Digital Natives Blog
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report
CIS facilitated a workshop on open data policy and tools for government officials from Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and those from Bhutan and Maldives, in June 2015. The workshop was co-facilitated with Akvo, DataMeet, and Mapbox, and was supported by International Centre for Human Development of UNDP India. Here we share the workshop report and other related documents. The report is written by Sumandro, along with Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo.
Survey of Estimates of Economic Value of Open Government Data
This is a survey of estimates of economic value of open government data, and public sector information in general, across regions, countries, and sectors offered by several reports published during the last decade. The survey is undertaken by Ömer Faruk Sarı, a student of Business Administration at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, and research intern with CIS.
Journalism Students of the SDM College Ujire Enrich Karnataka’s Folklore And Folk Art in Kannada Wikipedia
As part of an ongoing partnership with the Shree Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College Ujjire, with active support from a few Kannada Wikipedia editors, CIS-A2K began an outreach programme so that the journalism students could help many Kannada readers about Karnataka’s rich folklore and folk art.
Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore to bring Tulu Wikipedia live
A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th to encourage more Tulu-language speakers to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is is currently in the Incubator but the enthusiastic editor community is putting their best effort to bring it live out of Incubator. This edit-a-thon is one of the many activities the Tulu Wikimedia community has organised.
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group
This is a guest post by Wikimedian Sailesh Patnaik who has been a ardent contributor in Odia-language Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and has led outreach and partnership building initiatives to grow the Wikimedia projects in Odia and other Indian languages. In this post Sailesh shares his personal experience from his interaction at the Google Extended I/O organised by Google Developer Group in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. All the views are author’s personal views.
Magic words in Wikipedia
The struggle of finding solutions for replacing and retrieving content /words/facts and figures, in this day and age of machines that seem to know everything should ideally be a non-issue. Yet, for many of us who write reports based on the data available at that moment, it is nothing less than a nightmare to come to know that there has been a significant change in the data with which our reports have been written.
Train the Trainer: Running effective outreach activities in India
It is heartening to report that many Wikimedia projects in Indian languages have sustained, and even experienced an upward trend in, editor engagement. However, in terms of content creation, the majority of these projects are still facing grave challenges that put their very existence at risk.
Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report
The roles of intermediaries in open data is insufficiently explored; open data intermediaries are often presented as single and simple linkages between open data supply and use. This synthesis research paper offers a more socially nuanced approach to open data intermediaries using the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s social model, in particular, his concept of species of capital as informing social interaction... Because no single intermediary necessarily has all the capital available to link effectively to all sources of power in a field, multiple intermediaries with complementary configurations of capital are more likely to connect between power nexuses. This study concludes that consideration needs to be given to the presence of multiple intermediaries in an open data ecosystem, each of whom may possess different forms of capital to enable the use and unlock the potential impact of open data.
Indian government includes open source in RFPs
The Government of India has implemented a remarkable new policy-level change for open source software (OSS) deployment.
FOSS for Public Use: Free and Open Source Software for Digital India
I attended a round-table meeting on May 29, 2015 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The meeting was organized by SFLC in collaboration with the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software, and the Centre for Internet & Society.
International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft
The first public draft of the International Open Data Charter was released at the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, May 28-29, 2015. It is being developed by a range of organisations led by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Open Data Working Group (co-chaired by Government of Canada and the Web Foundation), the Government of Mexico, the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network, and Omidyar Network. CIS has contributed comments to a previous version of the draft, and also took part in the pre-release meeting of potential stewards of the Charter on May 26 in Ottawa. Here is the text of the draft Charter. Please visit opendatacharter.net/charter/ to submit your comments.
How to do GuerillaGLAM
A proposal titled How to do GuerrillaGLAM" that I had submitted for the Wikimania 2015 has been accepted. I will be presenting this on July 18.
Open Street Map "Mapping Workshop"
I conducted a workshop titled "OpenStreetMap Mapping Workshop" on Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at Phandeeyar. The workshop was attended by 20 enthusiasts. This involved organisations that work on resource issues, mostly on land grabbing, a start-up company that is planning to offer location-based local news feeds, a representative of MIDO, and an organisation that sells children’s books.
Odia Wikipedia Set to Celebrate 13 Years of Volunteer Contributions
Odia Wikipedia, one of the first of several Indian language Wikipedia projects, is ready to celebrate 13 glorious years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.
What is the Open Data Movement & Why Does it Matter?
I gave a talk at this event organized by Phandeeyar on May 13, 2015 in Yangon. About 25 delegates attended the event.
Wikipedia Campus at Oxford College
CIS-A2K collaborated with the Oxford College of Engineering, Bommanahalli, Bangalore on April 24, 2015 for introducing Wikimedia projects at their institution. Radhakrishna, a senior Wikimedian from Bangalore provided the crucial introduction and worked closely with the A2K team in conducting all the activities.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଅସୁବିଧା
This paper was presented at the 2nd National Language Seminar by CIS-A2K Pogramme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi. In the paper, Panigrahi discusses about the hindrances of mass use of Odia language on the internet and how that is impacting in overall contribution of people in the language.
Patterns of Gender Aggression and Harassment in Open Tech and Open Culture Communities Online
Report on the talk delivered by me at Adacamp held in Montreal, Canada on April 13-14, 2015.
2nd National Language Conference, Bhubaneswar
Institute of Odia Studies and Research organised 2nd National Language Conference beginning on Monday, March 30, 2015 and ending on April 2, 2015 at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. This conference was organised in collaboration with the Department of Tourism and Culture. I presented a paper in Odia language in this conference as part of a panel discussion related to Odia language computing.
Hindustani Language: We Are Wikipedia
In 2014, the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) embarked on a new social media-based initiative - WeAreWikipedia. The aim of the project was "One Wikimedian every week to tell untold community stories on Twitter".
