Hi everyone,
The popular Art+Feminism series of edit-a-thons is happening again for
Women's History Month, and two Boston-area groups are getting involved —
but they both need help from at least one experienced Wikimedian to act as
a facilitator.
Here's the info for the events; if you can help, please write to the
contact person directly.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), Boston: March 7 or 8
Contact: Gabrielle Reed gabrielle.reed(a)massart.edu
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester: March 13
Contact: Rachelle Beaudoin rachelle.beaudoin(a)gmail.com
We will add these events to our Meetup schedule as soon as they have event
pages set up. (Gabrielle and Rachelle, ping me when these are ready to go,
and I will add them.)
cheers,
Maia
maiaw.com | @20tauri | user:Girona7
Announcing AfroCROWD Intro to Wikimedia and How to Edit Wikipedia
workshops at New York's Brooklyn Public Library. Please email me if
you would like to discuss bringing one of these to your city. Please
also excuse cross-posting to various lists as we try to network across
the United States.
WHEN:
Saturday, February 7th 12:30 -3PM
Sunday February 8th 1-3:30PM
EVENTBRITE (better reading format):
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/afrocrowd-intro-to-wikimedia-how-to-edit-wikip…
If you plan to view via Livestream from a different city, please let
me know of your interest at alice.backer(a)gmail.com.
PROPOSAL:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/AFROcroWd_and_Interglider.ORG/Ou…)
BACKGROUND:
Against the backdrop of Black History Month, the workshops seek to
further the International Decade for People of African Descent’s
development and education goals and Wikimedia’s goal of increasing its
reach. Technology companies Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Twitter have
recently reported that their workforce is 2% Black, a figure
non-proportionate to the 13% of Blacks living in the United States.
The Black Twitter phenomenon shows that Afrodescendants have
successfully taken to social media as an organizing tool. Exposing
more Afrodescendants to Wikimedia has the potential to take this foray
a step further and transfer skills that might deepen Afrodescendant
exploration of online technology. But beyond it all, editing Wikipedia
alone or as a group is a constructive and rewarding way to spend time
online.
The workshops will be the first in a series of activities by Afro Free
Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD), a new initiative which
seeks to increase the number of people of African Descent who actively
partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software
movements. The workshops are open to all Afrodescendants including but
not limited to individuals who self-identify as African,
African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American,
Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian.
Although the February workshops will be held in English, they will
take into account that many Afrodescendant groups in the United States
might find that access to Wikipedia’s multilingual crowdsourcing
platform can help them transfer free knowledge to populations of
African descent outside of the United States that they are connected
to through origin or direct familial bonds. Multilingual
Afrodescendants may also want to use such platforms to develop and
maintain online bodies of relevant knowledge in native languages such
as Garifuna, Haitian Kreyòl, Igbo, Spanish, Twi or Yoruba, thereby
contributing to the survival of and increasing their proficiency in
those languages while also feeling more culturally grounded.
WHERE:
Brooklyn Public Library
Main Branch
10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn. NY
http://www.bklynlibrary.org/
(Subway: 2,3, 4 to Grand Army Plaza)
FOUNDERS:
AfroCROWD founders are Alice Backer, founder of www.kiskeacity.com,
www.haitianbloggers.com, and Global Voices Lingua, a Brooklyn-based
lawyer, blogger and free knowledge and culture enthusiast who has been
aggregating and disseminating Haitian online expression since 2005 and
has launched citizen media campaigns in Haiti, the Caribbean, Africa
and the United States and Milos Rancic, founder of Anarchopedia,
veteran Wikimedian with over 10 years in the movement, Wikimedia
Language Committee member and chair of Interglider.ORG. Milica
Gudovic, Interglider.ORG's CEO, participant to the process of
localization of Creative Commons Licenses for Serbia and experienced
feminist activist of 20 years, has lended considerable time and
expertise to our grant proposal and will help us with training in the
coming months.
A L I C E B A C K E R
Haitian Blog Aggregator: http://haitianbloggers.com
LOF1804 Podcast: http://www.kiskeacity.com
Blog: http://www.kiskeacity.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kiskeacity
Newsletter: Kiskeácity Daily
skype: alicebacker
Hello,
Happy New Year everyone! :)
We are planning Indic Language Wikipedia workshops in U.S.
Please go through Project Link :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Indic_Language_Wikipedia_Out…
Project idea What is the problem you're trying to solve?
Indic languages represent a large portion of languages used worldwide. The
number of contributors for Indic languages has been lagging other language
families for a variety of reasons. Internet connectivity in India being
limited/expensive is a major reason among them. Indic wikiprojects have
beens working to encourage more contributors for Indic Languages.
There are a number of areas on Indic wikipedias where content is either
lacking or is of poor quality. Health-related content is a prime example of
this.
Potential for solution
There is a strong and diverse Indian diaspora in the United States. Eastern
Seaboard has a large number of Indian expats that have either settled there
or live there for work/business. This was evidenced by the 20,000+ people
attending a speech in Hindi by the Prime Minister of India at Madison
Square Garden, New York.
In general, the Indian origin community in the United States has very high
literacy rates. They are also well-versed in English as well as at least
one of Indic languages. Access to Internet is not an issue for this
demographic. Enthusiasm for advancement of Indic languages is also evident
by the many initiatives being pursued by this group.
What is your solution?
1. Dedicated workshops for Indian Languages in United States of America.
2. Informal User Group to conduct periodic meetings/offline events.
3. Collaboration with local chapters and editors to improve Offline
Wikipedia in Indian Languages.
4. Special content (health related articles/essential medicines info
etc) on Indic Wikipedia can be improved by specialized dedicated group of
Indian medical students in U.S.
5. Collaboration with (U.S based) like minded individuals and
organizations dedicated to improve Open Knowledge movement in India.
Pilot Project
Outreach events in
- New York,
- Washington D.C,
- Boston
- Colorado Springs
- A session here will serve as an aide to developing and/or fine-tuning
presentations and sequence of activities.
- San Diego.
Goals
- Reach out to more Indians to increase their understanding of how Indic
Language Wikimedia projects work, and enable them to pass this knowledge on
to others.
- Improving and building upon contributions to Wikimedia projects in
English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Commons etc.
- Increasing visibility, reach and access to Wikimedia projects amongst
Indian Americans, especially in students.
- Sign up students interested in our various activities & any other
training workshops planned.
- Conduct outreach sessions in universities, student fests, fairs etc.
Other benefits
- A strong, diverse and engaged students community.
- Growth in editorship and readership from U.S.
We look forward to hear from you. Kindly share your views here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Indic_Language_Wikipedia_Out…
Keep Supporting, Keep Inspiring :-)
--
Warm Regards,
Abhishek Suryawanshi
User:AbhiSuryawanshi
Hi everyone,
Happy 2015! Hope you are excited for a fruitful new year of Wikipedia :)
Here are some updates and requests for volunteers on upcoming projects from
the New England Wikimedians:
.We had a productive organizational meeting at Northeastern University in
early December. We recapped projects from this past year, looked ahead to
2015, and welcomed a few new members. *Read the full meeting notes:*
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/NEWikiDec14
.With the departure of Kevin Rutherford from our group leadership, *Amanda
Rust, Molly White, and I *will be acting as co-leaders for the time being.
Benjamin Lees has been continuing in his role of treasurer. Note that this
leadership is fluid, meaning we would welcome others helping out. If you
would like to do more for our group, please let one of us know!
.It was decided that we *will not host WikiConference USA* in 2015, but
that we are interested in a) learning more about the possibility of doing
so in future years; and b) learning more about how the Wiki Education
Foundation might work with us to plan smaller projects this year. More on
this TBA...
.Our* landing pages are going to be revamped* in the coming months. I
believe the plan is to revert to using one (and only one) of our Wiki pages
as the central repository for info about the group and updates on events.
We will continue to use Meetup.com as well, but we likely will not be using
the site that Kevin created earlier this year. Our Facebook and Twitter
accounts will be updated as well, but they will simply mirror/amplify what
is on the main group landing page.
.CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS: Following up on the successful worldwide Art+Feminism
edit-a-thons last year, a group at the College of the Holy Cross is hosting
an *Art+Feminism edit-a-thon on Friday, March 13*, a.k.a. Carberry Day ;)
Location is the beautiful Holy Cross campus in Worcester, Mass. Lead
organizer Rachelle Beaudoin has asked for at least one or two experienced
Wikipedians to commit to attending. Please let me know ASAP if you would be
willing to help! [Note: Holy Cross is about an hour's drive; there is also
a free shuttle to campus from the Worcester commuter rail station.]
.Want to *organize an edit-a-thon/event in New England this year*? Reply to
this message and I will add you to a smaller email chain of folks who are
interested in spearheading Wikipedia-related events this year. Ideally, we
would like the user group to host at least a few edit-a-thons/photo
blitzes/other events in the region in 2015 — subject matter up to you.
Who's interested?
.We are planning on *bringing back monthly meetings*, with some changes:
They will likely have some focused topic of discussion before free
discussion/schmoozing, and we will probably change up the location from
month to month. If you have ideas about this, feel free to send them to
Molly, Amanda, or I.
Thanks for reading this far, and hope to see you soon!
cheers,
Maia
maiaw.com | @20tauri | user:Girona7
P.S. If anyone here is an MIT community member, I'm running an IAP workshop
Jan 12-15, Writing Women Into Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Writing_women_into_Wikipedia…>,
with Kim Surkan, a lecturer in the Women's and Gender Studies program. We
will spend a bunch of time on Wiki-editing basics, but if you'd like to
participate, please sign up via this info page
<http://diversity.mit.edu/event/writing-women-into-wikipedia/> — note that
in-person participation is being capped at 16 ppl. Also, there will be a
shorter workshop
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/From_the_Archives_to_…>
on the same general topic run by the MIT Libraries on Friday, Jan 23.