Dear Wikimedians,
I would like to request members of the Indian Wikipedia community to
nominate themselves to serve on the CIS's A2K Programme Director
recruitment committee. This programme will hopefully receive large
grant from Wikimedia Foundation and we would greatly benefit from
community input during the hiring process of the new Programme
Director.
The volunteer must be experienced Wikipedian, based in India [ as we
cannot afford international travel for the interviews] and must have
sufficient managerial experience [including experience with conducting
interviews]. The volunteer should be able to spare time in September
to review applications remotely and also conduct face-to-face
interviews for 2 days either in Bangalore or Delhi.
Those who fit the description are requested to nominate yourself by
sending me an email with a profile and relevant URLs before COB 25th
August 2012.
I will publish a long list on cis-india.org on 29th August, after
removing those nominations that don't have the required
qualifications. The volunteer to serve on the recruitment committee
will be selected from the long list by using IETF's Publicly
Verifiable Nominations Committee (NomCom) Random Selection[1].
The other members of this recruitment committee will consist of
1. One of the existing independent consultants [Hisham, Nitika,
Noopur, Shiju or Subha]
2. One member from the Wikipedia Chapter (Wikimedia India Program
Trust) community. To be nominated by the Chapter Executive Committee.
3. Executive Director of CIS - me.
The recruitment committee will be responsible for screening the long
list of eligible applications and conducting one-on-one face-to-face
interviews with the short list of applicants.
Best wishes,
Sunil
[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3797.txt The random seeds will be the
30 August 2012 result for the following national lotteries - Australia
(http://www.lotto.com.au/), UK (http://www.national-lottery.co.uk) and
USA (http://www.powerball.com or http://www.usamega.com)
Hi all,
Appreciate if you help in Indic language translations
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Central…
--
naveenpf
2012/7/30 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
> Hi all,
>
> it is almost August, that means it is time to get the banners ready! :)
> For this, we need your help and input.
>
> On
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Central… you
> can find a detailed description on how we plan to move forward. There may
> be some technical changes, but we will still need the translations in all
> relevant languages of the banner, and the link to the regular landing page.
> You can provide that on that page. Please put your information on the
> talkpage or in an email in this thread if you don't know how to edit a
> wikitable.
>
> Also, we need like last year for every country a one page description page
> in English (if your regular website doesn't happen to be in English). An
> example is http://www.wikilovesmonuments.nl/english (maybe with a little
> less detail). We need this in case that there are foreigners living in your
> country who want to participate, or tourists who visited your country. We
> want to link to that English page from our main wikilovesmonuments.orgwebsite and we ask you to link from it from your landing page with a clear
> icon or something (i.e. a British flag with the word 'English'). Please
> link this from
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Progress (third
> table) or again, just add it in the talkpage or in this thread if you don't
> know how to edit.
>
> Thanks for your help on this!
>
> Lodewijk
>
>
_______________________________________________
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
WikiLovesMonuments(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonumentshttp://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
Dear Wikimedians,
This is the announcement that we have published on the jobs sections
of the CIS website for the Director of the Access to Knowledge
Programme. Please share with interested friends, colleagues and
communities.
Please send me feedback if any, I am happy to make some incremental
changes to the announcement.
Best wishes,
Sunil
--
Vacancy for Programme Director (Access to Knowledge)
http://cis-india.org/jobs/vacancy-for-programme-director
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications for
the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for its New Delhi
office. The Access to Knowledge Programme Director would report to the
Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.
Position summary
The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme
which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of
Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free
knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large
Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages
and will manage a team of four staff members.
Responsibilities
Support the growth of Indic language communities and projects by
designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and
cultivate new editors, tackle technical challenges and explore
innovative approaches to building the projects, e.g., donations of
state encyclopedias, education partnerships, galleries, libraries,
archives, and museums (GLAM) institution partnerships.
Support India-focused initiatives to improve the quality of
India-relevant content on English Wikimedia projects such as,
university outreach, GLAM institution partnerships, India-relevant
thematic contribution campaigns, etc.
Support expanded access to free knowledge across India by
developing technology-based solutions like Wikipedia (mobile) and
Wikipedia (offline).
Help the Indian community share experiences and tell its story to
the wider Indian and global communities through traditional and social
media.
Generate and document lessons from programme activities that can
inform the work of Indian communities and similar programmes in other
countries.
Manage the team and grant resources effectively; manage the
programme in an open and transparent fashion with ongoing
communications and reporting to the Wikimedia community and the
Wikimedia Foundation.
Serve as a spokesperson for the Access to Knowledge programme and
build ties with the Wikimedia India chapter and other free knowledge
communities and movements in India such as Free/Open Source Software,
Open Access, Open Data, Open Educational Resources, Indic-computing,
etc.
Characteristics of the Director
High level of commitment: The Programme Director should be
strongly committed to CIS and Wikimedia movement missions and
objectives of the programme and deeply believe in the values of CIS
and Wikimedia projects in the Indian context, exude enthusiasm for the
mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling
difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge
into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves
learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be
comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion, open to input and
feedback, a proactive and candid communicator who wants people to know
what she/he is doing and isn't afraid to bring others in when things
are off-track or when you need help and able to handle criticism in a
mature fashion.
Community builder: It is essential that the leader sees himself as
a partner to and supporter of the Wikipedians who have and will
continue to be the leaders in building the Wikimedia projects. The
Programme Director must be willing and able to work with a diverse
array of people, many of whom come from non-traditional backgrounds
and have a fervent commitment to Wikipedia’s community-led nature.
Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement
and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of
India.
Proficient manager: Able to design and execute on a range of
initiatives; organize and manage a team of people and responsible in
use of resources (financial and human).
Data-driven: Should be well versed about the Indic and English
projects, subject his/her own approaches and activities as well as
those of the team to rigorous analysis and willing to stop doing
things that prove to be ineffective based on the data.
Partnership developer: Able to initiate, negotiate and operate
partnerships that advance the Wikimedia mission in Indic languages and
English (as relevant to India) with a wide range of institutions
across the public, NGO, philanthropic and private sector.
Willing to travel: The Programme Director must regularly travel
within India to engage with Wikimedia communities and conduct outreach
activities. Periodic global travel would be 4 trips per year.
Willing to flex schedule to operate within a global team: Must be
available for a limited number of conference calls or email exchange
some evenings on a weekly basis.
Candidate background:
At least seven years of professional experience with a strong
track record of success in high performance organizations.
Experience as a manager in a collaborative community (ideally
online) or organizational setting.
Strong academic results from highly-regarded university.
Strong understanding of the Internet and the forces that underpin
the success of Wikipedia.
Active participation as a Wikimedia volunteer would be an asset,
though not a prerequisite (must be prepared to demonstrate knowledge
of how Wikipedia works in interviews).
Demonstrated experience working in a global, multi-cultural team
environment.
Strong writer in Indic languages and English and must be fluent in
at least one Indic language and English.
Women are strongly encouraged to apply.
Remuneration: Commensurate with experience and aligned with senior
compensation at CIS.
Congrats Srikanth!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alolita Sharma <asharma(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2012/8/1
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Welcoming Srikanth Lakshmanan to the i18n engineering team
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi All,
Please join me in welcoming Srikanth Lakshmanan as outreach coordinator/QA
engineer (contractor) in WMF’s Internationalization (i18n) / Localization
(L10n) engineering team. As the team’s technical liaison, Srikanth will be
actively reaching out and working with our language communities to get
feedback on new i18n/L10n features being planned or rolled out to Wikimedia
sites.
Srikanth hails from Chennai, India. He has been a Wikipedian since 2006 and
identifies himself as a wikignome (User:Logicwiki). Srikanth has provided
language support for Tamil Wiki projects and loves to file bugs (and
occasionally fix them) when he sees languages are not properly supported.
Srikanth has recently revived his blogging habit at logic10.tumblr.com. His
other interests include cycling, travelling in buses, playing table tennis
(aka ping pong). Srikanth is excited to be able to contribute his tiny bit
in making a sum of all human knowledge more accessible and helping build a
more multilingual web! Check out some of his work on Tamil scripts and
consonants at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Script#Consonants_of_Modern_Tamil
Srikanth can be reached on email at slakshmanan(a)wikimedia.org or as
@srikanthlogic on our irc channels including #mediawiki, #wikimedia-dev and
#mediawiki-i18n.
Welcome Srikanth! It is great to have you on the i18n engineering team!
-Alolita
--
Alolita Sharma
Director of Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Reminder: this office hours begin in 30 minutes. :-)
Join #wikimedia-office from your IRC client or
Webchat: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Siko Bouterse" <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: Jul 31, 2012 3:36 AM
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] IRC office hours with the Wikimedia Fellows
> To: <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Hi all,
> The Wikimedia Fellows program will be holding IRC office hours in
> #wikimedia-office this Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 21:00 UTC. Fellows
> Tanvir Rahman, Peter Coombe, Jon Harald Søby, Steven Zhang, Sarah Stierch
> and Jonathan Morgan will be there to discuss their current fellowship
> projects (exact topics TBD based on who shows up with
> questions/comments/feedback), and I'll take any questions on the
> fellowships program that you may have.[1][2] As always, links to time
> conversion and other office hour info is on Meta.[3] Hope to see you there!
> Best wishes,
> Siko
>
> 1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_News/Current, and this should
> be even more current by Thursday :-)
> 2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships
> 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
>
> --
> Siko Bouterse
> Head of Community Fellowships
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
--
Tanvir Rahman
Community Fellow
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Dear Wikipedians,
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:18 PM, Barry Newstead (WMF)
<bnewstead(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Hisham’s departure coincides with another change in the India Program. We are pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge programme to support the achievement of the Wikimedia mission in India. CIS is a leading organization in India working on Internet policy. They are part of the broad free and open community. CIS is a long time friend of Wikimedia, our community in Bangalore, and the Wikimedia India chapter.
>
I would like to first like to thank Wikimedia Foundation for giving us
a grant to expand our Access to Knowledge Programme with a greater
focus on Wikipedia. I look forward to working with colleagues from the
Foundation and serving the community in India.
A little bit about my self since I am posting for the first time on
this list, I was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999. I was part of the
founding team of Mahiti.org though no longer formally involved.
Between 2004 and 2007, I managed IOSN.net, a project of APDIP-UNDP
that focussed on promoting FOSS, open standards and open content
policies in the Asia-Pacific region. Apart from the Government of
India, I have worked with the governments of Moldova, Tajikistan,
Saudi Arabia and Iraq on free software and open standards policies. I
currently serve on the boards of Samvada and Tactical Technology
Collective and also on the sub-board of Open Society Foundation's
Information Programme.
Now a little about CIS that is not in the FAQ. We are most often in
the news for our work around Freedom of Expression under our Internet
Governance programme. But most of our budget is spent on the other
less controversial areas. As a research organisation CIS does not
enforce party positions across staff members and fellows, like the
Kamasutra we encourage a multiplicity of positions. CIS has hosted
inclusiveplanet.com in the past and is currently hosting hasgeek.in.
CIS's garage has been converted into a hacker space called The Lab. In
the past, we have had the privilege to useful in small ways to
individual Wikipedians, the Indian Wikipedia community and India
chapter. The whole team looks forward to stepping-up that dramatically
with this grant.
As a registered non-profit society, CIS will strive to maintain high
levels of transparency and accountability to the Wikipedia community
and the general public. We will make the budget and programme plan
publicly available shortly. We will be transparent about staff
remuneration and travel-related costs – as is the case with other CIS
staffers. We will setup a recruitment panel for the Programme Director
with hopefully participation from the community and the chapter as was
the case in Brazil. More on that soon.
For now, if there are any questions for me regarding CIS and this
particular grant – I would be happy to answer them.
Best wishes,
Sunil
P.S. Apologies for posting from my Mahiti id.
Hi,
We have a Wiki Academy on 6 Aug 2012, Monday at Dravidian Univ, Kuppam, a
special university setup in 1997 with focus on the four Dravidian
languages, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. About 80 research scholars
and faculty are expected to attend the Event.
The Details for the event and a custom brochure is at
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Dravidian_University,Kuppam
We plan to leave early morning by car (takes around 2:30hours by Road) and
return by around 8 PM.
We are looking for few Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam wikipedians
based in Bangalore or nearby places to join us. As of now, myself and
Radhakrishna, Chair, Bangalore SIG have confirmed our plans.
Let me know if any one is interested to join us by Aug 3, 2012.
Thanks and regards
Arjuna Rao Chavala
President, Wikimedia India
Dear India Community
I'm writing to inform you that I plan to leave my current role supporting Wikimedia in India. I am going to be exploring opportunities and evaluating options that are closer to my career aspirations and my personal circumstances. I will be working through to ensure that there is a smooth transition - and this is likely to take 2-3 months. I am writing now because I felt it appropriate and opportune to inform you as early as possible.
I want to start off by thanking the Wikimedia community and movement for giving me this extraordinary opportunity. Working on something like India Program has been something that has been professionally enriching and personally fulfilling. Over the past 1 1/2 years, I have been supported by so many of you - and I want to thank you for everything you have done! The passion and intellectual firepower of our community has been my constant source of drive and guidance. There are so many examples of powerful stories from all over the country: the incredible efforts put in by the IEP Campus Ambassadors in Pune; the army of volunteers that drove the outreach push across the country in the first few months of this year; the beautiful stories of fantastic community initiatives from far and wide across the country and sub-continent, and indeed the world; the remarkable stories from so many communities - large, small and tiny ones!
I want to thank the team that I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with - Nitika, Noopur, Shiju & Subha. You guys have been wonderful. The work that we are doing is experimental and we have been innovating every day, and I know the circumstances have not always been easy. Take strength and inspiration from the large number of community members who have been touched by you and appreciate your efforts and value your work.
I will send an actual "over and out" message later. In the meantime, I will continue to work on everything that needs working on.
Happy Editing!
Warmest Regards,
hisham
Before i start, I am not a Wikipedia editor. Just someone who knows several
of them.
None of you seem to be thinking, or else no thinker is replying.
Hisham is not some war hero that you have to praise him like this.
If there is anything he has done, it is not praiseworthy.
yes, we weill miss him. a lot. who else do we blame for failurs and all the
nonsense in the community?
Hisham has done nothing for the community that stands out. all that he has
done is what volunters do.
if any volunteer asked for help and he responded, that voulneter would do
exzctly what hisham tells him to.
if he doesnt, hisham cribs that they don't let him do his work.
if he does, he claims credt for that volunteers success and puts the blame
on the volunteer if it fails.
he runined th english wikipedia with his IEP crap.
the community is still trying to recover.
on top of that he called up several voluntrs over the phone for iep this yr
and justified his actions.
congrats hisham, you've done a lot in one and a hafl years. a lot of damage.
Wer'e not happy that you are leaving, but sad, because we won't have anyone
to blame.
Have a good time.
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Dear Hisham,
I’m thinking back on your time here and want to thank you for so much that
you’ve done and built in these one and a half years. For setting up things
from scratch when there was neither a team nor an office and you were on
your own. For building and motivating a small team to venture into unknown
terrain (and for even daring to step into this terrain) without any
surefire guarantee of success. For tirelessly and successfully supporting
many Indic language wikipedias and the first-ever community-led
WikiConference India. For keeping up team morale in the difficult days
following the India Education program. For reaching out to hundreds of
people in India through any means necessary to create new editors. And,
yes, for being bold.
One of the things that makes this kind of work difficult is not just its
newness or its experimental unsure nature, but also its publicness.
Brickbats pour in much faster than bouquets in public fora, creating a
narrative of their own that is hard to buck. I want to thank you for being
able to smell the roses, for having a tough enough hide to survive the
brickbats while continuing to steer India programs and motivating your team
to do its best. I also want to urge the Wikimedia India community to be
constructive and rigorous in holding India programs accountable in its next
avatar - without being destructive or personal.
You’ve laid a very solid foundation for India programs that I expect the
team will continue to build on. I hope you enjoy your remaining time here
and leave with many more good memories than bad.
Will miss you, my friend!
Bishakha
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Hisham <hisham(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Dear India Community
I'm writing to inform you that I plan to leave my current role supporting
Wikimedia in India. I am going to be exploring opportunities and
evaluating options that are closer to my career aspirations and my personal
circumstances. I will be working through to ensure that there is a smooth
transition - and this is likely to take 2-3 months. I am writing now
because I felt it appropriate and opportune to inform you as early as
possible.
I want to start off by thanking the Wikimedia community and movement for
giving me this extraordinary opportunity. Working on something like India
Program has been something that has been professionally enriching and
personally fulfilling. Over the past 1 1/2 years, I have been supported by
so many of you - and I want to thank you for everything you have done! The
passion and intellectual firepower of our community has been my constant
source of drive and guidance. There are so many examples of powerful
stories from all over the country: the incredible efforts put in by the IEP
Campus Ambassadors in Pune; the army of volunteers that drove the outreach
push across the country in the first few months of this year; the beautiful
stories of fantastic community initiatives from far and wide across the
country and sub-continent, and indeed the world; the remarkable stories
from so many communities - large, small and tiny ones!
I want to thank the team that I have had the pleasure and privilege of
working with - Nitika, Noopur, Shiju & Subha. You guys have been
wonderful. The work that we are doing is experimental and we have been
innovating every day, and I know the circumstances have not always been
easy. Take strength and inspiration from the large number of community
members who have been touched by you and appreciate your efforts and value
your work.
I will send an actual "over and out" message later. In the meantime, I
will continue to work on everything that needs working on.
Happy Editing!
Warmest Regards,
hisham
--Sent from my LG Optimus.