Dear one & all

Please find below the Monthly Report of Wikimedia India for the Month of August. This also contains an program report of WikiConference India-2016 held in Chandigarh on 5th,6th & 7th August 2016
You can also find this on the reports section of Wikimedia India here - http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Reports/August_2016

Events

India at Rio Olympics edit-a-thon 2016

Wikimedia India is organizing the India at Rio Olympics edit-a-thon 2016 to celebrate the success of Indian sportsmen at the Olympics. The Event has been in progression all throughout August & many articles were created and improved. Currently more than 600 articles have been created ( stats to be published later). Find the full list of articles to be created & improved here The event intends to end on 18th September when Paralympics Games 2017 end.

Wiki Loves Earth in India 2016

The results for Wiki Loves Earth in India 2016 were announced in August. With over 32,000+ images uploaded for the competition by 6,000+ Contributors, the competition saw a phenomenal response from India.Thanks to all the hardwork put by the Volunteers & the Jury was what that made this competition a success.

Jury

Three Jury from three different diversified fields were invited

You can find the Jury Biopic Here

Results

Top 10 images as selected by the Jury

This Picture is taken behind Nirar Dam at Valparai, Tamil nadu overlooking the beautiful Annamalai R.F division (Indra Gandhi Wildlife Reserve) by User:JohnJoelraj
Grey horn bill with its favourite fruit by User: Mithan B M
A green Bee-eater trying to catch a bee by User:ARIJIT MONDAL
Mount Kanchenjunga seen from by User:Yoghya
A Morning in Chandratal by User:Mahendra Pal Singh
An Indian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) taking a dust bath at the Banks of the Ramganga River in Jim Corbett National park by User:Tanmay Haldar
Beautiful Demoiselle cranes migrate from Mongolia to Khichan near Bikaner (Rajasthan) by User:ANKITNARANG297
Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher at Shiravali by User:P Subramanya C K
Changu or Tsomgo Lake is at located at the east of Sikkim & at a very high altitude by User:Sudhanshu Gupta
Bengal Tiger posing for the camera by User:NIKHIL CHAMARTY

Wiki Loves Monument

Overview

Wiki Loves Monuments is a global photo competition that takes place generally in September. Wikimedia India would officially be organising this competition in India.

The aim of the contest is to ask the general public—readers and users of Wikipedia, photographers, hobbyists, etc.—to take pictures of cultural heritage monuments and upload them to Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and its other sister projects. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_in_India>

Call for Volunteers

The Wiki Loves Monument Team invites Wikimedians to be associated in the event as volunteers under different categories Jury Team Cultural Partnership Team Press, Media and Outreach Team Technical Team Heritage Walk Team Volunteer Coordinator

Rapid Grant

Rapid Grant worth INR 1,35,000 was submitted and subsequently approved by the Wikimedia Foundation. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_India#Endorsements>

Planning of Visit of Katherine Maher to India

Wikimedia India was involved in the finalization of Agenda for visit of Katherine Maher & planning of her meetings with media & Organizations for Future Partnerships Post Conference, Katherine made a visit to New Delhi and met few external partners. A synopsis of these meetings has been described below.

Meeting with Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi

On 8th August, 11 AM, Mr Manish Siosdia (Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi) had an interaction with the Wikimedians. The Delhi Government is all ready to roll out education programs in the Delhi region, in fact, to help us resolve our gender gap issues, Delhi Government would help us focus more on women's colleges at the initial stage. The Delhi Government has also expressed its intent to conduct a Wiki-activity in Indian languages on M.K. Gandhi in September month, such that Delhi Government could further facilitate (small souvenirs) the contributors on 2nd October as a part of the M.K. Gandhi's birthday celebration. Delhi Government is also looking at possible interventions where GLAM activities could be undertaken. Incorporating WIkimedia projects under Delhi Government's free-public wifi scheme has also been proposed. The meeting was arranged by Wikimedia India and attended by Katherine Maher along with Wikimedia India EC's (Yohann Thomas, Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava).

Department of Electronics and Information Technology Meeting

On 8th August,1 PM, Wikimedians met Mr. Rajiv Bansal, Joint Secretary. Government of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology at this office in Delhi. The talks centered around bringing DIETY newsletter under open license, a collaboration between Government of India and WMIN + CIS-A2K over government's vikaspedia, drawing attention to Indian language content to be released under Creative Commons, Collaboration with the ministry towards making the government websites include better and accurate language content, etc. The meeting was arranged by CIS-A2K and attended by Katherine Maher along with CIS-A2K staff (Tanveer Hasan) and Wikimedia India EC's (Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava).

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Meeting

On 8th August,5.30 PM. Wikimedians met Dr Ramesh Gaur (Head Libarary- JNU) and Dr Anup Das (Documentation Officer). JNU will be opening up its central repository of thesis (almost 22,000 units, including PhDs, M.Phil and Master's Program) under open access. JNU will be assisting us in providing journal articles to our editors for use on Wikipedia. 'One Lib One Ref" workshop at JNU would also be conducted in JNU shortly (maybe in September). JNU also has shown its intent at digitization Dr B.R. Ambedkar's writing under the Hindi Wikisource. Further collaborations during seminars at JNU on Wikisource projects would also be taken up. The meeting was arranged by Wikimedia India and attended by Katherine Maher along with Wikimedia India EC's (Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava) and CIS-A2K staff (Tanveer Hasan).

WikiConference India 2016 (WCI 2016)

The WikiConference India 2016 was conducted on August 5,6,7 in Mohali, Punjab. The conference happened after a gap of five years, last conference was held in Mumbai 2011.

Conference Schedule

The Conference schedule was made by the Programs team.

The Programs Schedule was made by first inviting submissions from the community.Then they were shortlisted by the Programs team & the final list of speakers were informed on their talk page.

Chandigarh Hackathon

Chandigarh Hackathon Group Photo The Hackathon at the WikiConference India was organized by Santosh Shingare . The Hackathon organized in parallel track with other programs of the Conference. It closed with 7 applications, which are all useful to the community.

Edit-a-thon

Lists of edit-a-thons which were planned for the event

Wiki Women Lunch

Programs, Sessions & activities conducted by Wikimedia India at WikiConference India

Membership drive by Wikimedia India at WikiConference India 2016

Wikimedia India had a special booth at the conference where attendees were coming & registering for membership. Close to 100 attendees signed up to become member of Wikimedia India

SAARC Regional Wikimedian meeting

This meeting was in continuation with the past meetup done by Wikimedian from the countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal & Pakistan in past WikiConferences conducted by WMF in Berlin in 2015 & Wikimania Mexico. This meetup consisted of members from members of Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia India, Representatives of Wikimedia Nepal & Wikimedia Pakistan represented by editors of Urdu Wikipedia Community. One of the ideas presented by the attendees was to conduct a SAARC regional conference for Wikimedians. To reach this goal, it was agreed to take a first step by setting up a Mailing list amongst the chapters of the 4 countries

Other News

Tulu Wikipedia <https://tcy.wikipedia.org/> has finally gone live after being in the Incubator for nine long years. Tulu is spoken by nearly 2 million speakers in the Mangaluru, Udupi and other South West regions of the Indian state of Karnataka and in some places in the state of Kerala. 198 editors have contributed so far to make this happen. The project has started seeing more activity since 2014 when the first ever community meetup was organised in April , 2014. St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College, two educational institutions in Mangaluru, India have done a commendable job in institutionalizing education programs and several outreach programs for their students. Wikimedia India congratulates everyone who have helped grow this project, the language committee and other friends in the global communities who have supported and guided in working towards the approval of the project.
A Bangalore Meetup was organized on 21st August 2016 at the CIS office,Domlur.
The Agenda for the conference included Wikiconference India 2016 experiences and learnings sharing, planning for Bangalore-based Wiki activities & discussion on the India at Rio Olympics Edit-a-Thon organized by Wikimedia India
Tamil Development and Information Department of Government of Tamil Nadu has issued a Government Order (Number: 105, Date: 01. 07. 2016) to Tamil University, Thanjavur and all other government departments and institutions to release all their publications, archives and collections under Creative Commons by Share-Alike license.
This Government Order has got the approval from the TN Government's Legal Department and issued by the order of Governor of Tamil Nadu. The order can be seen here. An English copy will be available soon.
This order comes as part of the public policy initiatives undertaken through the collaboration between Global Tamil Wikimedia Community and Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA).The community recognizes this as a significant milestone in spreading free knowledge for the benefit of Tamils. :Wikimedia India hopes that this sets a good precedent for all government institutions across the country.
OpenCon is a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system of research and education. OpenCon 2016 will be held in Washington DC on November 12-14, with satellite events around the world.
OpenCon satellite events held in partnership with the main conference can be of any size, in any place, at any time and are open to anyone. OpenCon 2016 Ranchi is a satellite event which is organized by Sridar Gautam on 12th November 2016
Kolkata meetup was held on 13th August

Wikimedia India Blog

In the Media


WikiConference India-In the Media

All Press & Media links are available here


Regards
Yohann Thomas
Wikimedia India
yohannvt@gmail.com