I forgot to copy the list.

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Lourie Pieterse <louriepieterse@yahoo.com>
To: Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sat, June 18, 2011 1:51:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Google's Wikipedia Challenge 2011

Hello Asaf

Sorry for taking so long to reply on this topic.

As far as I know we will definitely be interested. We did discus this topic a while ago when Nanjala Misiko contacted us. I don't know why no one else replied so far, they are most probably very busy. Even if the chapter doesn't decide to get involved my university (Stellenbosch) will be interested. About two weeks ago I had a meeting with a few people from the library, and they would be willing to facilitate and promote the Google competition to our students. The main idea is to get an idea of how many students know about editing Wikipedia, because we need these statistics for another project we are planning.

Kind regards
Lourie


From: Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org>
To: wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sat, June 18, 2011 1:27:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Google's Wikipedia Challenge 2011

Hello again, everyone.

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org> wrote:

As for judges -- yes, Google's figure of 35 judges per language would be a challenge, certainly for Zulu and Tswana.  We shall try to achieve at least half that many for each.  I ask for your help in this -- volunteer judges can sign up on the page I just created in Meta to start concentrating information about this[5].  I will also be reaching out to some non-Wikipedians to serve as judges -- academics, linguists, etc.

I am also on the lookout for a volunteer trainer from South Africa, ideally a speaker of at least one of the three target languages.  The trainer needs to be available for a whole week of fairly intensive training sessions in 2-3 universities in South Africa and 2-3 others in Botswana, on the week beginning July 25th.  The Foundation will fund travel; Google will fund accommodation.  The Foundation will also help prepare the training materials.  Please let me know if you're interested and available.

If none of the people receiving this e-mail are interested, perhaps some of you can help us find someone who would be?
 
Once again, I welcome any suggestion for improvement, to make this as successful and beneficial to our movement and mission as possible.

If one of you is planning to respond to or engage with me on this, but hasn't found the time yet, I'd appreciate a quick note, just so I know we shall have _some_ cooperation from WMZA.

Thanks!

--
    Asaf Bartov
    Wikimedia Foundation