 Hello. Could you please take your seats? Okay. Hello, everyone. Good morning. So, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Let's Connect Learning Clinic one session. It's called Networking for Introverts. This session is designed by Leadership Development Working Group and Let's Connect. I'm Nitesh. My username is Nitesh Gill. I belong to Punjab, India. I'm a part of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group since 2015 and I'm here on behalf of Leadership Development Working Group. Once again, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the pre-conference activity Day Zero Wikimedia. I welcome you here to the first learning clinic of Let's Connect. The title is already mentioned here, like Networking for Introverts. Just to introduce myself, I am Chinmai. My username is Chinmai Mishra and I am again from India. I have been as a volunteer in this movement for the last seven years and working with the Let's Connect team as a working group member for the last four months. We hope you enjoy and have a happy hour today. Okay. Just to let you walk through a short introduction, what Let's Connect is about. It is a peer learning program that connects all the individuals who get registered themselves on the meet-up page or through the Let's Connect registration form. We identify the persons, those who have similar interests, and we try to kind of understand their needs and what are the requirements they have. With that, we start providing them the solutions or connect them with the peer experts, those who can help to understand their requirements and to fulfill those requests. The goal is to understand what this program can offer them and to connect them with peer supports. And again, to make a cluster with organizational skills related to be it organizing a camp with learning like, you know, sub skills, learning hat skills, be it a training related to some capacity building things. So this is all about learning and you're happy to make requests and mistakes. We don't judge people. It's a happy place after all. So yes, I'm going to give a brief one or two lines about leadership development working group. So it is a global community-driven working group. So the goal of that group is to unpack the meaning of leadership in Wikimedia movement and also to develop leadership plan. So all the documents you can find on meta. So we will share those links after this session if you would like to go through with those links. You can come to us. We can share with you. So yeah, we can move ahead. Just to understand a little bit more about why are we here today? So at times we struggle being being so upfront or opening up with somebody to make a request or to have a conversation. So today we will just follow up simple activities following up with simple strategies, how to make a conversation, how to initiate a conversation with a stranger or to somebody with whom we want to know more about, a little bit more about. And the press, we will have some opportunities to talk to each other in this room. Those who are like aware of each other, those who have already met or those who are meeting for the first time. Plus we will provide you some simple questions or some little bit fun exercises to go ahead with some questions, how we can initiate a conversation by asking some questions, not just with concrete responses or a big field to discuss on. Just to give you a little more highlight about the session introduction. We have certain kinds of misconceptions like introverts are not okay with having any conversation. They are not okay opening up with somebody else in the room or so to understand those misconceptions and what are the fact. The fact is more into what we like, what we need. Like introverts at times, they need their own time to understand how they can deliver on certain fields or how they can improvise themselves, not just by having any conversation with anyone. That doesn't mean that introverts dislike people, we just need our own time to work on ourselves and to deliver on something. There is a famous book by Laurie Hogre who says the author says that introverts do not like small talks because we dislike people. That's not the truth. The truth is we hate small talks because it creates the barriers in between people because we don't want to limit ourselves with certain kind of discussions or certain kind of phase of conversations. We just want to go ahead of that to have a big talk. Okay. So today we will have certain exercises, small activities to understand what is the importance of building a human connection. In this data of digital activities, social media platforms, meta, Wikimedia projects, we still lack of that. At times we lack that human connection. We always look for somebody to talk to whenever you are in certain kind of need, certain kind of requirements. We need to talk about it. And to initiate that conversation, we will have certain kind of small exercises today. So let's just witness how we can make it better and make it a happy hour in Wikimedia. Just to give you a highlight of the agenda, the introduction will take 10 minutes, which we have already covered. Now we will move to the ice breaker, which will be of five minutes. Then followed by that, we will have two activities, the strategy one and two for each of 20 minutes. Then we'll have a wrap up of 10 minutes. So with this, I'll move ahead and pass it on to Nitesh for the ice breaker activity. Thank you, Chinmahi. So yes, let's start with the ice breaker activity. So yeah, we have a basket here. So in this basket, we have a few questions. So you can Chinmahi will come to you and you just pick up one question from the basket and then just try to find, not try, just find a pair of you in the room and have a good conversation with them. And for this activity, we will have five minutes. So Chinmahi, could you please pass the question? So yeah, you can pick your questions. These are some random questions. Yeah. So yeah, and you will have two questions in pairs. So please take turns to address those questions. So who already got your questions, please find your pair in the room. Yeah. So our five minutes starts now. Please try to find someone from the room and let's start with our conversation. Hey Asaf, Asaf, you need someone just to conform. Has anybody got their questions? Everybody has a question. Perfect. Thank you. Hey, hello, hello. Attention everybody. Hello. Yeah, we can feel you are really engaged with each other. Thank you so much to giving your attention to us. So yeah, maybe we are okay. And we are hoping you had a great conversation with each other. So because we are out of time, so we cannot sorry continue this activity anymore. So yeah, we will connect to each other again. So please take your seats and let's move to our next activity. So we have our strategy one, which is which calls ask big talk questions. So yeah, for this activity or with the help of this activity, we will try to communicate with each other or will engage with each other through big talks. So before going to our next move, so we need to understand what are the big talk questions. We know you already know, but still we are discussing here. So these big talk questions are that are really rich conversations on where we can understand each other very well, where we can know each other's values, beliefs, motivations and and also we can get new ideas, new concepts from each other. So these only with because these questions are open ended, these questions are quite different from small talk questions, we cannot say yes or no, we have to give elaborated answers to those questions to big talk questions. So yeah, we have a few examples of small talk questions and on the other side, big talk questions. So if I will pick one question from there, do you like reading books, then I can say or I will say yes, I like reading books, but it will be only yes or no or it could be one liner, one word. But if we will turn to big talk question, we need to ask elaborated question and I will also, if Chinmay will ask me that elaborated question, that follow up question, then I will give her elaborated answer. I have to because she wants to know me more and I also want to continue my conversation with her. So it's about making connections, build connections. So we have the flow of the activity, please. Yeah, so we also have our flow of the activity. Then again, we need to find our new pair. We will not continue with our previous partner. So we need to find someone new from here in the room, please go around with other people. And you already have small talk questions, right? So you can turn these questions in big talks. So you can do in your own way. You have idea. So you can go ahead with that. And we have again five minutes for this activity. And please find your new pair from the room. We only have five minutes. Just one addition. Just one addition. If you are done with your partner with the first conversation before 10 minutes, you can move on to somebody else and initiate another conversation. Thank you. All right. So in next 15 seconds, we will move to the reflection. We have to end the first strategy. Nitesh. Hey, everyone, attention again. So yeah, thank you so much for bringing this energy here. We are really excited. We were a bit nervous before the session, but now we are really comfortable with you. So now we want to know if you have any question for this activity, otherwise we will move on. So if anybody has any question for us, please feel free to ask. No. Oh, great. Then thank you. So okay, let's move to the reflections for this activity. We were hoping to build connections and maybe and we can see you already build your own connections and you brought that activity here. And we are also excited to see you. And now we would what we we were like to do here, we are already doing. So now we would like to hear something of you, your experience from this activity and what you feel here, but how was your conversations? And if you have anything in your mind during this activity, so please go ahead and even can talk. We have 10 minutes for it. So please feel free to raise your hand then stages us. Anybody can come. Yeah, please, please come. Dominica, right? Yeah, please come here. Yeah, because it's fixed. If are you comfortable right to come here? Okay. That's nice. Thank you so much. I just wanted to share that it was such a great experience. As soon as I started talking to my new neighbor, we found out that we have a great topic in common. And we come from different ends of the world. And this is so exciting to meet someone who is working on the same perspective and with the same wish to bring Wikimedia into the world. And I will definitely stay in touch with her. And this was just great that after two minutes we were like, Oh, yeah, you too. Yeah, me too. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dominica. Like you shared your learnings and good to know you already built your connection and you want to continue your connection. So thank you so much for sharing with us. So anybody else want to share something with us? So please. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So first, please come, then another. Good morning, everyone. Hi. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be here. Within two minutes I've learned so many things I've connected with her. And I've connected with him too. I've learned that in the Wiki family, you meet a lot of people and you connect with a lot of people and you get to have different opportunities, different perspective and different understanding of what Wikimedia is all about. And you begin to ask yourself and begin to appreciate yourself and appreciate the work the Foundation is doing and appreciate the knowledge that is being shared. And you begin to appreciate the world we live in. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Obi. Thank you so much for sharing these things with us. These are really positive. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing with us. Now, I would like to invite Nada. So please come. Hi. This is the first time to ever leave my country. Wow. Yeah. I live in Palestine. It's not easy to leave Palestine, especially Gaza. It's not easy to leave Gaza, but I did it. And in Gaza, I'm not an introvert. I have no learnings in this term, but in networking, I have a big issue. And yeah, it's always to have a back of the questions to review on network. So keep our slides. Yeah, this is a biased and a promoted learning. But yeah, so what I want to say that our movement is about networking and having a shared and common goals. And despite any differences we might have, we are here for free knowledge and also if we need talking. So enjoy this session. Thank you so much, Nada. I love your smile. So yeah. So yeah, thank you so much for connecting your like experience with this session. And yeah, now we would like to hear something from anyone else. So please go ahead. You can come to us and you can share your experience. Anyone else? Yeah, sure. Please come. So very briefly because my memory span is bad. His name is Mamadou. He comes from Guinea. And it's the first time you participate to Wikimania. Yes. So he's expressing deep thanks for everyone here, but also the organizer because this feels very much like home. And he's very happy to share with all of us. Yes, I'm happy to meet you. Let's see. So hi. Thank you, Mahmood, for sharing your learnings in your own language. And we are really happy to hear that. And thank you Florence for translating these words for us. So thank you so much. And now if we can take last one, so please raise your hand if anyone is interested to share. You would like to go? I'm asking you. So I guess I've been volunteered. So my name is Jean-Barre. I'm from Wikimedia Netherlands. And I didn't even catch your name. I'm so sorry because we just rushed into it. So we talked briefly about and he's involved with all kinds of projects, but also involved with Wikidata. So I asked him if he's a developer and he says, no, I'm involved in data science. First connection already made because my son has just been admitted to a course on data science for the next four years. I was like, oh, and he assured me that this is the future. So that makes me, as a parent, feel very confident. And I was explained to someone else that a 13 and a half hour flight to get here might seem like a long sacrifice, not as bad as yours, having to go through Egypt to come here. But still, but as soon as you get here, you meet all these people, which you really make connection with like, oh, data science or, oh, this project, oh, you're working on capacity building. So that's the cool thing about these conversations within a minute, you make these quick connections and like follow up. And there's so many people with so many initiatives, it's probably going to be hard to choose after the small talk, like what do we continue to talk about, but it's great. Thank you so much, Rihanna, for, yeah. So thank you so much for sharing your learnings with us. And yeah, now we have done our first strategy quite like, I can say it was really energetic and it was beyond expectations. And thank you so much for making this activity beautiful. And now I would like to pass my to Chinmai for the moving. Thank you. So I can see the first strategy was helpful. And congratulations for your making that first move to some of you. Somebody took like, you know, left country for the first time, somebody took the initiative to be on front and share their experience for the first time. So congratulations to all moving out with that, we will move to the next strategy, which is take a bait. So this phrase, like take a bait, it basically comes from the fishing. When we put some hook to grab a fish or somebody, something. Yeah. Okay, the description is already on the slide. What does it fix? But in the same way, we have to put that thing in the conversation first. So while we are moving out with this strategy, the expectation is when we are initiating the conversation or we are moving ahead with continuation of the existing conversation, we can find a hook point in that conversation. For example, if I am going to ask some question to somebody or I am telling somebody, the other person can try or if I'm having the conversation with somebody, I can try to understand what is the hook point in that conversation and I can move ahead with that. Okay. So yeah, I need to tell you the how it is useful to them, to the people participating in the room, especially you. So it helps you to understand, like, you know, overcome that one word expression, like, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Thank you. So we need to just go beyond that how you and I am doing fine. We can just analyze each other tone of conversation, the intent we are willing to have the conversation. Plus what are the thought process? What is the energy we are carrying? We can just do analyze that with the person's attribution or the person's body language, something with that. This is going to help us understand each other in a better way and to overcome our fear of doing that first move. So again, the activity lies into pairs. Again, you have to switch your partners, but you can have that conversation, existing conversation going ahead with the new partner and you already have the smaller questions with you during that activity. We followed the same in strategy one. Now it's up to you. You can move ahead with the new question with the new partner, or you can choose something existing that you have. You got it. Okay. But if you have any kind of question or confusion, I'll just give you an example. Basically, it is a role play activity. So we'll just ask like we're meeting for the first time me and Nitesh. So hi, Nitesh. Hi. Sorry. Okay. Is it your first time to Singapore? Yes, it's my first time to Singapore. Okay. Where are you from? I'm from India. Okay. I heard India is a very vibrant country in terms of culture and a lot of cultural events are happening in soon India. Yes, there are a lot is going on in India and it's like we are going to engage in other events as well. So yes, you are right. It's really vibrant country. And then you will be there. You just pick me. We can meet and we can like have a fun together. Okay. So in this case, I found it as a hook for the country India because I am from India, but I didn't like an opt for that in the having an initial conversation. So we can find that hook in a place where we can extend the competition with that one point and that will be a though it is a role play, but I don't think we have a lot of people here to do a role play, but still we're off for the second activity. So all the best to all of you. And we can start. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, I was okay. So for this activity, we have 10 minutes with us and then we will move for the reflection. So again, guys, please do you suffer? Please get engaged into any conversation. Okay. Just a general announcement in next 10 seconds, we will move for the reflections. So you have 10 seconds to wrap up your things and we would love to hear yourself. We are on time. I know it's difficult to leave a conversation in between, but I'm sorry. We have to stick to the time. So, uh, this was another strategy where we tried to give you a hook to take a bit. And did you find your bet? I didn't see that a little bit more louder. Did you find your bet? Okay. You're looking for more. Okay. Okay. Good to see that energy in this room. Okay. So now we will like to know your bet, which was different or something unique than the first two activities we had, the ice breaker activity and the strategy one. So anybody will like to volunteer to share their experience on finding their own weight and their conversation. What did, how did it went? Anybody would like to share something? Hi, everyone. I'm Manav. I work for the foundation and I'm also here as movement charter drafting committee member. I've met some of you and I've been in a few discussions. Though I talk too much, but I find it too hard to sometimes initiate the conversation. So that is why I was here and thank you for giving those tips because it was actually helpful for me to initiate a conversation. But thankfully I had Julia with me and she was kind enough to actually come and talk to me and then we were able to continue and not end it. Yeah. I hope the last two rounds are as good as this one was because we didn't want this to end. Right. It's like, hi, it's so good to meet you in person. Right. That is what it was. Anybody else would like to share your bets? Please. We would love if we'll have more hungry fish in the rooms. Thanks. I'd like to start by saying happy independence day. Yesterday. Thank you. So I found this third activity a lot simpler than the first two ones because I found it simpler for me to continue a conversation than to start it. I think this is a definition of an internet actually. And everything else has been said. I can't add to the connection this conference makes and so on. Anyways, thank you. Any more bets here? Any highlighted bets? Would you like to start, sir? We have time, please. For reflections, yes. Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Antonin Tavango and I have been with my friend there. He's called in Mamadou and our conversation was cool because he speaks French and I speak English. So he's using his mobile app to translate. I talk. He talk. That's how we got connected. So it was so cool. Thank you. It's good to see like, you know, a lot more first moves and thank you. Thank you for all your thoughts. We really appreciate it. Okay. So we know that we had a good time here and we kind of tried converse having conversation with new people, but we don't want you to have a full stop here. You can stay connected in some of the firms and here on the slide, you can see some of the examples or some of the possible ways of staying connected together, having a follow up connection going ahead after this conference because we are here for next few days, next two, three days. And I hope you guys meet you again and we'll be happy if you have back in this room for our next learning clinics as well, which will be obviously different from this concept, but having family faces always feels good that to be in person. It's been long gap when we had that. And for us to in let's connect. I think this is the first in person like, you know, connections we had having. So we'll be happy to hear all those things. Here are some examples that how you can stay connected. Maybe you can just ask each of this contact information, share your telegram ID, share your email addresses, or share your affiliates, group channels where you can stay connected if you are belonging to some region. And then since we have next three, four days time with us, you can plan following up with a simple meeting like, Hey, I'm going for some session. This is helpful. Would you like to be my company for that? We can know each other's interest and we can know each other's areas of expertise by that. And if you know that the person like during this last 30, 40 minutes, if you realize that the person is in need of something, and I'm the I'm in a state where we can offer help, or I know somebody who can offer help, then please make them connected and be a facilitator as we are trying the all the best to do it today. Yes, of course. Thank you so much. You're doing a good work. You're wonderful work. It's, it's good to see people when we like, you know, thinking about others being kind to others. And this is one of the most demanded or most required skill in Wikimedia moment to be empathetic towards everyone, to be kind for everyone. And so yes, with that, we will move for the wrap up. So we thank you everyone for being here today with us and spending one hour of your valuable time here. And we hope that you are taking back a good experience with some new connections, some new human connections. And we hope that it will be helpful for you to continue for next conference days. And we hope and we wish you have a good Wikimedia here. I know it's again a first move for a lot of all, like, you know, including me, it's my first Wikimedia. So I know how the conference feels like. And I hope you all have a happy Wikimedia ahead. But personally, I would like to thank the Wikimedia organizing team for giving us the opportunity to present ourselves here. And I would like to thank all our mentors to make us prepared also. And to all the participants present here to sparing your time and bringing us that energy in this room. So thank you everyone. And followed by this, we will have another learning clinic in just 15 minutes. If you want to stay back, you can stay back. Yes, 15. Learning clinic too. So if you want to continue, you can stay back here. And if you want, you can call your friends as well. We don't mind. Yeah, thank you everyone for joining us. And thanks to those who just joined us. And so yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. And it's not the end. It's just a start. We hope we will meet again and have a lot of chat. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us. And let's meet outside the session room. So okay, thank you. Thank you everyone. Have a good day.