Hi,
Within 5 hours, 50+ photographers uploaded 5,000+ photos through Wikipedia
Takes Pune!
[image: Inline image 1]
Still many to go! Have a look -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Takes_Pune
Thanks to Rishi Acharya and Team from PAI-International Learning Solutions
for amazing support and Radio-One (94.3FM) for continuous on-air promotion
of event!
Also Arnav Sonara did fantastic job on main event day for technical help!
And without support of *all well-wishers*, event couldnt 've been possible
- Thank YOU all!
Detailed report, learning's and thanks giving will be published soon!
Keep Supporting, Keep Inspiring!
Regards,
Abhishek Suryawanshi,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AbhiSuryawanshi
On Behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune
Hello Everyone! There's a small Hackathon happening at the BITS
Hyderabad Campus on Friday night. Userscripts, some bots and the API
would be the focus.
More info at http://bits-atmos.org/atmos/highlights/
Drop me an email if you are planning on attending!
--
Yuvi Panda T
http://yuvi.in/blog
Dear Wikimedians,
The hiring for the Programme Director has been moving along steadily
since we began seeking applications in August 2012. The call for
applications was disseminated across various Wikimedia mailing lists, as
well as more than 15 Free/Open Source Software mailing lists. We stopped
accepting applications for this round of interviews on September 24th,
and released a long-list comprised of seven candidates to the
recruitment committee [1] on September 25th. From the time we began
looking for applicants and when we closed the first round of
applications, we had received 29 applications.
The recruitment committee was asked to make of list of the candidates
that they felt should be placed on the short list. Each candidate was
awarded one vote for appearing on a committee member’s list. Only the
applicants who received two or more votes were placed on the short-list,
which left us with three short-listed candidates. The candidates were
informed on October 1st. The first round of interviews was held on
October 7th, 2012, at CIS’s office in Bangalore. After much
deliberation, it was decided that a second round of interviews would be
held most likely on November 10th, 2012, for a few choice long-listed
candidates and one member of the short-list who was unable to attend the
first interviews. Sunil Abraham will replace Nishant Shah on the
recruitment committee for the interviews on the 10th.
CIS will continue to accept applications for the position until Monday,
October 29th.
As was the case in Brazil [2] and the Arab region, we would like all the
shortlisted candidates to also undergo an online assignment under
community scrutiny before the final candidate is selected; therefore, in
the weeks following the interviews, we request that community coordinate
with the recruitment committee to prepare some type of assignment to
give to the shortlisted candidates. This assignment could possibly be a
list of questions. In the Brazilian case, the same questions were posed
to all candidates, while in the Arab case the questions were different.
These assignments must be completed publicly, and the candidates will
have the choice to participate anonymously to avoid any possible
repercussions to their professional or private life.
We request that the online assignment be prepared by the 26th of
November. The short-listed candidates will have one week to complete the
assignment after the date that it is released.
Also, the Access to Knowledge Programme Plan has been put up on
Meta-Wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan.
We will continue to post to the mailing list as the hiring process moves
forwards.
Thank you,
Jadine Lannon
jadine(a)cis-india.org
[1] The recruitment committee was, at that time, comprised of Adethya
Sudarsanan from the community; Arun Ramarathnam from the Wikimedia India
Chapter; Nitika Tandon from the Wikimedia Foundation; Jessie Wild from
the Wikimedia Foundation; and Nishant Shah from CIS.
The profiles of the recruitment committee, as well as their email
addresses, are provided below:
Past members:
Nishant Shah
Nishant Shah is the Director-Research at CIS. He is a doctoral candidate
at the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and a
recipient of the Asia Scholarship Foundation's fellowship for
comparative research at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies,
Shanghai University, Shanghai, China. Nishant is a regular columnist
with the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, GQ
India and DML Central.
Email: nishant(a)cis-india.org
Current members:
Sunil Abraham
Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social
entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which
aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication
Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today,
Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on
the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999
to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a
Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he
managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's
Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in
the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also
managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for
Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and
co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.
Email: sunil(a)cis-india.org
Nitika Tandon
Nitika Tandon is a Program Officer with the Centre for Internet and
Society. She completed her Master of Business Administration at the
Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands and is a recipient of
the Dean's Fund Scholarship Program from Erasmus University.
She advises Wikimedia Foundation on the strategic direction of various
programs that are run to increase readership and editor base for
Wikimedia projects in India. She works closely with the Wikimedia
Foundation on program design, implementation, management, evaluation of
different community initiated programs on Wikimedia projects. Some of
the programs she spearheads are Wikipedia Outreach Program, Wikipedia
Editor Growth & Contribution Program, Wikipedia Education Program,
Wikipedia Train the Trainer.
She engages with the Wikipedia community and chapter to build a strong
relationship among these stakeholder groups and allow for effective
partnerships; works with cross-functional teams of Wikimedia Foundation
in Cairo, Brazil, US, Canada to drive Wikimedia movement's priorities;
designs and manages national roll out of programs; facilitates
cross-pollination of ideas between different Indian and global language
Wikipedia communities; provides ad hoc support to Wikipedia community on
all aspects of participation as may be deemed necessary.
Email: nitika(a)cis-india.org
Adethya Sudarsanan
Adethya Sudarsanan has 2.5 years of experience in the IT industry. He
was born, raised and educated in Chennai, and he currently works for a
MNC headquartered in the United States of America.
He became involved with Wikipedia at a very young age as a user and
later an editor. He was a speaker at the WikiConference India 2011 in
Mumbai, where he presented a talk on how to improve the presence of
Wikipedia and its related projects in the web space.
Email: adethyasjce(a)gmail.com
Arun Ramarathnam
Arun Ramarathnam is an IT professional based in Bangalore.
He started his contributions to Wikipedia in the year 2004. He
experienced the power of collaboration on the Wikipedia platform during
the Indian Ocean Earthquake (2004), when hundreds of wikipedians
collaborated to build the article about the disaster as the events were
folding out. He has contributed to the English Wikipedia and started
some of the early India initiatives like Indian Collaboration of the
Week, Indian portal and Category adoption. He is primarily focused on
community efforts and is one of the key wikipedians responsible for the
periodic monthly Wikipedia meetups in Bangalore. He participated in the
Chapters committee meeting in Berlin in 2010 as India Chapter delegate.
He contributed actively to the Developing nation’s task force during
that meeting.
He is passionate about building volunteer communities focused on
specific goals. He has been key part of core teams that organized many
Barcamp events in Bangalore. He founded the Bangalore Palm User Group -
an enthusiast group of gadget lovers focused on Palm OS based devices.
He has been a member of Executive Committee of PMI Bangalore chapter (a
not for profit society focused on Project Management) between 2006 and
2010 and served as its Vice President during that tenure.
He is a founder member of Wikimedia Chapter (India) and currently serves
as a member on the Executive Committee.
email: arunram25(a)gmail.com
Jessie Wild
Jessie Wild joined the Wikimedia Foundation full-time in 2010, after
several months of external consulting work with the Foundation.
Prior to joining Wikimedia, she worked with the Bridgespan Group in San
Francisco and, among other cases in education and youth development, was
on the team that supported the strategy development process at the
Wikimedia Foundation. Before Bridgespan, Jessie was a strategy
consultant with Bain & Co. in Chicago where she worked in various
industries including telecommunications, consumer products, healthcare,
and financial services. She also served in the Private Equity Group.
Jessie hails from Carmel, Indiana and graduated from Indiana University
with a degree in Public Policy Analysis and International Business, with
focuses on Spanish and Religious Studies.
Email: jwild(a)wikimedia.org
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/6_December_2011_note…http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with…
Greetings all,
As you guys already know were going to host a DevCamp 11/9 - 11/11 in
Bangalore - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bangalore_DevCamp_November_2012
One of the topics that we'll be working on is Commons Mobile
application for image triage. We'd love if any commons admins could
join us. Even if its for a short time during the DevCamp. If your
already a commons then please message us and come along. If your not
an admin then please pass on some names to us and we'll contact them.
Thank you.
--tomasz
Dear all,
As announced earlier, the Access to Knowledge team (previously the India
Program team) started working with a few alterations in September. In a
move to make things more transparent and ensure better communication across
communities as well as draw more participation to all our events, we've
created a public calendar.
Right now, there is no way in which I can make the calendar edit-able by
all but if there are events you want to list, I'd be glad to list them.
Link to the calendar: http://bitly.com/a2kcalendar
Please do reply with your suggestions on how we can make this calendar more
efficient.
Thank you,
Best
Noopur
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bangalore_DevCamp_November_2012
I'll send an update as soon as we have the registration stuff set up.
But I wanted to ask you to save the date.
Join the Wikipedia development community in Bangalore.
Wikimedia is holding a technical meetup in Bangalore, India at the
Indian Institute of Management campus. This DevCamp is a chance to
participate in development of Javascript based internationalization and
localization tools as well as mobile applications using Phonegap and
LAMP technologies, and to work alongside experts. Software engineers,
UX/UI designers, and translators are welcome!
Developers of all backgrounds especially with a focus on browser and
mobile technologies are welcome at Wikimedia DevCamps. Prior experience
with the MediaWiki software is not required. Translators with a
linguistic background who can help improve language support for
Wikimedia technology projects are also needed.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear all,
Greetings from Wikimedia India !
Organisational Updates
The second Annual General body meeting was held on 23 Sep 2012. Annual
report for 2011-12<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMIN-Annual-Report2011-2012TwoUp.pdf>was
released on the occasion.
*Elections*
Elections were conducted during the AGM. Karthik Nadar Nikita Belavate,
Pranav Curumsey, Srikanth Ramakrishnan and Viswa Prabha were declared
elected.
*Membership:*
Membership as of 30 Sep, 2012 is 126. M/s Arnion Technologies Pvt Ltd,
Ahmedabad became the first institutional member, following the grant of
membership on 19 Sep 2012.
*Donations:*
Amount of donations processed during the month is Rs Nil.
*Board Meetings:*
Board did not have in person meetings in September.However AGM was attended
by five EC members.
*WikiConference 2011*
Conference Audit
Report<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:MumbaiConf2011AuditedR-P-Statement.pdf>published
along with Chapter Audit report during AGM on 23 Sep 2012
*Executive Manager*
EC after an exhaustive search and selection process has appointed Sowmyan
Tirumurti as Executive Manager of the organisation. This is the first
position to be staffed. Mr Sowmyan has over 40 years of experience in
Aerospace, and Computer peripherals industry. He has worked with Indian
Space Research Organization, DCM Data Products, ORG Systems, TVS
Electronics, and Honeywell Technology Solutions in India. He has held roles
related to R&D management, Quality improvement, Cost improvement,
Marketing, Sales and service support, Strategy planning, Supply chain
management, Contract management, and Compliance monitoring.
After retiring from Honeywell Technology Solutions in 2008, he has explored
many web based content delivery methodologies meant for continuing
education. He has promoted webcasting at low bandwidth, created a web site
for lessons on Six sigma and Hoshin kanri, taught Japanese language through
a Youtube channel, and attended Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on
Coursera and Udacity.
Sowmyan joined Wikimedia India on 1st October 2012 as Executive Manager
based in Bangalore. His primary role is to support the members and the
community in organizing and running the various promotion programs.
Sowmyan's photo is at http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Staff
Wiki loves monuments
Here are some statistics and updates from India:
- 16,796 photos have been uploaded from India thanks to Wiki Loves
Monuments 2012.
- There were 2,230 participants from the country, meaning India had by
far the most participants.
- Anupamg <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anupamg>, Thamizhpparithi
Maari <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thamizhpparithi_Maari>,
Sthitaprajna <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sthitaprajna>,
Darwinacitizen <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Darwinacitizen>and
Vu2sga <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vu2sga> were the top five
contributors from India.
- Taj Mahal(Indian Monument N-UP-A28-a) is the world wide winner - a
monument which was clicked by maximum no of photographers. It was
photographed by 114 different users in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012.
First round of filtering is going on and it is expected to be completed by
Oct 15,2012.
Community & Special Interest Groups
*Events:*
- AGM,23 Sep 2012 See blog
post<http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/09/29/wikimedia-india-annual-report-2011-12-r…>
- Wiki Academy at IIT, Madras, 6 Oct 2012.
*Upcoming Events*
- 50th Bangalore Meetup.
- New EC induction program is being planned for 13-16th at Bangalore.
New office bearer election and induction of new EC members by outgoing EC
members on various aspects of running the organisation and planning for
2012-13 are the expected major outcomes from this meeting.
A round-up of Wikimedia events, academies and initiatives around the nation
are updated here <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Events>.
Media Coverage
No much media coverage this month.
Grants Funded
No grant requests.
We look forward to your continued support and active participation.
Best,
On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
Naveen Francis
Secretary
Hi All,
Bangalore wikimedia meetups made half century !
It is time to celebrate. Please join the 50th Meetup to make it a grand
success!!!
Venue:
Teri Auditorium, near Domlur Club
Time:
13th Oct (Saturday) 4:00 PM
Please register your self @ http://wpblr50.doattend.com/
Please refer to http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WP:MBL50 for more details about
the event.
Please forward to all those who are interested...
--
Thanks & Regards,
RadhaKrishna
Bangalore SIG,
Wikimedia India Chapter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Hello Folks,
The 19th Mumbai Wikimedian Meetup is here. We want to finalize the plan for
Wiki Women Workshop happening on November 4th, 2012. Nevertheless all are
welcomed, women and men.
Do join us at the meetup on Sunday, October 21st:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Mumbai/Mumbai19
Regards,
Krutikaa