[Foundation-l] Announcing Hisham Mundol as WMF consultant for National Programs, India

[MZMcBride]

Barry Newstead wrote:
> As I have mentioned in the past, we have a lot of momentum in India but we
> have a long way to go to achieve our full potential as a movement.  Indians
> represent 4% of the world¹s Internet users today (and this share is
> growing), yet they only represent 1.5% of page edits on Wikipedia. We should
> be able to rapidly increase this share - across all projects - and expand
> readership in a corresponding fashion.

To what end? What's the virtue of going after India?
 
> Hisham¹s title will be Consultant, India National Programs.  He will report
> to me.  His role will be to design and implement specific pilot programs
> that encourage many more Indians to become contributors to our projects in
> Indic languages as well as English.

Is this position a staffer or a contractor?

> As a newcomer to the Wikimedia movement, Hisham¹s first task will be to
> deepen his understanding of us: our history, goals, values, culture and
> mission. To that end, he will be spending the coming weeks (not months!) in
> learning mode: Hisham and I will be meeting with community members in
> Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore on Feb 23-25 and then Hisham will join community
> meetings across the country as they occur. Hisham will also spend time in
> San Francisco with the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as with
> other like-minded individuals and organizations and he will attend the
> chapter conference in Berlin.

So Hisham has never edited a Wikimedia wiki? I'm curious how much of a
factor "having a familiarity with Wikimedia" was in choosing an individual
for this role. Can you elaborate?

> Hisham will be creating a workspace on strategy wiki where he will share
> what he is learning and develop the core elements of the action plan going
> forward. We encourage active community engagement on this wiki. We aim to
> move to action quickly and welcome input and guidance from across the
> community.

The strategy wiki was intended to be used to create a five-year strategic
plan for Wikimedia. He should be using Meta-Wiki for cross-project
coordination, right?

MZMcBride