Dear Wikimedians,
The hiring for the Programme Director has been moving along steadily since we began seeking applications in August 2012. The call for applications was disseminated across various Wikimedia mailing lists, as well as more than 15 Free/Open Source Software mailing lists. We stopped accepting applications for this round of interviews on September 24th, and released a long-list comprised of seven candidates to the recruitment committee [1] on September 25th. From the time we began looking for applicants and when we closed the first round of applications, we had received 29 applications.
The recruitment committee was asked to make of list of the candidates that they felt should be placed on the short list. Each candidate was awarded one vote for appearing on a committee member’s list. Only the applicants who received two or more votes were placed on the short-list, which left us with three short-listed candidates. The candidates were informed on October 1st. The first round of interviews was held on October 7th, 2012, at CIS’s office in Bangalore. After much deliberation, it was decided that a second round of interviews would be held most likely on November 10th, 2012, for a few choice long-listed candidates and one member of the short-list who was unable to attend the first interviews. Sunil Abraham will replace Nishant Shah on the recruitment committee for the interviews on the 10th.
CIS will continue to accept applications for the position until Monday, October 29th.
As was the case in Brazil [2] and the Arab region, we would like all the shortlisted candidates to also undergo an online assignment under community scrutiny before the final candidate is selected; therefore, in the weeks following the interviews, we request that community coordinate with the recruitment committee to prepare some type of assignment to give to the shortlisted candidates. This assignment could possibly be a list of questions. In the Brazilian case, the same questions were posed to all candidates, while in the Arab case the questions were different.
These assignments must be completed publicly, and the candidates will have the choice to participate anonymously to avoid any possible repercussions to their professional or private life.
We request that the online assignment be prepared by the 26th of November. The short-listed candidates will have one week to complete the assignment after the date that it is released.
Also, the Access to Knowledge Programme Plan has been put up on Meta-Wiki: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan.
We will continue to post to the mailing list as the hiring process moves forwards.
Thank you,
Jadine Lannon jadine@cis-india.org
[1] The recruitment committee was, at that time, comprised of Adethya Sudarsanan from the community; Arun Ramarathnam from the Wikimedia India Chapter; Nitika Tandon from the Wikimedia Foundation; Jessie Wild from the Wikimedia Foundation; and Nishant Shah from CIS.
The profiles of the recruitment committee, as well as their email addresses, are provided below:
Past members:
Nishant Shah Nishant Shah is the Director-Research at CIS. He is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and a recipient of the Asia Scholarship Foundation's fellowship for comparative research at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China. Nishant is a regular columnist with the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, GQ India and DML Central.
Email: nishant@cis-india.org
Current members:
Sunil Abraham Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.
Email: sunil@cis-india.org
Nitika Tandon Nitika Tandon is a Program Officer with the Centre for Internet and Society. She completed her Master of Business Administration at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands and is a recipient of the Dean's Fund Scholarship Program from Erasmus University.
She advises Wikimedia Foundation on the strategic direction of various programs that are run to increase readership and editor base for Wikimedia projects in India. She works closely with the Wikimedia Foundation on program design, implementation, management, evaluation of different community initiated programs on Wikimedia projects. Some of the programs she spearheads are Wikipedia Outreach Program, Wikipedia Editor Growth & Contribution Program, Wikipedia Education Program, Wikipedia Train the Trainer.
She engages with the Wikipedia community and chapter to build a strong relationship among these stakeholder groups and allow for effective partnerships; works with cross-functional teams of Wikimedia Foundation in Cairo, Brazil, US, Canada to drive Wikimedia movement's priorities; designs and manages national roll out of programs; facilitates cross-pollination of ideas between different Indian and global language Wikipedia communities; provides ad hoc support to Wikipedia community on all aspects of participation as may be deemed necessary.
Email: nitika@cis-india.org
Adethya Sudarsanan Adethya Sudarsanan has 2.5 years of experience in the IT industry. He was born, raised and educated in Chennai, and he currently works for a MNC headquartered in the United States of America.
He became involved with Wikipedia at a very young age as a user and later an editor. He was a speaker at the WikiConference India 2011 in Mumbai, where he presented a talk on how to improve the presence of Wikipedia and its related projects in the web space.
Email: adethyasjce@gmail.com
Arun Ramarathnam Arun Ramarathnam is an IT professional based in Bangalore. He started his contributions to Wikipedia in the year 2004. He experienced the power of collaboration on the Wikipedia platform during the Indian Ocean Earthquake (2004), when hundreds of wikipedians collaborated to build the article about the disaster as the events were folding out. He has contributed to the English Wikipedia and started some of the early India initiatives like Indian Collaboration of the Week, Indian portal and Category adoption. He is primarily focused on community efforts and is one of the key wikipedians responsible for the periodic monthly Wikipedia meetups in Bangalore. He participated in the Chapters committee meeting in Berlin in 2010 as India Chapter delegate. He contributed actively to the Developing nation’s task force during that meeting.
He is passionate about building volunteer communities focused on specific goals. He has been key part of core teams that organized many Barcamp events in Bangalore. He founded the Bangalore Palm User Group - an enthusiast group of gadget lovers focused on Palm OS based devices. He has been a member of Executive Committee of PMI Bangalore chapter (a not for profit society focused on Project Management) between 2006 and 2010 and served as its Vice President during that tenure. He is a founder member of Wikimedia Chapter (India) and currently serves as a member on the Executive Committee.
email: arunram25@gmail.com
Jessie Wild Jessie Wild joined the Wikimedia Foundation full-time in 2010, after several months of external consulting work with the Foundation.
Prior to joining Wikimedia, she worked with the Bridgespan Group in San Francisco and, among other cases in education and youth development, was on the team that supported the strategy development process at the Wikimedia Foundation. Before Bridgespan, Jessie was a strategy consultant with Bain & Co. in Chicago where she worked in various industries including telecommunications, consumer products, healthcare, and financial services. She also served in the Private Equity Group. Jessie hails from Carmel, Indiana and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Public Policy Analysis and International Business, with focuses on Spanish and Religious Studies.
Email: jwild@wikimedia.org
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/6_December_2011_note_... http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-...
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