Dear all,
Greetings from Wikimedia India !!!
We are delighted to present the last monthly Wikimedia India
report of the year 2011, almost a year after the chapter received the
formal recognition from the Government of Karnataka on 3 January 2011.
The journey so far wasn't easy, but we appreciate your continued
patronage , support and participation.
Organisational Updates
Formation of Task Forces:
As announced earlier, with the objective of increasing the
engagement and participation of the members of the chapter actively in
various initiatives, the India chapter has come up with focused Task
Forces for coordinating and driving various chapter activities [1].
There are two types of Task Forces - Project Task Forces and Operations
Task Forces. The Project Task Forces are focused on growing the
Wikimedia projects. The Operations Task Forces are critical functions to
enable the Project Task Forces and the Chapter in growing the movement.
The operations group consists of Administration, Fund raising, &
Communications. The Projects task force consists of City and Langugage
SIGs and Special Projects. The new task forces will be led by the
following people:
- Anirudh Bhati, Head, Fundraising.
- Arun Ramarathnam, Chair, Special Projects.
- Srinivas Gunta, Head, Administration.
- Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Chair, City and Language Special Interest Groups.
- Tinu Cherian, Head, Communications, PR & Media Relations.
Membership:
The Chapter membership stands at 190 members as of 31 December 2011.
Donations:
Total donations received in Dec 2011 - INR 700
Average donations in Dec 2011 - INR 350
FCRA:
Our application for FCRA prior permission under the Foreign Contribution
(Regulation) Act with the Government of India is still pending. An
official from the Home Ministry has visited Arjuna Rao Chavala,
President.
Internet Relay Chat(IRCs):
>From time to time, Wikimedia India conduct planned online IRC chat
sessions. The Dec 17, 2011 was anchored by Arun with the focus on
Chapter City & Language Special Interest Groups. [2]
Board Meetings:
The Chapter Executive Committee had two Tele-conference meetings in the
month of December (dated 07 Dec and 14 Dec, 2011). The Wikimedia India
chapter and Wikimedia Foundation had one joint co-ordination call on 21
Dec 2011, which was attended by Arjuna Rao Chavala, Arun Ramaratnam,
Naveen Francis, Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Tinu Cherian, Anirudh Bhati, Asaf
Bartov and Hisham Mundol. The summary of the joint coordination call was
shared earlier [3].
Community
City and Language Special Interest Groups
City and Language Special Interest Groups are a mechanism to engage
the diverse interests of members across India. The objective is to grow
the wiki projects in their areas of interest by reviewing the status,
planning and executing events of interest through growing the community
involvement. The leadership of these groups is part of the extended
leadership of the Chapter.
The Wikimedia Chapter is proud to announce the appointment of
the next batch of City and Language Special Interest Group Chairs [4] as
given below:
City
- Delhi SIG - Noopur Raval (noopur [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Bangalore SIG - RadhaKrishna (Arkrishna [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Mumbai SIG - Kundan Amitabh (kundan.amitabh [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Pune SIG - Mandar Kulkarni(mandar.kulkarni [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Kolkata SIG - Kalyan Sarkar (kalyan [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
Languages
- English SIG - Ashwin Baindur (ashlin [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Kannada SIG - Omshivaprakash H L (omshivaprakash [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Marathi SIG - Mahitgar (mahitgar [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
- Telugu SIG - Rahimanuddin Shaik (rahimanuddin [at] wikimedia [dot] in)
The current sign-ups of Members for the SIGs are as follows:
City Special Interest Groups
| City
|
Members
|
| Bangalore
|
10
|
| Delhi
|
2
|
| Mumbai
|
3
|
| Pune
|
6
|
| Kolkata
|
2
|
Language Special Interest Groups
| Language
|
Volunteers
|
| Bengali
|
1
|
| English
|
15
|
| Hindi
|
1
|
| Kannada
|
3
|
| Marathi
|
4
|
| Malayalam
|
8
|
| Nepali
|
1
|
| Odia
|
3
|
| Sanskrit
|
2
|
| Telugu
|
3
|
Events
A round-up of Wikimedia events and initatives around the nation is as follows.
- Wiki Academy @Jaya Engineering college ( 10 Dec 2011) :
The first Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering college, Chennai,[5] was
organized by the Wikimedia chapter and co-hosted by Jaya FOSS Club. Odia
Wiki Chair & Chapter member, Subhashish Panigrahi explained basics
of Wikipedia, how it is edited by millions of volunteers, how Wikipedia
is exclusively encyclopedic and kind of articles and notability of
articles in Wikipedia, how Wikipedians communicate and form community,
and organization of Wikimedia foundations and active projects. Then he
took the audience through active editing by signing up, searching for
articles, choosing articles to create. Then he demonstrated about
creating an article by using the Edit toolbar, citing the text by
searching the web and uploading and adding pictures in articles. The
editing session was followed by a Q & A session. Hisham Mundol,
Consultant, Wikimedia Foundation India Programs, connected with the
audience via Google Hangout. Hisham interacted with the audience by
giving a talk about the nature of the event, few details about
Wikipedia, WMF and Chapter and foundation are trying to do in India. He
answered questions raised by the audience. Nitika Tandon , Consultant,
Wikimedia Foundation India Programs, later explained about the India
Education program (IEP), how it functions and the
student-teacher-foundation collaborations through the education program.
The photos of the event are available here [6].
- Coimbatore 1st Meetup( 10 Dec 2011) : The first Kovai
(Coimbatore) meetup [7] was held at KGISL Campus, Saravanampatti,
Coimbatore. The Meetup was organised by Srikanth Ramakrishnan
(User:Rsrikanth05) and User:Sodabottle.
- Bangalore Wikimeetup 40 ( 11 Dec 2011) : Around 11
people attended the 40th Wikimeetup in Bangalore [8]. The Bangalore SIG
Chair, RadhaKrishna presented a talk on the experiences on
WikiConference India 2011 and WikiAcademy events in IT companies.
Experiences of Wiki Academy in Jaya engineering college and way forward
was shared by by Subhashish Panigrahi. Plans regarding Wiki Eleven in
January 2012 was discussed. The photos of the event are available here
[9].
- Wikipedia Meetup1 Salem( 11 Dec 2011) : A Wikimeetup was organised at Salem, Tamil Nadu, [10] by Tamil Wikipedians Sodabottle and Surya Prakash.
- 'Wikipedia Takes Kolkata /Kolkata Photo Walk (18 Dec
2011) : A Photo Walk was organised in Kolkata, West Bengal [11] by
Kalyan Sarkar (Kolkata SIG Chair), Jayanta Nath (Bengali SIG Chair) and
Biswarup Ganguly. Around 437 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
as a part of this initiative.[12]
- GLAMcamp Amsterdam Noopur Raval ( Delhi SIG Chair and GLAM enthusiastic) attended GLAM worskop in Amsterdam, hosted by Wikimedia Nederland. [13]
- Wikipedians participation in CMDA IT Expo , 2011:
Indian Wikipedians participated in the annual CMDA IT Expo 2011,
Pune.[14] The stall were manned by Sudhanwa Jogalekar ( EC member),
Mahitgar ( Marathi SIG Chair), Ashwin Baindur ( English SIG Chair) ,
Hisham Mundol and Nitika Tandon ( WMF India Programs), and Campus
Ambassador (IEP) volunteers.
- Malayalam Wiki-Academies: Malayalam Wiki-community
organised two Wiki-Academies in Kerala in the month of December at
Alappuzha ( Dec 13) and Kollam (Dec 31). The Alappuzha (2nd Wikiacademy)
held at St.Joseph Vanitha College was led by Adv. T.K Sujith, Adv.
M.P.Manojkumar and Akhil Krishnan. The Kollam (4th Wikiacademy) held at
Govt. Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, was led by Kiran Gopi (
User:Kiran_Gopi) , Faud A.J. ( User:Faudaj) , Kannan Shanmugam (
User:Fotokannan)and Sugeesh ( User:Sugeesh)
Other News
- A new initiative named "Featured Wikimedian was started on the public wiki of Wikimedia India. Every month, one Indian wikimedian will be featured. [15]
- Tamil Wikimedia contest: The Tamil Wikimedia community
has organised an international contest to get more photos, videos and
audios related to Tamil, Tamilians and Tamil culture to the Tamil
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. [16] (themed “Eluthu mattum arivanru”
or “Knowledge beyond text”) . The Tamil Wikipedia Community and the
Wikimedia Foundation have jointly sponsored a prize money of $850 (with
nine prizes) for winners. (The first, second and third prizes are $200,
$100 and $50. Three prizes of $100 each are for those uploading the
maximum number of quality entries. A special prize of $150 is for media
files on traditional Tamil arts and crafts. Winners would be announced
on March 15, 2012 and they would get certificates with their entries
displayed on the front pages of Tamil Wiki projects. The contest (,
November 15, 2011 to February 29, 2012) is open to all and is on
Facebook [17].
- India Wikipedians Sengai Podhuvan , Karthik Nadar and Aniruddha Kumar joins Jimmy Wales among others in the Wikimedia Fundraising 2011 banners [18].
- New Mailing lists are created for Gujarati
Wikipedia[19], Assamese Wikipedia [20], GLAM India [21] and India
related content on English Wikipedia & related projects. [22].
Milestones & Anniversaries
December 2011 [23]
- 25
- 21
- 18
- The Bengali Wiktionary has reached 2,000 entries, as a user adds over 1,300 entries for Malagasy words in 5 hours.
- 16
- 9
- 5
- 4
Media Coverage
We look forward to your continued support and active participation.
Best,