[Wikimediaindia-l] Announcing the Wikimedia India Community Newsletter - Edition 1

[Achal Prabhala]

Greetings,

On behalf of Shiju Alex, here is... the first ever edition of the 
Wikimedia India Community Newsletter. It's an incredible effort, and 
we're really glad to have something like this - congrats to all who 
helped with it.

Going forward, Shiju (and all of us) would appreciate help and 
participation. If you are a member of a Wikimedia language, or 
geography, or project that you feel isn't adequately represented, or if 
you'd like to help with design, proofreading and turning it into 
something that works like the Signpost - we'd appreciate hearing from 
you at:

wminewsletter at gmail.com or Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>

At the moment, we're circulating the file in two pdf versions (one for 
viewing, one for printing) and this is the link to the file on Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_2010_September.pdf

Shiju will shortly find a way to design it in html, making it easier for 
everyone.

Cheers,
Achal


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Releasing first edition of Wikimedia India Community 
Newsletter - 2010 September
Date: 	Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:56:06 +0530
From: 	Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>
To: 	Belayet Hossain <bellayet at gmail.com>, Ragib Hasan 
<ragibhasan at gmail.com>, jayantanth at gmail.com, "Naveen (Naveenpf-wiki) 
Francis" <naveenpf at gmail.com>, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak at gmail.com>, 
tinucherian at gmail.com, mayur kumar <mayurdce at gmail.com>, Hari Prasad 
Nadig <hpnadig at gmail.com>, Praveen Prakash <me.praveen at gmail.com>, 
Raziman T V <razimantv at gmail.com>, Francis Simi Nazereth 
<simynazareth at gmail.com>, makan so thachan <thachan.makan at gmail.com>, 
Jacob Jose <jacob.jose at gmail.com>, Rajesh Varma <rajeshrv at hotmail.com>, 
Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia <mahitgar at yahoo.co.in>, Abhay Natu 
<anatu at yahoo.com>, Sankalp Dravid <sankalp.dravid at gmail.com>, 
Mayooranathan Ratnavelupillai <rmayooranathan at gmail.com>, "C.R. 
Selvakumar" <c.r.selvakumar at gmail.com>, Ravishankar 
<ravidreams at googlemail.com>, balasundar at gmail.com, arjuna rao chavala 
<arjunaraoc at googlemail.com>, Junaid P V <junu.pv at gmail.com>, Rajesh K 
<rajeshodayanchal at gmail.com>
CC: 	Barry Newstead <bnewstead at wikimedia.org>, Achal Prabhala 
<aprabhala at gmail.com>, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>, Arun 
Ram <arunram25 at gmail.com>



Dear All,

Our hard work for the past 2 months to release the first version of 
Wikimedia India newsletter is coming to an end today.

Please find attached the Print Quality PDF of the finalized version of 
Wikimedia India Newsletter for your reference. We are officially 
releasing the newsletter at 7:00 PM in the Bangalore Wikimeetup.

This newsletter is the result of the ideas, suggestions, and feedback 
that you had been provided by you during the last 2 months. Finally 
Indian wikipedia community has come together for a common purpose. This 
is just a starting. We have a long way to go.

Each language community (8 communities as of now) has helped by 
providing content about the respective language community. Some 
communities could not join as their communities are not strong enough to 
provide news to the newsletter. Hope they will join soon.

Let me introduce again the Indian Language Wikipedians involved in this 
effort (All are included in this mail thread). Here are they:

Bengali:

    *     Belayet Hossain
    *     Jayantanth
    *     Ragib Hasan


*English*

    *     Naveen PF
    *     Srikanth Lakshmanan
    *     Tinu Cherian


*Hindi:*

    *     Mayur Kumar


*Kannada:*

    *     Hari Prasad Nadig


Malayalam:

    *     * Praveen P .
    *     * Raziman T.V .
    *     * Simy Nazareth
    *     * Shiju Alex
    *     * Junaid P.V .
    *     * Thachan makan
    *     * Jacob Jose
    *     *  Rajesh V arma


*Marathi:*

    *     * Mahitgar
    *     * Abhay Natu
    *     * Sankalp Dravid


*Tamil:*

    *     * Mayoora Nathan
    *     * C.R. Selva Kumar
    *     * Ravi Dreams
    *     * Sundar


*Telugu:*

    *     *  Arjuna Rao C .
    *     * Ravi Vyzasatya
    *     * Veeven
    *     * Sujatha Thummapud i
    *     * Bhaskara Rao Chimakurthy
    *     * Ravi Chandra Enagant



*Technical team*

    *     * Typesetting, template design, other tecnical support: Junaid
      P.V.
    *     * Front and back cover page design: Rajesh Odayanchal



I know that not everybody knows each other. But you will be excited to 
be introduced to wikimedians working for other language wiki communities 
of India. Let this be a new begining. Sharing experience from different 
language wiki communities will surely help us (it is already helping us) 
to replicate the success stories and best practices in other wikis.


So we are done with the first release. So what next?

Eventhough we cannot think of a monthly newsletter now, we need to aim 
atleast for a quaterly newsletter. Taking this point in into account, we 
are proposing a list for regular content collation and newsletter 
coordination. This list will contain the core editorial team and two 
volunteers from each wikipedia. The volunteer nominations can be 
suggested by the respective wikipedia community.

The role of the volunteers from the language wikipedias would be to 
conduit for collating content on events, happenings and plans of those 
respective wikipedias. The community could choose to rotate these 
nomiees as they deem appropriate. Please send your queries regarding the 
mailing list to Arun Ram (arunram25 at gmail.com 
<mailto:arunram25 at gmail.com>).


Once again I would like to thank each one of you from various language 
communities for providing the community news.( from various language 
communities.)

Junaid P.V has done the type setting and the template design of this 
newsletter. Without his support and hardwork this newsletter would not 
have seen as it is today. Many days he was woking over night to fix 
various issues. Once again I thank him for being kind with me while I 
was sending repeated changes that I got from various language communities.

Rajesh Odayanchal has designed front and back cover pages.He specially 
created an Indian language map for this newsletter. Thanks to him.

Arun Ram has done the peer review of most of the language community 
news. Special Thanks to him.

Last but not the least, I specillay thank Achal Prabhala for the review, 
timely advice, and support. His advice has helped us to move forward 
when there were many roadblocks in between.


Thanks once again.

Thank you.
Shiju Alex