Here's the link that gives the log of this meeting - for those who couldn't attend.

As planned, the major topic of discussion was the Indic Languages initiatives.  We talked about the overall approach that Shiju has been following with several dozen community members.  We walked through the  Medical project - currently underway in Assamese, Telugu, Oriya (Odia) & Malayalam.  (This seeks to create vital articles in Indic wikis with the help of community members with medical/healthcare background, or users who are interested in healthcare articles.)  During the IRC, Jayanta informed us that the Bengali community have also started it  - which is great.   We also discussed the Translated Articles Enhancement Project which has been started by the Kannada community.

Thank you to every one but a special thank you to the new folks who came on today.  It's always nice to see new faces!

We ran out of time on this IRC.   As discussed, I would like to suggest Thursday March 22nd @9pm IST for another IRC.  (This is in addition to the IRC planned for March 29th.)  The March 22nd IRCwill be an open house - and will not therefore have a predetermined agenda.

As always, do visit the India Program page for more information on everything we do. 

Best

hisham

On Mar 15, 2012, at 8:45 PM, Hisham wrote:

Reminder that we are starting in 15 minutes.

Do join in!  Details below.

hisham

On Mar 11, 2012, at 7:03 AM, Hisham wrote:

cross-posting to reach pan-community; apologies if you received it from other mailing lists already

Hi Folks,

One of the essential things that India Program needs to constantly work out is keeping the community informed of the work that we are doing - so that this work is clearer but also to help cross-pollinate ideas amongst a wider set of community members who might not have been engaged on specific village pump / talk page discussion or involved in particular activities (e.g. outreach events) or wikiprojects.

We used to have a monthly IRC with the community and India Program.   (For those who are not familiar with IRC, it is an Internet messaging system similar to a regular chat room.  It's very simple to use and you can join in by clicking on the following link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.)  I have been remiss in conducting these for the past few months - and I'd like to make amends by restarting, with a couple of modifications.

a) I'd like to propose fortnightly instead of monthly.  (I was wary of doing it any more frequently than monthly earlier because I didn't know if there would be enough on the plate to discuss.  I have changed my mind now - because there is too much to discuss to cover in a single monthly session.)  I'd like to propose that we do it in the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month at 9pm IST (which is GMT + 0530) - THOUGH NOT THIS MONTH - BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED THE TIMELINE.  Just for March, we will do it on March 15th and March 29th (both at 9pm IST which is GMT + 0530)
b) I'd like to propose that we do it focussed on specific work streams instead of general.  The reason I say this is that - as with many community meet-ups, folks will give time to attend a meet-up or participate in an IRC only if there is a topic of relevance to them.  To that extent, we could do one IRC on Indic languages and one on Outreach & Communications.  I'd start both the IRCs with a re-cap of India Programs activities for the fortnight (or so) prior to the IRC and forward from the IRC - and then we could talk about either Indic langauges or Outreach & Communications.

The March 15th one will be focussed on Indic Languages and the one on March 29th will be on Outreach & Communications.  

Having said that, there is quite a bit of overlap on these topics - so feel free to join both.  The more the merrier! Please do also invite anyone who is interested to know more about India Program or - even more importantly - interact with fellow Wikimedians interested in a particular activity to join in.  (It's quite a lot of of fun {citation required} - and i've heard a rumour {citation required} that there was actually a romance that started on one of the IRCs...)

As always, the logs will be put up on meta for the benefit of those who can't attend and for the record.

I'll send a reminder on the day of the session and one 30 minutes before the session.

Thanks

hisham