Blog
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group
- June 29, 2015
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.
Read more →Magic words in Wikipedia
- July 29, 2015
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.
Read more →Train the Trainer: Running effective outreach activities in India
- July 30, 2015
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.
Read more →Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report
- June 16, 2015
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.
Read more →Indian government includes open source in RFPs
- August 23, 2015
The Government of India has implemented a remarkable new policy-level change for open source software (OSS) deployment.
Read more →FOSS for Public Use: Free and Open Source Software for Digital India
- July 09, 2015
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.
Read more →International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft
- May 29, 2015
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.
Read more →How to do GuerillaGLAM
- May 28, 2015
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.
Read more →Knowledge Sharing Workshop with MIDO and Joosk
- June 18, 2015
Sumandro Chattapadhyay led a knowledge sharing workshop with members of Myanmar ICT Development Organisation (MIDO) and Joosk, a design firm that works closely with MIDO.
Read more →Right to Information Act and Open Data Policy in India
- June 18, 2015
Sumandro led a knowledge sharing session at this event organized by Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO) on May 14, 2015.
Read more →