cross-posting pan India (apologies if you got/get this through other mailing lists.)
Hi Folks,
I'm really pleased to send out this email welcoming the first 2 new members of the India Programs team. Just before I introduce them, I thought I'd share with you the background of their selection.
Context
As you might be aware, the Foundation had decided to undertake a catalyst operation in India to promote the growth of the community and projects here. The team is expected to be a small, nimble 5 person group. We had put out 2 job postings - for Indic Initiatives and for Participation. (Please refer: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-May/003007.html) We posted them on linkedin and on the Indian FOSS community list as well as announcing them on various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The response was wonderful. >110 applications for Indic Initiatives and nearly 175 applications for Participation. These were short-listed to 10 (3 for Indic Language and 7 for Participation.) These were a mix of existing & previous Wikipedians, Wikipedia newbies and open source advocates.
In June, the shortlisted 10 were interviewed and further down-selected to 4. These 4 were then further interviewed by a group of other staff members from the Foundation. I am pleased to inform the community of the final selected 2.
Shiju Alex - Indic Initiatives
Most of you already know Shiju. For those who don't, Shiju is a long-time Wikipedian [User: shijualex] and is active on Malayalam Wikipedia, English wikiprojects and Wikimedia Commons, as well as Wikisource and offline. He has been passionately involved with the establishing and building of Indic language Wikipedias. He's participated in a series of outreach activities and is also (jointly) undertaking a grant from the Foundation for outreach across India. He's a regular member of the Bangalore community.
Shiju is from Palakkad, Kerala and is married with a 2 year old baby. He currently works as a Senior Technical Writer with ABB in Bangalore.
Even those of you who know him might not know the following 2 things that I was lucky to discover during the selection process. Shiju is an MSc in Physics with a specialisation in Astronomy and Astrophysics - and he retains a deep interest in anything astronomical. Feel free to quiz him vigorously on this! He also enjoys trekking and misses his time in Pune where he could be up & close the gorgeous Sahyadri Hills.
Shiju is going to lead our work on promoting Indic language projects across India. The challenges are enormous - from technical constraints to low levels of awareness of these projects to vibrant but nascent communities. However, these only point to the massive size of the opportunity for Indic language projects - which is the joint top-2 strategic priority of the movement in India. After he joins, he'll collaboratively put together a plan for Indic language projects and work towards quality execution of high-impact initiatives.
Shiju is currently serving out his notice period so will be able to join us only around September - October.
Nitika Tandon - Participation
Nitika [User:nitika.t] is relatively newer to the community - and has been brushing up her editing. She's been immersing herself in the Wikimedia world and attended community meet-ups as well as reviews of the Wikipedia India Education Program. She is from Delhi - and is currently based in Mumbai - where she works as a Strategic Partnerships Manager with Directi. (If you're not aware, they are one of the most prominent internet domain & solutions providers in India.)
Nitika has an MBA and has also worked on research analytics. A fascinating detail I discovered about a previous assignment of hers - and you must ask her about it - is how African drums can be used for management coaching! She also reliably informs me that there are 7 Spanish dance forms and she instructs in all of them!
Nitika is going to be working on Participation - which is primarily focussed on increasing the contributor base of non-Indic language projects, primarily Wikipedia. One of her first tasks will be to expand the Wikipedia India Education Program from the Pune pilot to a more national footprint. She'll also work on other initiatives to promote participation - and I can foresee Wikimedia Commons being a potential initiative.
Nitika will join us on August 1st.
Introductions
I'm going to be scheduling the August Monthly India Programs IRC on Thursday August 18th to introduce them both to you. Please do join us. I'll send a reminder closer to the date. Also, needless to say, they'll be attending a series of community meet-ups over the next months.
In the meantime, please do join me in welcoming them onboard. I'm really excited because this means that we will now have the capacity and capability to dramatically accelerate our activities in India.
Warmest Regards,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
cross-posting pan India (apologies if you have got this through other mailing lists.)
Hi Folks
I wanted to share an update on the Wikipedia India Education Program. As of today, we have 15 teachers from 4 colleges participating. The most exciting part is that we have nearly 800 students (and counting) who are going to work on about 1200 articles in this semester. (Do note these numbers may fluctuate as the actual editing in classrooms starts - which is only to be expected.)
Please see the project page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program - and do go through the sub-tabs for Ambassadors and courses.)
I think it will be a great idea if the Campus Ambassadors had a chance to introduce themselves to you and you had a chance to interact with them. Can we do it on the India Programs Monthly IRC this Thursday (July 28th) at ppm IST on #wikimedia-office. (I apologise that we are late on this month's IRC.)
You can also hear from them about their experiences. They've having 1-on-1 discussions with faculty members to identify potential articles to work on and conducting editing workshops for students in classrooms.
I look forward to as many of you attending as possible - and for a wonderful interaction with the Campus Ambassadors. They are great guys and have done amazing stuff so far. They're going to need your help and encouragement. Drop in and say hello, and a little more!
Warm Regards,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*Bangalore Mirror : "Not just the written word"*
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/81/20110724201107240043349229ed6f4b5…
*Bangalore-based Wikipedians are spearheading an experimental initiative,
the Oral Citations Project to overcome the lack of published material in
emerging languages on the online encyclopedia initiative, the Oral Citations
Project to overcome the lack of published material in emerging languages on
the online encyclopedia*
*
*
*There is more Wikipedia in India but it would be interesting if there could
be more India in Wikipedia...or more South Africa for that matter” — this
view put forth by researcher and Wikipedian Achal Prabhala in the film
People are Knowledge, probably sums up the need for capturing simple things
that we know and do in forms other than the published material. *
*
*
*And taking this thought forward is the Oral Citations Project, a pilot
project which explores alternative methods of citation that could be
employed on Wikipedia. Funded through a grant by the Wikimedia Foundation,
the essence of how this project was undertaken is captured quite lyrically
in the short 40-minute film. *
*
*
*“For most of our learning, a majority of us are trained to look at
something that comes in the published form because the written word is
considered sacrosanct. That way, we become prisoners of a system of
hierarchy of knowledge. But there are so many things that we know and do in
our everyday lives that are not documented in the written form or any other
form for that matter. Recording these things in some form would add to the
vast knowledge base,” says Bangalore-based Achal Prabhala who is also member
of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board and makes South Africa his home
for three months in a year. *
*
*
*Achal adds that the nature of the project is experimental as nothing like
this has ever been done in Wikipedia before and if it finally gets
implemented, it would be a path-breaking venture. *
*
*
*The idea behind this project was this — Wikipedia privileges printed
knowledge (books, journals, magazines, newspapers and more) as authentic
sources of citable material. Restricting citation sources makes the
enterprise workable. But books and printed words generally are closely
correlated to rich economies: Europe, North America, and a small section of
Asia.*
*
*
*“Just to give an example — in 2005, 161,000 books were produced for a
population of 60 million people, while in South Africa there were 6,100
books for 48 million people and in India for a population of 1100 million
people, only 97,000 books were published. What this means for indigenous
language Wikipedias from India and South Africa is that there is very little
citable, printed material to rely on in those languages; in turn, it means
that it is very difficult for any of those languages to grow on Wikipedia,”
adds Achal. *
*
*
*The project was done with three Wikipedia languages — Malayalam, Hindi and
Sepedi (a South African language) and the subjects chosen to be documented
through audio interviews were two games Sur and Gillidanda in Hindi,
Naaliyar Bhagavathi Theyyam, a temple ritual and Dappa Kali, a folk game,
both from Kerala in Malayalam and in Sepedi, Mokgope, a country liquor made
from the marula fruit, and two games played in Limpopo in South Africa,
Kgati and Tsere Tsere. Collaborators for the project are Bangalore-based IT
professional Shiju Alex and Mayur, Mohau Monaledi of South Africa and Achal
Prabhala, with additional help from Vijayakumar Blathur. *
*
*
*“We wanted to take up languages that were varied in terms of number of
people who spoke them and the kind of media market they reperesent. Sepedi
is a South African language spoken by just 5 million people with hardly any
media market or any published material in that language. The fact that these
language Wikipedias had active editors also helped. The common thread for
picking these topics was that there is hardly any written material on them
and whatever exists cannot be accessed,” says Shiju, a Malayalam Wikipedia
editor, who travelled along with Achal to witness and document Dappa Kali
and Naaliyar Bhagavathi. Achal also travelled to Johannesberg and Limpopo to
collaborate with Mohau, who recorded audio interviews with women who made
the liquor and played the age-old games. *
*
*
*In the long run, Shiju feels that this project will help in capturing for
posterity traditional symbols of Indian society that may get lost to the
coming generations. “Nobody plays Dappa Kali these days. Kids in Kerala are
more interested in cricket,” he rues. The project will be presented at the
forthcoming Wikimania to be held in Israel.*
*
*
*
*
*RECORDING THE PROCESS*
*
*
*The film People are Knowledge was shot and directed by Priya Sen with
additional assistance from Zen Marie and Achal Prabhala and was completed
this month. It includes interviews with noted experts in the field of
language, anthropology and women studies such as Jon Soske, a scholar of
Indo-African history, Urvashi Butalia, a pioneering feminist publisher and
writer, Isabel Hofmeyr from the University of the Witwatersrand and also
various people who were directly involved in the project. It records the
process of audio interviews done through internet telephony and documents
discussions held with a priest in a remote village in Kannur district, women
making liquor from marula and playing their native games and children
playing folk games in remote Kerala villages. *
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#July_2011