Gautam,

Thanks for the update.

Plan to engage with Department of Public Libraries is a valuable step ahead, in my opinion. Shortlisting other departments who's association would help immensely (for instance the department of secondary education) and trying to connect with them would be a plus. Let me know if I could be of any help there, I'd be happy to help.

Membership at 80 looks like a good number achieved considering that Chapter had minimal resources to do a membership drive in that it doesn't have paid employees yet who can run around getting stuff done (or are there any now?). I believe placing a link on http://wikimedia.in/ about the membership would help drive more members. The site notice on the community wiki can also be put to better use.

Good to hear about the progress on FCRA. Going by what I've heard from others, this is going to test your patience.

About the Foundation update,

The number of students involved sounds great and sets up huge expectations about the program. There has been tremendous publicity for the program. Like mentioned on the update, it does require great deal of effort to retain this enthusiasm in the campuses -- however the addition new staff, Shiju and Nikita should boost the efforts. I personally would like to see more people like Srikeit (who's presently helping out with the program) who've contributed immensely on Wikipedia, and have known the community for quite sometime being given opportunities to help steer this program. I met Srikeit during Wikimania and he was mighty excited about his role where he could put to use his long time experience being part of Wikipedia.

I would be extremely keen to know more about the conversations happening between the mobile companies and the Foundation. What is the current picture? As more and more people increasingly access information from mobile here, this is going to be an important channel worth exploring rigorously, and with focus on Indian languages.

And the independent public trust -- I know that I'll be hitting a sensitive topic by even stirring this, but I can't help but wonder how the dual power house model would work. A common Wikipedian from here would have several unanswered questions, and few very simple and obvious questions like whether two different entities are actually required for the same region, or about whom to approach for help in improving projects in the region or for assistance of any kind. It sort of puts up good deal of confusion for the community. Between just the chapter and the foundation's office (transformed into a legal entity of 'trust'), while there's just too many things to be done in this nascent community, isn't co-ordination going to be unnecessary overhead and something that is eating up into each of your's time? How do you plan to address these? And when the chapter was established, it was decided to go for a 'society' model for obvious reasons, and for of how democratic it would be.

There are several more questions that would prop in the minds of Wikipedians who've seen times when there was no chapter, no WMF assistance during the earlier years (2002 - ) to the years now of conspicuously towering interest in the region. There were times when we put our own money to organize Wikipedia related activities, not having anyone here to help. So, this change is welcoming, the kind of interest we're seeing now in India is huge for every Wikipedian from this country. However, there is uncertainty about where this is headed.

Cheers,

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Gautam John <gautam@prathambooks.org> wrote:
Dear All:

We have instituted a monthly call between the India Chapter and the Wikimedia Foundation.  Members of the Chapter EC, Hisham and Asaf Bartov (who heads up Global South Relationships at the Foundation) will participate in this call.  The objective of the call is to share information and improve collaboration between the Chapter and the Foundation on various Wikimedia projects of relevance to India.  We had the first one on Aug 24, 2011, and here's a quick update.

Chapter Update
Foundation Update
Collaboration on future projects

Some requests from colleges to participate in campus ambassador like program  were received by the chapter and Hisham. Hisham said that till the ongoing program is stable, he will not be able to roll it to other cities. He suggested  that colleges can get  started by forming  student clubs and Foundation staff are providing necessary information and assistance for the same. He also requested Chapter EC to extend their support for the same.

Chapter seeks active involvement in the elections and looks to grow its membership base and expand it's reach in encouraging the use and contributions to the Wikimedia movement in India.

Thank you.

Best,

Gautam



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Hari Prasad Nadig
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