Greetings,

On behalf of Shiju Alex, here is... the first ever edition of the
Wikimedia India Community Newsletter. It's an incredible effort, and
we're really glad to have something like this - congrats to all who
helped with it.

Going forward, Shiju (and all of us) would appreciate help and
participation. If you are a member of a Wikimedia language, or
geography, or project that you feel isn't adequately represented, or if
you'd like to help with design, proofreading and turning it into
something that works like the Signpost - we'd appreciate hearing from
you at:

wminewsletter@gmail.com or Shiju Alex <shijualexonline@gmail.com>

At the moment, we're circulating the file in two pdf versions (one for
viewing, one for printing) and this is the link to the file on Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_2010_September.pdf

Shiju will shortly find a way to design it in html, making it easier for
everyone.

Cheers,
Achal


-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Releasing first edition of Wikimedia India Community
Newsletter - 2010 September
Date:   Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:56:06 +0530
From:   Shiju Alex <shijualexonline@gmail.com>
To:   <>

Dear All,

Our hard work for the past 2 months to release the first version of
Wikimedia India newsletter is coming to an end today.

Please find attached the Print Quality PDF of the finalized version of
Wikimedia India Newsletter for your reference. We are officially
releasing the newsletter at 7:00 PM in the Bangalore Wikimeetup.

This newsletter is the result of the ideas, suggestions, and feedback
that you had been provided by you during the last 2 months. Finally
Indian wikipedia community has come together for a common purpose. This
is just a starting. We have a long way to go.

Each language community (8 communities as of now) has helped by
providing content about the respective language community. Some
communities could not join as their communities are not strong enough to
provide news to the newsletter. Hope they will join soon.

Let me introduce again the Indian Language Wikipedians involved in this
effort (All are included in this mail thread). Here are they:

Bengali:

   *     Belayet Hossain
   *     Jayantanth
   *     Ragib Hasan


*English*

   *     Naveen PF
   *     Srikanth Lakshmanan
   *     Tinu Cherian


*Hindi:*

   *     Mayur Kumar


*Kannada:*

   *     Hari Prasad Nadig


Malayalam:

   *     * Praveen P .
   *     * Raziman T.V .
   *     * Simy Nazareth
   *     * Shiju Alex
   *     * Junaid P.V .
   *     * Thachan makan
   *     * Jacob Jose
   *     *  Rajesh V arma


*Marathi:*

   *     * Mahitgar
   *     * Abhay Natu
   *     * Sankalp Dravid


*Tamil:*

   *     * Mayoora Nathan
   *     * C.R. Selva Kumar
   *     * Ravi Dreams
   *     * Sundar


*Telugu:*

   *     *  Arjuna Rao C .
   *     * Ravi Vyzasatya
   *     * Veeven
   *     * Sujatha Thummapud i
   *     * Bhaskara Rao Chimakurthy
   *     * Ravi Chandra Enagant



*Technical team*

   *     * Typesetting, template design, other tecnical support: Junaid
     P.V.
   *     * Front and back cover page design: Rajesh Odayanchal



I know that not everybody knows each other. But you will be excited to
be introduced to wikimedians working for other language wiki communities
of India. Let this be a new begining. Sharing experience from different
language wiki communities will surely help us (it is already helping us)
to replicate the success stories and best practices in other wikis.


So we are done with the first release. So what next?

Eventhough we cannot think of a monthly newsletter now, we need to aim
atleast for a quaterly newsletter. Taking this point in into account, we
are proposing a list for regular content collation and newsletter
coordination. This list will contain the core editorial team and two
volunteers from each wikipedia. The volunteer nominations can be
suggested by the respective wikipedia community.

The role of the volunteers from the language wikipedias would be to
conduit for collating content on events, happenings and plans of those
respective wikipedias. The community could choose to rotate these
nomiees as they deem appropriate. Please send your queries regarding the
mailing list to Arun Ram (arunram25@gmail.com
<mailto:arunram25@gmail.com>).


Once again I would like to thank each one of you from various language
communities for providing the community news.( from various language
communities.)

Junaid P.V has done the type setting and the template design of this
newsletter. Without his support and hardwork this newsletter would not
have seen as it is today. Many days he was woking over night to fix
various issues. Once again I thank him for being kind with me while I
was sending repeated changes that I got from various language communities.

Rajesh Odayanchal has designed front and back cover pages.He specially
created an Indian language map for this newsletter. Thanks to him.

Arun Ram has done the peer review of most of the language community
news. Special Thanks to him.

Last but not the least, I specillay thank Achal Prabhala for the review,
timely advice, and support. His advice has helped us to move forward
when there were many roadblocks in between.


Thanks once again.

Thank you.
Shiju Alex