Thank you for your responding to me, Barry. I would like to point out a few issues, if I may, to set the context to my stated wish about what India Programs should be doing.
A significant proportion of the events listed in your reference were community events and if we consider only those conducted by the India Program team we would see a smaller list which is not so impressive. Some of these events had minimal help from India Programs. For example in the GNUNIFY Wikipedia event conducted in February by the Pune community, Nitika's presentation was used and that was all. (Since I had myself added the entry to this page thinking it to be a collation of India outreach events, I am not protesting its inclusion). There are other such events where the involvement was low and these need to be excluded, keeping only those conducted primarily by India Program personnel.
I see your point about value being added by these activities. Any outreach is useful. However, India Program resources are scarce and valuable ( both in the point of view of your multi-100,000$ budgets and limited capacity of the very small team). In this context, it is the mix of activities carried out and the proportion of its components that worry me and the community.
The presence of a small outreach activity is definitely justifiable as keeping a pulse on the overall community and in touch with reality. IMO the conduct of two events a month by India Program staff is more than adequate - it still means 24 events a year, a very sizeable contribution. Hence, events should be carefully chosen for maximum impact deriveable and maximum diversity of experiences. It should be driven by only one staff member, assisted by volunteers, and Hisham should appear there to enthuse the participants, as per the time he can spare from his main agenda, not get involved in the training himself. (More on this later).
Hi all,
On mobile: We are working on this. Deals take time to consummate and are confidential until they are finalized with partners, but there is work going on in India and we hope to have some good stuff soon.
@Ashwin: At one level I agree, but another way to think about this is as follows...It is useful to differentiate between things an editor "can" do and what an editor "actually chooses to do". There may be thing that an editor can do, but chooses not to do that is still worth doing and India Programs can fill that gap. On Outreach, India Programs is a) helping to cross-pollinate learning across the community and take more of an analytical approach to assessing Outreach than had been done before Nitika started to really focus on this; and b) bring added capacity to help us all reach more groups (look at the volume of outreach that has happened since Nitika started pushing on this theme - not pure coincidence).[1]
@Srikanth: I don't think we should be ready to say there is no need for group X to focus on activity area Y, since group Z exists. Existence does not equate with "satisfying all of the needs in India". India Programs will stop supporting outreach the moment the chapter or local communities feel they are fully able to met all of the demand for learning about the Wikimedia projects from groups across India. Even today, the India Program team seeks ways to support community members or the chapter to do the outreach and does outreach sessions when a) they are asked to provide support; or b) where there aren't community members ready to take the lead.
General point: IMO the debates which crop up regularly on this list over "who should do what" is tangential to the goals we all share of strengthening our community and realizing our mission in India. The capacity represented by Existing Community + Chapter + India Programs is nowhere near the need required to reach the full potential of the movement in India, so what is there to fight over? The more appropriate question IMO to ask is: "How best to work together in a way that we utilize the differing capabilities to maximum effective, given we're a long way from reaching a point where we are "finished with our mission"? It would also be cool if we celebrate what people actual "do" and debate the efficacy based on the results (since all of our work is experimental in nature and unproven at this time) rather than debate "who" should do the work.
My 2 paise. ;)
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs
Kind regards,
Barry