Dear Wikimedians,

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that CIS-A2K is implementing its new model of working - CIS-A2K version 2.0. This model takes on board many of the criticisms that have been made of our work so far.

We will be eliminating the role of Program Director in this version, and I (from July, 2015) am the person at the Centre for Internet and Society in charge of programming under the WMF grant. Nirmita Narasimhan (from this month onwards), Policy Director will be assisting me. This will result in a reduction of the budget.

As part of this version 2.0, CIS-A2K would try to engage communities towards an in depth analysis of community engagement, and take A2K programme closer to the community by contracting Program Associates (PA). Each of the five focus language areas(FLAs): Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu will have one PA each working from the city or town where most of the community members operate. This will help CIS-A2K understand the language community more closely and work in accordance with needs of the community. Thus avoiding duplication of resources and bringing focus to the activities organised. The PAs will be directly managed and be held accountable by members of each language community who will assign any work they want to be done. CIS-A2K team will provide an additional layer of supervision and oversight. This will reduce need for CIS staffers to travel from Bengaluru for every event/activity.

In addition, the existing employees at CIS-A2K would now be working for all the five FLAs in a more specialized role as follows:

Pavanja : Would be responsible for creating movement resources such as handbook, tutorial videos, etc, and shall plan for creation, printing and distribution.
Rahmanuddin : Would operate as technical liaison person.
Subhashish : Will help Wikipedians create blogs on Wikimedia blog and report all events happening around, along with media publication and coverage of  events organised by the communities and A2K team.
Tanveer : Would be responsible for all insitutional partnerships and content donation activities. Communities are encouraged to get in touch with Tanveer if they want any specific institution to be explored for Wikipedia activities.

This will enable the above core A2K team members to have multiple touch points with the FLA Wikimedia communities. Unlike the previous model where a single Programme Officer was solely responsible for activities for a FLA.

Abhinav and Tito Dutta would be Program Associates and will be working on Marathi Workplan and policy level discussions respectively.

We have ensured that the PA selection process is done by community consensus.
Announcements were sent out on the FLA Wikipedia village pumps in the 2nd and 3rd week of August.
A community nomination was expected to set the process rolling, but with multiple people applying, A2K team asked the applicants to translate some of the important movement resources documents (These were handbooks regarding Editing Wikipedia, Illustrating Wikipedia, GLAM handbook, Free licenses handbook and so on) to assess the applicants understanding of Wikimedia projects.
 
The translations sent by the participants were put up for community members to review (these were uploaded by candidates on commons.wikimedia.org). The reviews did not offer any decisive inputs regarding finalising PA position. It was also felt based on visit and conversations with Telugu Wikipedia community members, that a selection committee should be constituted for selecting PA for each language.

Telugu -

Telugu announcement was made on 19 August, Candidate A applied on 20 August. As this was the only application, the application deadline was extended to 15 September and an announcement in this regard was put out on 7 September on Telugu Wikipedia village pump. Candidate B and Candidate C submitted their applications on 26 September and 28 September respectively. Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya, Dr. Rajsekhar and Ms. Sujatha were part of the selection committee. Selection committee members and their profiles: 

Ravi Vyzasatya: Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya with username వైజాసత్య is one of the earliest Telugu Wikipedians and sysop on Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wiktionary. He has been a Wikipedian for more than 10 years. His areas of interest are research articles, biographies of personalities. He is instrumental in creation of village  articles on Wikipedia using his bot, which has created close to 24,000 articles on Telugu Wikipedia. He also proposes rules and policies on Telugu Wikipedia. By profession he is a researcher with expertise in Molecular Biology, Immunology, Cell Biology. 

Rajasekhar: Dr. Rajasekhar, username Rajasekhar1961, has been a Telugu Wikipedian for over 8 years and is a bureaucrat & sysop on Telugu Wikipedia, sysop on Telugu Wikisource and Telugu Wiktionary. He was one of the senior most Wikipedians with interest in wide range of areas like Biology, Telugu language, Yoga, Telugu personalities, Medicine and Transportation. He is a pathologist by profession. Interesting thing is that he has turned his lab into Wikipedia help centre and has provided his phone number publicly for anyone to call and know about Wikipedia.

Sujatha: Ms. Sujatha Thummapudi, username T.sujatha, has been a Telugu Wikipedian for over 9 years and is a sysop on Telugu Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikisource. She has been writing articles on spirituality, religion, places and so on. She was part of the Lilavathi's daughters project and lead the project in Telugu. She, along with her husband Mr. Sriramamurthy garu has been actively working in Te Wiktionary, Te Wikipedia and Te Wikisource as well.

Mr. Ravi Vyzasatya asked the three candidates two questions and the candidates answered the same on Tewiki village pump. Later A2K team asked the selection committee to send us their decision.

The selection committee for Telugu came to a consensus and selected Mr. Pavan Santhosh as the candidate for the post of PA for Telugu for a period of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory during this period, we can continue with him. His profile is given below:

Pavan Santhosh: He has been a very active Telugu Wikipedian with more than 16000 edits to his credit and has worked extensively to improve content and quality in Telugu Wikipedia, Wikisource & Wiktionary. He was the joint secretary of the committee that organized the 11th anniversary of Telugu Wikipedia. He has been an Individual Engagement grantee from Wikimedia Foundation for the project “Making Telugu content accessible”. He has organized and co-organized many meetups, events and outreach programs.  

Kannada -

The announcement for PA was made on Kannada Wikipedia village pump on August 12, It was postponed twice to 15 September and 15 October. The decision was given by selection committee in last week of October.
Selection committee members and their profiles: 

Tejas Jain (User:Teju2friends): Software engineer by profession. Has been an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2007. Has more than 4500 edits in Kannada Wikipedia, about 250 in Kannada Wiktionary, about 35 in Kannada Wikiquote. He has also contributed to other Wikimedia projects. He has written useful scripts. He has participated in many Kannada Wikipedia events, meetups and conducted outreach programs.

Harish M G (User:M G Harish): Software engineer by profession. Has been an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2006. He has more than 2700 edits to his credit in Kannada Wikipedia, about 105 in Kannada Wikiquote. He has been an administrator of Kannada Wikipedia. he has written useful scripts. He has participated in many Kannada Wikipedia event, meetups and conducted many outreach programs. 

Vikas Hegde (User:Vikashegde): Software engineer by profession. Has been an active Kannada Wikipedian since 2009. He has nearly 800 edits to his credit in Kannada Wikipedia and about 35 edits in Kannada Wikiquote. He has also contributed to other Wikimedia projects. He has been the major contributor to some projects in Kannada Wikipedia. He has participated in many Kannada Wikipedia events and meetups. He is also a well known Kannada blogger and written some useful blogs about using Kannada in IT.

The selection committee has agreed to appoint Mr. Ananth Subray for a period of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory during this period, we can continue with him. Here is a profile of Mr. Ananth Subray. As he is a student, he would be employed as an intern. 

Ananth Subray (User:Ananth subray): Mr. Ananth Subray is a 2nd year BSc. (PCM) student at Christ University, Bengaluru. He has been part of the Wikipedia Education Program in the university from last 2 years. Having been recommended by the faculty and his other fellow batch-mates, he also helped us to run the Wikisource activities for the Education Program for the junior batches in his university. Ananth is fluent in Kannada, Hindi and Telugu apart from English. Even though new in the Wikimedia community, Ananth has been a fast learner and is active as a Wikimedian. He has participated in the Mediawiki Train-the-Trainer programme conducted by CIS-A2K this year. 

Konkani 

The Konkani Wikipedia community has selected Ms. Melissa Simoes as the consensus candidate to become the next PA for Konkani. Here is her profile. 

Melissa Simoes (User:Melissa Simoes on gom.wikipedia.org): She is a graduate and has a degree in education. She has worked as teacher in a high school at Goa. She has been a very active Konkani Wikipedian and has contributed whole heartedly to Konkani Wikipedia. She had important contribution in making Konkani Wikipedia go live. Writing poems is one of her hobbies.


Odia

The announcement for Odia Wikipedia PA was made on 14th August, but was postponed to 10th October as one of the previous selection committee members requested that he would want to apply for the post. A new selection committee was formed. The selection committee gave their decision on 1 November.
Selection committee members and their profiles

Mrutyunjaya(User:MKar): most active Wikimedian in the Odia Wikimedia community so far. Admin on Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource. Been active in building the "WikiTungi" (Odia Wikimedia user group) in Nalconagar where he has brought many Wikimedians onboard. Active in conducting community surveys, designing and implementing WikiProjects and WEP; discussion and content acquisition for Wikisource from many authors.


The selection committee has agreed to appoint Mr. Sailesh Patnaik for a period of 3 months on trial basis. If the performance is satisfactory during this period, we can continue with him. Here is a profile of Mr. Sailesh Patnaik. As he is a student, he would be employed as an intern.

Sailesh Patnaik(User: Saileshpat): Mr. Sailesh Patnaik is a Mechanical Engineering student at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. He has been active in Wikimedia Movement from last three years. He is also involved and coordinating with CIS-A2K from 2013 for the growth of Odia Wikipedia and strengthening the community. He is already handling the social media accounts and outreach programs for Odia Wikipedia.

Hope the Wikipedia communities in India will continue to guide us and hold as accountable with their feedback and criticism during A2K version 2.0 so that we can continue to evolve and change the programme.

Ph: +91 9611100817