a local chapter. The meet was over by 10:15 since Jimmy had to address a press conference at 11 AM and rest of us had to get back to our work. You must be thinking wat i did in this meeting ? I was quite listening to Kiruba , Syed , Sue , Jimmy and others.  I had loads to share but i  preferred to listen before i share my thoughts.

With this blog , I am sharing my thoughts on what can be done for wikipedia.

• Local Chapter in India
• Wikimania Event
• Collaboration with Intellectual Groups in India like TKF
• Data Mining of Wikipedia User Community and extract details about Most active Users , locality etc and provide them more support to spread wikipedia.
• Data Mining of Corporates , socialites information who frequently donate for social cause. Spread information about wikipedia within such community.
• Local events , Corporate fund raiser , road shows.
• Scheme or Program to identify “Leading Wikipedians” and recognize them and provide credibility for their work. This will help to improve the volunteer base.
• Partnerships with open source companies , clubs etc to spread awareness.
• A service to develop Custom Knowledge Management System from wikipedia and deploy for a company /organization and in return get some donations for the foundation.
• Collaboration with specific groups , foundation to increase wikipedia articles. For eg : Collaborating with National Forest Department to increase the articles base in wikispecies.
• Use the power of social networking and web 2.0 services. For Eg : When i did a search for communities related to wikipedia in orkut and facebook , i was shocked to find just two active communities with 25k users. By starting communities for wikipedia cause and increasing the user base in such communities will help us to spread awareness on wikimedia and its activities.
• Developing mobile games or online games and using this as a  channel for spreading awareness.
• Developing social networking applications to raise funds for wikipedia.
• Identify  Vernacular Language enthusiast and support them to contribute to wikipedia.

I am done with the list for time being :).  I m not sure how many of these suggestions have  already been implemented. I wrote Wat i felt can be taken.I want to share few learning’s from this experience of mine.

Key Learnings:

• Be down to earth even when you reach the peak in your career growth. Best example  i can think of is Mr.Jimmy Wales.
• Be community enthusiast - > contribute to wikipedia in your own way.
• Always Listen before you speak.

I am sharing few photos we took during the meet and i sign off for now.

Meet with you soon with my next post.