People in Vidisha have used Wikipedia for years to study, to settle arguments and to look things up. Almost nobody here had met the people who write it. The city had never hosted an organised Wikimedia community event.
On 7 June 2026 we changed that with a celebration of Wikipedia's 25th birthday. Some months later, with a little distance, I want to write down what we did, what the numbers do and do not say, and what I would change.
Why Vidisha
I had organised and taken part in Wikimedia work elsewhere: national campaigns, hackathons, conferences. But there is a particular kind of gap in a small city. Reading Wikipedia and contributing to it feel like completely separate worlds. Most readers do not know that volunteers write it, that photographs can be shared for everyone to reuse, or that there are projects beyond the encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's 25th anniversary was a natural moment to connect a global milestone with something local.
From an idea to a funded event
I wrote a proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation's India Rapid Fund under Wiki Open Learning, the volunteer education initiative I founded. The proposal and its approval discussion are public. Balarc Foundation supported us with grant administration.
Then came the work that never appears in photographs: a registration form, a venue, a session plan, printed material, a budget revised more than once, and replies to applicants one by one.
More applicants than seats
We prepared 35 places. More than 109 people applied.
That gap told me something important by itself. The interest was always there. Nobody had asked. It also meant making hard choices about who could attend, and it is the clearest lesson I took from the whole event: plan for more demand than you expect.
The day
Twenty-six people came. For most of them it was their first Wikimedia event of any kind.
We introduced Wikipedia and its sister projects, created accounts together, and ran a team challenge in which each group imagined practical ways to bring more people in Vidisha to Wikipedia. Some ideas were small and immediately doable; others were ambitious. All of them came from people who had known about Wikimedia for a few hours, and who were already thinking about how to involve others.
We ended with twenty-five candles on a cake.
What the numbers say, and what they do not
MeasureResultApplicationsMore than 109Participants26New Wikimedia accounts18 of 26Women participants14 of 26Files in the event's Commons category157, against a target of 50Participant video testimonials11
Women were the majority in the room.
I like these numbers, but I try to read them carefully. Applications measure interest, not attendance. A new account is a first step, not a habit. The Commons count measures documentation, not experience. What matters more to me is that some of the people from that room were still contributing months later.
Documentation as part of the event
I treated documentation as part of organising, not an afterthought. The event's photographs and videos, including the brainstorming activity and the cake cutting, are in Category:Wikipedia 25 Celebration Vidisha on Commons, along with eleven short testimonials in which participants describe the day in their own words.
Those files illustrate the event report and the Diff post, and they will be useful for any future outreach in the region. A photograph on someone's phone helps nobody. A photograph on Commons with a proper description becomes part of the record.
After the room emptied
Two weeks later, on 21 June, we ran an online hands-on editing workshop for anyone who wanted to continue. A second workshop followed in August. And in October and November 2026, Vidisha is hosting a Wikidata 14th birthday celebration, supported by a Wikimedia Deutschland microgrant.
One event is a moment. A sequence of events is the beginning of a community.
What I would do differently
Plan for demand. With three times more applicants than seats, a waitlist and a parallel online session would have included more people.
Fix the follow-up date before the event, so participants leave knowing exactly when the next step is.
Give one volunteer only documentation duties, so the organiser is not also the photographer.
Prepare a one-page take-home guide in Hindi with account, editing and upload basics. People forget most of what they hear in a day.