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Friends,
TL; DR
After almost five years of professional engagement with the South Asian
language Wikimedia communities, I have decided to step down from my current
role. And I will remain a Wikipedian friend of yours who you can reach out
in volunteer capacity on my talk page.
——
I was about to complete my first wiki-versary when I joined the Wikimedia
Foundation’s India Program as a Consultant for Community and Program
Support. The program ran until August of 2012 and then got housed at the
Centre for Internet Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K) [0].
Thanks to Sunil, Pranesh, Nirmita, Nishant and many others at the CIS
family who embraced my team from India Program with great amount of trust.
CIS became more like a family for me all these years. It will always remain
my other home and alma mater - calling CIS a former employer will be quite
an understatement. I feel I grew as a person along with the organization
that is today a noted name for its research in openness, accessibility,
privacy, IP reform, access to knowledge, and digital humanity.
Over these years I have had the most memorable time in my personal and
professional life. I have traveled a lot in the country and across the
world, met many friends in the Wikimedia and the open knowledge community,
and had the privilege of working on many important projects both locally
and globally. The South Asian language Wikimedia communities that I have
worked with have not just been patient and understanding, but have been my
mentor in many ways. I thank you all wholeheartedly for being such great
friends and guides. And I hope that I have added some value to your
community, project and the larger Wikimedia movement.
This was an incredible journey and I feel really honored to see as many as
three new Wikimedia projects taking birth where I had a chance to
contribute. Many of you have shared your stories in an interview series
WikipediansSpeak [1] that I started during my time at CIS, and I felt so
touched and connected to many people that spoke languages that I never even
understood. I want to thank many Wikimedians both from the Indian and the
global Wikimedia community that participated in @WeAreWikipedia [2], a
rotation curation project on Twitter that I started as a voluntary project.
The good news is @WeAreWikipedia has always been and will be a
volunteer-led project even after I leave my professional role at CIS.
In the last few days of my work at CIS, my biggest worry was if I will be
able to give much time to wrap up Project Ol Chiki [3], a project to create
typeface family and input tools for the Ol Chiki script (used to write the
Santali language) that I was leading. I would like to personally thank to
colleagues T.Vishnuvardhan (former Programme Director of CIS-A2K) for his
guidance, Pooja Saxena for designing the typeface and several other
peripherals, Prof. Damayanti Besra and other friends of the
Santali-language community who have reviewed the typeface, and Wikimedians
Jnanaranjan Sahu and Nasim Ali who have created the input tools. A few
years of my childhood was spent in a place where 30% of people spoke this
aboriginal language Santali, and I cannot share how nostalgic it felt when
the opportunity came to lead this project.
Once again, thanks you all the friends in the Wikimedia community, and the
larger openness movement for your kind support over all these years. In the
long road, this was a great milestone but there are many more to come. I
hope to continue working with you in my volunteer capacity, and/or may be
in my new role.
Where I am heading next?
Some of you might know this already. I am super excited that the next
milestone is going to be another open source community as I am joining
Mozilla’s Participation team as South Asia Community Catalyzer [4]. I am
super excited for it. And I will keep seeing you all amazing people on the
Wikimedia projects like before.
Do feel free to get in touch with me in my talk page at User:Psubhashish,
or over email at psubhashish (at) gmail (dot) com, or at @subhapa on both
Twitter and Telegram.
0. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikipediansSpeak
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
2. https://twitter.com/wearewikipedia
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
3. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_Ol_chiki
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
4.
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/introducing-our-new-south-asia-co…
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
Love,
Subhashish
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org
<https://psubhashish-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1PJvbCaYjAlErR…>
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Dear friends,
We are happy to share the consolidated newsletter for September 2016.
Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and
What Has Been Done?
—Ting-Yi Chang (September 18, 2016)
Five years after Wikimedia Foundation's 2011 editor survey (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.p…)
was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners,
and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender
imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three
parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia
gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.
"Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors.
only 8.5% of editors are women."
Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the
editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the
alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same
survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only
3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the
internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our
computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been
silenced and forgotten?
. . . Read more on Blogs (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-ex…)
(Part 1 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
, Part 2 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
and Part 3 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
)
== Program reports =
Outreach, education programme and community engagement programme reports:
* Wikiwomen's Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of
Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-ex…)
(Ting-Yi Chang; September 1, 2016)
Karnataka is known for its diverse linguistic cultures. Aside from Kannada,
many are native speakers of Konkani, Tulu, and other languages. A small
Wikiwomen's meetup was held on Saturday, August 27th at St. Agnes College,
Mangalore, to invite female Wikipedians from the region. Many of them were
new to the online encyclopedia but demonstrated strong interest in learning
and contributing more Indic language content online.
* A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates (
http://cis-india.org/openness/a-workshop-to-improve-telugu-wikipedia-articl…)
(Pavan Santhosh; September 12, 2016)
Many articles about Nobel laureates are missing in the Telugu Wikipedia.
Recently undergraduate students from four different disciplines of the
Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada gathered to create and improve
articles related to Nobel laureates.
* Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons
licenses (
http://cis-india.org/openness/campaign-for-relicensing-copyrighted-books-un…)
(Pavan Santhosh S. & Subhashish Panigrahi; September 20, 2016).
A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several
noted authors from "all rights reserved" to Creative Commons Share-Alike
(CC-BY-SA) license..
== Articles/blogs =
Articles, opinion pieces, analysis pieces:
* ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ସ୍ୱାଧୀନତା ଦିବସ: ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ଼ ଲେଖିବା¸ (
http://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-day) : (Subhashish
Panigrahi; September 18, 2016). The blog post was mirrored in Your Story (
https://odia.yourstory.com/read/b3b56fd08a/-?c=16) , Odisha Story (
http://www.odishastory.com/odia/2016/09/software-freedom/) and Aajira
Odisha (http://aajiraodisha.org/software-freedom/) on September 17, 2016.
The originally published piece can be accessed here (
http://psubhashish.com/post/150524560200/sfd) .
Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open
software, was celebrated in many cities today. The piece sheds light on the
philosophy of software freedom, and how free and open source software is
making a significant social change. I have also shared how anyone can
contribute to the FOSS movement in different ways and celebrate SFD. .
== Team updates =
Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tniranjana) ,
our Programme Advisor, and Abhinav Garule (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Abhinavgarule) , Programme Associate
for Marathi have left the team recently to continue with their other
personal/professional commitments. We thank both of them for their
association and support both to the team and to the community. We wish them
success in their forthcoming endeavors, and hope that they will keep
contributing to the Wikimedia movement in their volunteer capacity.
If you want to receive news from this program, please sign-up here (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/Subscribe) .
This newsletter is also available on Meta-wiki at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/September_2016
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k/
Follow us on Twitter at @CISA2K
Dear friends,
First of all, apologies if this mail is not in your native language.
This to share with you all that we have published on the jobs section of the CIS website [0] for the position of Programme Officer of the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) programme. We would really appreciate if you can share with interested friends, colleagues and communities.
Please let us know if there is any kind of changes needed. We will love to address any concerns or inputs.
Best,
Subhashish
----------
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications from prospective candidates who identify themselves as female, for the position of Programme Officer (Communications) , to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme.
The job application is open to women only because we feel that a woman communications person will contribute more towards bridging the gender gap in the Wikimedia movement by emphasising on gender-sensitive communication apart from contributing internally for bringing a gender balance in the team. The position is full time and will be based in CIS’ Bengaluru office. Programme Officer will work closely with CIS-A2K Team (hereinafter Team) and would report to the Executive Director/any supervisor in Team.
Position Summary:
As a Programme Officer, your job will be to support the Team’s larger goals — growth of Indian-language Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects (hereinafter Wikimedia projects), and the contributor communities (hereinafter Community). Your primary responsibility will be to support the Programme Associates — that spearhead our on-ground programmatic activities -- with regular communications with the community and the world outside.
Characteristics of the Programme Officer:
* High level of commitment: The Programme Officer should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, 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 s/he is doing and isn't afraid to bring others in when things are off-track or when you need help and should able to handle criticism in a mature fashion.
* Community builder: It is essential that the Programme Officer sees herself/himself as a partner to and supporter of the Wikimedians who have and will continue to be the leaders in building the Wikimedia projects. The Programme Officer 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 Wikimedia movement’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.
* 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, universities, philanthropic and private sector.
* Willing to travel: The Programme Officer must regularly travel within India to engage with Wikimedia communities and partner with institutions.
Responsibilities:
* You will be responsible for the overall communications of Team that include storytelling in the form of interviews, blogs, opinion pieces in newspaper/other platforms, regular coverage in both Indian language and English media, and anything beyond.
* You will be exploring widely from conventional to new media to spread the stories of the hundreds and thousands of volunteers that make the Indian-language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects such great knowledge repositories.
* Creating original stories of challenges and learning, and successes of Wikimedia community in general and the ones that we closely work with in particular.
* Function as an interface between A2K team and the community, and help the team better work collaboratively with the community.
* Sharing the work of the community and A2k team in a regular basis in the monthly newsletters and other places.
* Providing training on effective communications to the communities in a need basis, and supporting them to independently tell their own stories in their own languages.
* Announcement of programmatic activities in the form of announcements, blogs and reports, and microblogging (social media, etc.).
* Interviewing Wikimedians under the ambit of the WikipediansSpeak [*] project and beyond, and share the story of the Wikimedia community widely in the media.
Required Skills:
* Graduate or masters in journalism/other media studies, law, or any other discipline with at least two-three years of professional experience with a strong track record of success in high performance organisations, preferably in non-profits.
* Experience could be during studies or after, primarily in blogging, writing organisation reports, managing social media for organisations, interviewing and covering people’s stories in mainstream media.
* Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably and open one like Wikipedia and in online.
* Good understanding of the basics of organisational programme design and management.
* 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).
* Experience working in a global, multicultural and diverse team environment will be preferred.
* Must be fluent in English and at least in one Indian language.
* A good understanding of the cultural and knowledge universe of the Indian language communities.
* Ability to integrate and understand the complexity of the Indian language communities.
Pluses:
* Support India-focused initiatives to improve quality of India-relevant content and number of editors on Indian-language Wikimedia projects.
* Support the growth of Indian-language Wikimedia communities and projects by designing and implementing community collaborations and partnerships projects – detailing rationale, aim and objective, execution, evaluation, timeline, resource investment, etc.
* Spearhead CIS-A2K’s pilot projects.Identify institutions/groups that have ready-made content/archived material and aggregate available material in respective languages.
* Create a network of state institutions, university departments, non-government organisations, academics, artists, researchers and Wikipedia community members that will work towards creating a repository of knowledge on specific themes by using Wikimedia projects as a platform.
* Conduct initial meetings with the principal investigators from each of the shortlisted institutions and share project ideas.
* Facilitate Wikimedia community involvement with the core network of institutions and principal investigators to collaboratively participate on specific content/area modules.
* Create social media platforms for visibility of these projects and facilitate need-based technical and online support.
* Conduct a series of Wikimedia outreach sessions for various nodes within the network.
* Conduct periodic monitoring and evaluation of the pilot projects in progress.
* Generate and document lessons from programme activities that can inform the work of Indian communities and similar programmes in other countries.
* Provide ad hoc support to the Wikipedia community on all aspects of Indian languages as may be deemed necessary.
Context of the CIS-A2K programme:
As an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and Wikipedia’s sister project, we design and implement different projects with an aim to create high quality content and cultivate new contributors to Wikimedia projects. The projects will be premised on themes and seek to create a multilingual repository of knowledge using Wikimedia projects as a knowledge platform. You are encouraged to deeply engage with the CIS-A2K work plan before making the application. You will work cohesively with the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India Chapter to meet specific goals of each language community in India. You will be a part of a small team of 5 to 10 doing high visibility and high impact work.
Please note that we, at CIS, do not have any distinction,exclusion, or preference that is based on the basis of race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction, social origin, which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity and treatment in employment. (adapted from Declaration ILO Geneva [3])
Location: The position is based out of the CIS’s Bangalore office.
Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.
To apply, please send your resume along with a covering letter and at least three references to Tanveer Hasan (tanveer(a)cis-india.org) by October 20, 2016.
Notes:
0. http://cis-india.org/jobs/cis-a2k-programme-officer
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter
2. WikipediansSpeak is an initiative to bring the voices of Wikipedians to the world and include interviews in various media, both multimedia and text-based narratives and beyond. More in the project page <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikipediansSpeak>
3. http://www.ilo.org/public/portugue/region/eurpro/lisbon/pdf/agender_jun06.p…
Thanks,
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org