Digital Natives Blog
Transformaking 2015 : International Summit on Critical and Transformative Making, Yogyakarta
Transformaking 2015 brought together makers, scientist, hackers, bricoleurs, researchers, artists, designers and other interdisciplinary practitioners from across the globe in a series of Residency and Research Program, Symposium, Exhibition, Fair, and Satellite Projects. It was held from August 10 to September 20, 2015. Transformaking 2015 was organized by HONF Foundation & CATEC (Culture Arts Technoloy Empowerment Community) in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Common Room, Crosslab, and Nicelab.
International Open Data Charter: Comments by CIS
The second meeting of Stewards of the International Open Data Charter is in progress in Santiago, Chile, where the revisions made to the Charter based on the comments received during the public consultation period that ended on July 31, 2015, are being re-discussed and finalised by the Stewards. Here we are sharing the comments submitted by us on the first public draft of the Charter published during the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in May 2015. The comments include those submitted by Sumandro and Sharath Chandra Ram.
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.
