Dear Wikimedia technical contributors in India,
As you already know, the annual Wikimedia Hackathon is happening this year during 20-22 May. After two years of online version, this year it will be in a hybrid, i.e. a remote event with local in-person meetups. We are happy to inform you that we have applied for a rapid grant to organize a local hackathon parallel of the global event.
Given the pandemic remains in the current and controllable state, with less 1% positivity, the local hackathon will be an in-person event with all safety measures. Subject to the approval of the grant, we will open a call for participation for interested technical contributors to apply for scholarships to participate in this event.
The reason behind organizing an in-person event is, as the world is opening up and COVID-19 under control, we felt that it would be a good time to host an in-person event with limited participants, as permitted by the local government. In the last two years, we realized that many things can be organized online, however, certain components of in-person events such as forming new connections, which are especially cross-community, and post-event networking are often lacking in online events. So we would like to see how this goes after almost two years of online events.
Looking forward to your participation.