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Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-article-competition
<b>This was a competition to raise Wikipedia awareness and help students discover the joy of writing articles in their native language and an attempt to connect producers having knowledge in Gujarati to a wide audience of more than four lakh readers. </b>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><a href="http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AA%B5%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%95%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%80%E0%AA%A1%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AF%E0%AA%BE:%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%9A%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B0-%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%B8%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B0/%E0%AA%B6%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B2%E0%AB%87%E0%AA%AF_%E0%AA%A8%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AC%E0%AA%82%E0%AA%A7_%E0%AA%B8%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AA%E0%AA%B0%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%A7%E0%AA%BE">The Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition</a> was held among 10 Gujarati medium schools of Ahmedabad city in Gujarat with the support and cooperation of <a href="http://www.theopenpage.co.in/">The Open Page</a> publication and <a href="http://www.gujaratilexicon.com/">Gujarati Lexicon</a> in two phases over a period of two months.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Initial discussions about doing something to promote Gujarati language on the internet started when Shiju Alex, Indian language Wikipedia consultant met Yatrik Patel from <a href="http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/">Inflibnet</a>. With Mr Yatrik Patel's intervention we were able to meet Mr Archit Bhatt, the director of <a href="http://www.tripada.com/TET/ContactUs.aspx">Tripada Education Trust</a> in Ahmedabad. </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">After a round of presentations from Wikipedians, Gujarati Lexicon and interested schools in August, we charted out a rough sketch of the article competition. Then, this plan was proposed to Gujarati editors online. Again, without the cooperation and encouragement of long term members like Mr Dhaval S Vyas, Mr Ashok Modhvadia, Mr Sushant Savla and Mr Maharshi Mehta, these students would not have had the freedom to make mistakes and learn as they progressed. Apart from these online members, constant guidance and support was provided by Mr Ashok Vaishnav, Mr Harsh Kothari and Mr Konarak Ratnakar. They coordinated with Ms Hemangini Kanth from The Open Page and Ms Shruti from Gujarati Lexicon to materialize the competion.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Structure</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Phase I: Over 200 students from the ten schools were invited to write articles with references on Gujarati literary personalities (poets and writers) on paper. These entries were then collected and checked by Mr Yogendra Vyas, a consultant to <a href="http://www.gseb.org/">GSEB</a> (Gujarat Education Board) and Mr Ashok Vaishnav.</p>
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<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Gujaratityping.png" alt="Gujarati typing" class="image-inline" title="Gujarati typing" /></th>
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<p style="text-align: left; "><i>The above picture shows a student learning Gujarati typing</i></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Phase II: 20 students were selected from these entries and invited for a workshop on Gujarati typing, introduction to GU WP and were briefed on how to write articles. Once the deadline was over, these on-wiki articles were checked by Mr Dhaval Vyas and Mr Ashok Modhvadia and two winner entries were selected. They were subsequently awarded trophies and certificates in a small ceremony on 21<sup>st</sup> October.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Here is a <a href="http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AA%B5%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%95%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%80%E0%AA%A1%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AF%E0%AA%BE:%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%9A%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B0-%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%B8%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B0/%E0%AA%B6%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%B2%E0%AB%87%E0%AA%AF_%E0%AA%A8%E0%AA%BF%E0%AA%AC%E0%AA%82%E0%AA%A7_%E0%AA%B8%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AA%E0%AA%B0%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%A7%E0%AA%BE/%E0%AA%B2%E0%AB%87%E0%AA%96%E0%AB%8B%E0%AA%A8%E0%AB%80_%E0%AA%AF%E0%AA%BE%E0%AA%A6%E0%AB%80">list of articles</a> written by the students.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Learnings</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Given that this was a pilot program and I have read about only one such prior <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papat_Limpad">attempt in Javanese Wikipedia</a>, we had much to learn:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">It was a wise decision to take primary speakers of Gujarati because their proficiency in spelling, punctuation and vocabulary was good. This may not be possible for students with Indian languages as secondary language.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">While we had estimated a maximum of one month's time, it took us nearly two months to accomplish it because of the huge number of entries. Perhaps, the work should be distributed amongst more people.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The biggest challenge that lies ahead is retaining these editors – we are working to get feedback from students to see how this could have been better and what attracted them about Wikipedia.</li>
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<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/G1.png" alt="G1" class="image-inline" title="G1" /></th>
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<p>This competition has given the community a batch of new editors along with valuable content and we hope to retain the momentum by engaging more Gujarati students further.</p>
<p>Click below to download the posters</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-article-competition.pdf" class="internal-link">Wikipedia Article Competition </a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-images/openpage1low.png" class="internal-link">The Open Page</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-article-competition'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-article-competition</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-11-04T02:12:56ZBlog EntryGujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot
<b>This report analyses a series of meetings and workshops held in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, India during the month of October 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I visited Gujarat for a few Wikipedia activities – including Wikipedia meets in the cities of Ahmedabad and Rajkot, interacted with students and teachers from various colleges as well as to successfully conclude the <a href="http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/વિકિપીડિયા:પ્રચાર-પ્રસાર">Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition</a>.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I visited Rajkot on October 17, 2012 with two Wikipedians – Harsh Kothari and Konarak Ratnakar, both from Ahmedabad. We were scheduled to take up a small introductory lecture on contributing to Wikipedia at Christ College, Rajkot in the afternoon and meet up with other Gujarati Wikipedians from Rajkot and Junagadh later in the day. Fortunately, I was able to connect with Rashmikant Makwana, a teacher at TGS (The Galaxy School) in Rajkot. I had first met up with him during the photo walk – Wiki takes Ahmedabad in January 2012. He had shown a great deal of interest in doing something for his school students. Thanks to Mr. Makwana's prompt response and support, we visited three branches of <a href="http://www.tges.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=77">TGES (The Galaxy Education System)</a> and had the opportunity of interacting with over 100 students from secondary and higher secondary divisions.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with TGES students</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I got to read Mr. Makwana's email only after I reached Rajkot. He wrote that he spoke to a couple of teachers about our visit and their students were very eager to meet us as they had many questions about Wikipedia! I was pleasantly surprised because once we met these students (mostly 11<sup>th</sup> standard, English medium students) we realized they had already tried their hand at editing and even creating articles! So, they had far more advanced queries like how to verify information on Wikipedia, what is the authenticity of information there, questions on notability and so on. Next, we were taken to the <i>vadi branch </i>of the education group. These were children from fifth and sixth standards and who also had questions and better ones about stories of vandalism they had committed on Wikipedia! We told them how Wikipedia was one of the best ways of telling people about their culture, identities, city and language. Besides students, we also met teachers who taught Gujarati, History and Geography.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with Christ College students</h3>
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<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GujaratiWikipedian.png/@@images/6d7409d5-a94e-49f6-9172-6508f80d72ba.png" title="Gujarati Wikipedian" height="208" width="156" alt="Gujarati Wikipedian" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><i>Wikipedians giving lecture</i>.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.christcollegerajkot.edu.in/">Christ College</a> offers a variety of graduate courses. We were connected with their faculty, Mr. Rushabh, by Umesh Joshi from the Open Page publication in Rajkot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I am thankful to both of them for their support in gathering their MBA students! Harsh Kothari, a Gujarati Wikipedian presented on how one can contribute to Gujarati Wikipedia while Konarak helped them in a live editing session. One question that everyone asked us was – WHY do people edit Wikipedia?</p>
<p>So, we called upon Jitendrasinh Chauhan, a long-term Gujarati Wikipedian. He came up and spoke to them on how he discovered Gujarati Wikipedia and has not only gained in terms of knowledge but also friendships that he has made with fellow editors across the state and overseas! We also explained the importance of learning correct ways of editing to these students who might pursue public relations as their professions.</p>
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<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Meeting Wikipedians</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The trip to Rajkot, apart from meeting a whole bunch of new people, was also about connecting offline with Gujarati Wikipedians. Their warmth and day long support in terms of logistics, context and guidance kept us enthused. I extend my gratitude to Jitendrasinh Chauhan and his friend Harsh, both Wikipedians for their help. They have also helped us establish a dialog with Saurashtra University where we hope to plan a two-day conference centered around Gujarati language and digitization.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GUWPvisual.png" alt="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" class="image-inline" title="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" /><br /><i>Given here is a network visualization infographic highlighting the key points</i>.</p>
<hr />
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Videos</h3>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ college - 1</b></p>
<p><b><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_jhc-Ymy5k4" width="300"></iframe></b></p>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ College - 2</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jb6AF89STZU" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Write about your city on Gujarati Wikipedia </b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YJu2-gOHjaI" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-10-31T08:17:56ZBlog EntryFirst Pune Odia Wikipedia Workshop Organized!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized
<b>The first Pune Odia Wikipedia workshop was organized in Pune on October 27, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi recollects his experience about the events through this report.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">Odia Wikipedia</a> (<a class="reference external" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">http://or.wikipedia.org</a>) crossed 3000 articles. After being dormant for 8 long years, Odia Wikipedia emerged as one of the active South Asian wikipedias. I visited Pune on October 27, 2012 to participate in an Odia Wikipedia workshop celebrating this success with the wikipedians and also attend the <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune/WikiWomenDay">WikiWomenDay 2012</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the last few months Odia Wikipedia has seen many active faces. One of them is Suratha Parhi, a very active Odia wikipedian. Suratha reached out to his friends, colleagues and existing wikipedians staying in Pune to celebrate the success with an Odia Wikipedia workshop. As it was after Durga Puja only a few Odia people in the city were there to attend. We saw a gathering of 10 people at <a class="external-link" href="http://www.pai-ils.com/">PAI International Learning Center</a> for this workshop. Abhishek Suryavanshi from <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a> extended his support for organizing the venue for us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prior to the workshop I interacted with the participants to understand their interests and efficiency with Odia typing. To my surprise two of the participants were good in typing in phonetic and Inscript. Suratha took the audience through a <a class="external-link" href="http://tiny.cc/odia">presentation</a> about Odia Wikipedia explaining the history of Odia language, importance of Wikipedia, how to contribute to Wikipedia, manual of style for writing articles, dos and do nots, rules and regulations and validating articles by adding sources. After the preliminary sessions participants started asking questions about numbers of readers, how to type in Odia, use of Odia Wikipedia and various such questions. Suratha answered their questions with examples and illustrations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To demonstrate editing on Odia Wikipedia we invited one of the participants. We helped her to create her user account and others also created their user accounts on Odia Wikipedia. Then we invited Sudhir Patel, a type designer and technologist working with <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cdac.in/?id=pune">CDAC, Pune</a> to introduce Odia typing and <a class="external-link" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing_help">how to type easily in Odia</a>. After a small hands-on training for typing, all of the participants were able to start searching for articles they wanted to edit. Some of them created new articles and some edited existing articles. At the end of the session we shared our contacts to stay in touch. We also showed them <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:">Chatasabha</a>, a friendly desk on Odia Wikipedia and demonstrated how they can ask questions and see the answered questions. New wikipedians will be also connected to the <a class="external-link" href="http://facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki">facebook group</a> to be updated about events and activities. New Wikipedians have decided to meet once again in November for a Odia Wikipedia meetup. Sudhir and Suratha are also planning to organize a introductory session on Odia Wikipedia during the cultural gathering organized by Odia communities.</p>
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<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/o3.png" alt="Orissa Wikipedia Participants" class="image-inline" title="Orissa Wikipedia Participants" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Above is a picture of participants from the Orissa Wikipedia workshop held on October 27, 2012</p>
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<p>More pictures on <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Odia_Wikipedia_Workshop_Pune-1_27_October_2012">WikiCommons</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Press Coverage:</strong><br />OdishaDiary.com, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=37463">Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language</a> (October 31, 2012)</p>
<p>Videos</p>
<ul>
<li>Suratha Parhi explaining about Odia Wikipedia</li>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ib8ULCJ4Xks" width="300"></iframe></p>
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<li>Sudhir Patel explaining about Odia Typing </li>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1cBbYONRlKg" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-11-30T12:44:44ZBlog EntryMalayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update
<b>Three months back, I wrote a blog post (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/) about the inauguration of the Wikipedia education program in Malayalam Wikipedia. This program is the first of its kind in an Indic language, and Malayalam community is doing the program in collaboration with the IT@School, a project of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in schools. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Three months have passed since the last report in English (regular updates in Malayalam) about the program have been shared with the Malayalam wiki community during this period. Here is a brief update about this ongoing program. The <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/">July report</a> was mainly about the inauguration of the project in the Government Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, Kollam, and a few details about the plans of the community regarding this project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Wikipedia education program was inaugurated by the IT@School director, Abdul Nasar Kaipanchery on July 14, 2012. After two weeks, we conducted a Malayalam Wikipedia introduction workshop for the students and teachers of Anchal West School. Almost 150 participants including students and teachers attended this workshop. After the workshop students were asked to write an article (on paper in Malayalam) about any topic related to Anchal and submit it to the education program coordinator, Sateesh R. Veliyam, a teacher in that school. Satheesh is also a Malayalam wikipedian. Students were given three weeks to submit the article on paper. Nearly 100 students submitted the articles and the project coordinator (with inputs from other Malayalam Wikipedia community members) shortlisted 34 students for the Wikipedia education program. The selection of the students for this program was based on their writing skills in Malayalam, the interest in this voluntary project, and other skills needed for this time bound Wikipedia education project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A meeting was conducted with the selected students on August 9 in the school computer lab. As Malayalam Wikipedians knew that the major roadblock for students to start wiki editing in Malayalam would be Malayalam typing (in fact this is the case with all Indic languages) we decided to teach Malayalam typing to students on a priority basis. A printout of the Malayalam Inscript layout was given to the students. The Inscript layout was selected because that is part of the syllabus in Kerala. Students were asked to practice Malayalam typing and learn it within the next two months. From that day onwards students were practising Malayalam typing at school and making a steady progress.</p>
<p>Some recent developments are listed below:</p>
<h3>September 8</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Students are back to school after the Onam vacation. The progress on their Malayalam typing is evaluated. Malayalam Wikipedians, Kannan Shanmugham and Sugeesh visited students and addressed them. They discussed the potential articles that could be created as part of this project. They also helped few students to create their user names in Malayalam Wikipedia. After addressing the students they also visited some famous people in Anchal, other places, and some organizations to collect reference books and other information related to this project. The collection of reference materials from library, personal collections, and from panchayat office is vital for this project as these are the only places from where we can get any reliable information regarding the different topics that students plan to write.</p>
<h3>October 1</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As Malayalam typing and the collection of information and reference materials were in progress we received an important book authored by Dr. P. Vinayachandran which had a lot of information about Anchal. Students who achieved a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing and those who had created user accounts started editing in Wikipedia. On October 1, four new articles were created by the students who had learned Malayalam typing.</p>
<h3>October 12</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Shiju Alex visited the school students to see the progress of the project, interacted with them, and welcomed them to Malayalam Wikipedia. Since all of them had acquired a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing, we decided to create usernames for all of them. So on that day we created accounts and user pages for all the 34 students who were included in the project.</p>
<h3>October 13</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All the students who were part of the project reached Kollam to participate in a one-day Malayalam Wikipedia editing workshop. The program started at 10 a.m. Malayalam wikipedians Binu, Sugeesh, Kannan Shanmugham, Ajay Balachandran, Akhil, and Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. It was organized to assist students in getting started with Malayalam Wikipedia, introduce them to basic wiki editing and other related stuff. Apart from providing support for all basic needs, students were also introduced to "talk pages" and the basic policies of Wikipedia which would help them to get started with the project. We finished this one-day workshop at 3.30 p.m. by taking a group photo. A detailed report (in Malayalam) regarding this one day workshop can be read from <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8B%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D">here</a>.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/Itschoolmal_wiki10.JPG/image_preview" alt="Students attending Malayalam wikipedia workshop" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Students attending Malayalam wikipedia workshop" /><br />Students doing Malayalam wiki editing</p>
<h3>October 14</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Malayalam Wikipedians Sateesh, Sugeesh, Shiju, and our new wikipedian Anathu P. Sankar visited the Rehabilitation Plantation Limited [RPL] which is an important institution near Anchal and is one of the article being developed as part of this project. We met a few key people who provided some references about RPL. It was decided that students who were working on the articles related to RPL will visit again to collect more information about the project.</p>
<p>As of today some of the important progress the main progress made on the project are is listed below:</p>
<ul>
<li>All students have created their accounts.</li>
<li>All students have created their user pages.</li>
<li>Most students created or edited articles that they were planning to contribute.</li>
<li>Students with the help of their teacher, Satheesh continue collecting reference materials on topics they plan to write.</li>
<li>Students continue editing in Malayalam whenever they get access to computer and internet.</li></ul>
<p>Some of the things that need to be kept in mind regarding this project are:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The project is done entirely on a voluntary basis. No separate time is allocated for students to participate in this project.</li>
<li>Thirty-four students are part of this and most of them are from ninth standard.</li>
<li>Out of the 34 students, 7 are girl students.</li>
<li>Out of 34 students only 10 students have got computers at home.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Kerala schools are using free software for computers. They use a customized version of Ubuntu in computer labs. It is easy to configure Malayalam typing in that. Technically all 34 students need to depend on the five computers available (computers with internet facility) in the school computer lab to practice Malayalam typing, wiki editing, and do the other tasks related to the project. And the lack of regular access to computer and internet is affecting the smooth progress of the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As separate time is not allocated for this project, students who are
part of this project are working on it either during intervals, lunch
time, during early hours before the start of the school, or by staying
late after the school working hours. Since we have only around five
computers with internet in the school lab, students need to divide and
share the timing among themselves. Many of them come to the school on
Saturdays and Sundays to participate in the project.</p>
<p>Few important links related to this project:</p>
<ul>
<li>The master project page of this program is available<a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE"> here</a>.</li></ul>
<ul>
<li>The list of students participating in this program is available <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%BE">here</a></li>
<li>The list of articles that students started or enhancing as past of this project is available <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B2%E0%B5%87%E0%B4%96%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%BE">here</a></li>
<li>The progress report of the project in Malayalam is regularly updated <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8B%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D">here</a></li></ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>We will keep you posted about the updates from this project as and when it happens. Malayalam community is planning to complete this project (student editing) by the third or fourth week of November</em>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update</a>
</p>
No publishershijuAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-11-09T18:18:20ZBlog EntryBridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune
<b>A2K team members Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval participated in the "WikiWomenDay" organized by Wikipedia Club Pune at PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus on October 28, 2012. Subhashish unfolds the happenings of this full day free fun workshop.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Globally participation of women on Wikipedia is less than 10 per cent. Women wikipedians across the world have joined hands to boost women's contribution to Wikipedia. Recently the A2K team was in Pune for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune/WikiWomenDay">WikiWomenDay 2012</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a>, the first Wikipedia club in India, to encourage women's participation on Wikipedia, had organized a full day fun event on October 28, 2012 at <a href="http://www.pai-ils.com/">PAI International Learning Solutions</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of Wikipedia Club Pune briefed about the agenda of the event. Noopur spoke about the global contribution on Wikipedia in terms of various topics and how male-centered topics were well covered. Few of the male centric articles were taken up for comparison with those of women to make the audience understand the gap of contribution. A good majority of articles which were of interest to men were well written whereas women centric articles were of bad shape due to lack of contribution from women. A visual <a href="http://visual.ly/wikipedias-gender-gap">representation</a> was shown to the participants to explain the statistical information about gender gap on Wikipedia. Apart from article contribution, male editors were found to be more social and discussed more on talk pages which also bring more male editors on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants were introduced to the basics of Wikipedia editing (five pillars, notability, importance of source of references, vandalism) before they were explained about actual editing. Each of the participants were provided with a computer and one of them was invited to create her user account.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>Thereafter Abhishek demonstrated searching an article on Wikipedia and how logging in to Wikipedia allows editors to edit articles which are protected from editing by anyone. One of the logged in editors was asked to make a small edit on an article which surprised many of the participants. They realized that even they can make changes to the articles, for the first time in their life. Then there was a buzz about the credibility of the articles as they all saw that anyone can edit the articles. So the Wikipedia article on Pune was vandalized and Pune was made the capital of India for a few minutes! The page was refreshed after a while and reverted. This was clear enough to demonstrate how active the editor community is on Wikipedia.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/WikiLearning.png" alt="Wiki Learning" class="image-inline" title="Wiki Learning" /></p>
Abhishek Suryavanshi demonstrates wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of the errors and typos get corrected quickly as someone or the other notices that there is a mistake and correct it. However, there are many articles, especially articles of Indian context which still have wrong information because the number of Indian editors are less. A series of editing for various favourite articles chosen by new wikipedians opened up the window for them to understand how important their participation could be. Abhishek, Nikita, Noopur and Subhashish helped the editors with editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After engaging the editors for quite sometime with editing there was a fun quiz session to brush up what was taught. The participants were asked questions based on the previous session.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Winners of the quiz were awarded with Wikipedia stickers and badges.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/WP.png" alt="Pune Wikipedia Session" class="image-inline" title="Pune Wikipedia Session" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">A picture of participants learning wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012 in Pune</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the participants left after the lunch break. Those who came back then gathered for a Indian language Wikipedia session. Out of the whole audience there were Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Odia speakers. They all were showed their respective language wikipedias. A demonstration was given to show the typing tool. As the editors were completely new to the Indian language typing, some of them started typing using default <a href="http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam">Narayam</a> transliteration tool and some took the help of <a href="http://www.bhashaindia.com/ilit">Microsoft ILIT</a> and <a href="http://www.google.co.in/transliterate">Google Transliterate</a> as well. During this session new wikipedians edited many articles on <a href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/">Marathi</a>, <a href="http://hi.wikipedia.org/">Hindi</a> and <a href="http://bn.wikipedia.org/">Bengali</a> Wikiepdia. After the whole day session there was still some time left for acclaim and fun. The participants were awarded with participation and contribution certificate by the Wikipedia Club Pune. All the new wikipedians registered on Wikipedia Club Pune.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a special announcement for Wikipedia Summit India, Anniversary Celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune. Club members celebrated with cutting a special Wikipedia cake. Rishi Aacharya and Ketaki Pole from PAI International Learning Solutions extended their support for this event.</p>
<h3>Meeting with Wikipedia Club Pune members</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a meeting with some of the Wikipedia Club Pune members on October 27, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions. It was attended by Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of the club brought a proposal about the Wikipedia India Summit, anniversary celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune which is planned in the first quarter of 2013. Importance of a India level summit, plans and agenda, logistics and partnership and sponsorship options were discussed during this meeting. There will be public announcement regarding this summit.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-11-10T08:30:09ZBlog EntryWikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad
<b>CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus are organizing a hackathon for their tech fest — ATMOS on October 26 - 27, 2012, from 6.00 p.m. on October 26 to 6.00 a.m. on October 27.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An all night hackathon to get started in contributing technically to the world’s largest source of free information – Wikipedia. The code that you write (and eventually deploy) will be viewed/used 7,938,026,125 times a month! Write user scripts that fix annoying little things with the way Wikipedia functions. Write bots to import (and accurately maintain) large amounts of information from various sources into Wikipedia. Write tools to make it easier to maintain Wikipedia’s standards and fight spam. Most of all join the awesome Open Source community and have fun!</p>
<h3>Pre-requisites:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Preferable working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript *or* python.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Laptops, which you will have to carry with you.</li>
</ul>
<p><span style="text-align: start; float: none; ">To register for the event, click </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpCalViX1FCc0FwT1g2ZFNqN3FrNUE6MQ" style="text-align: start; " target="_blank">here</a><span style="text-align: start; float: none; ">.</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessEvent Type2012-10-25T08:42:56ZEventLaunch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program
<b>The Assamese Wikipedia community has shown a rapid growth in the past six months from 20 active editors in January 2012 to 29 active editors in June 2012. The absolute numbers might seem low but in terms of percentages its an overwhelming increment of 45 per cent.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This increment can partly be credited to the photography and article contest, conducting workshops at various educational institutions and organic community growth.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though Assamese Wikipedia is still a small project with about 1600 articles, the Assamese Wikipedians have the drive, willingness and zest to get more editors and multiply their community. Their enthusiasm and determination has led them to start with an Assamese Wikipedia Education Program. The program was launched on October 14, 2012 with 15 masters students (90 per cent of these are women students) under the guidance of Prof. Dulumoni Goswami, Head of the Department of Education, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guwahati_University">Guwahati University</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The day before the launch some of the Assamese Wikipedia editors including Jyoti and Durbhajyoti met to design and alter the Wikipedia Education Program for Assamese Wikipedia. It was decided that the entire program will be divided in four different stages which are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stage 1: Introduction to Wikipedia + Introduction to Education Program + Assamese typing</li>
<li>Stage 2: Editing Assamese Wikipedia</li>
<li>Stage 3: Advanced editing including adding references, headers, TOC and wiki markups</li>
<li>Stage 4: Concluding the Education Program</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In accordance with each of these stages there will be set of deliverables expected out of the students which are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Deliverable 1: Create Wikipedia user accounts and user pages</li>
<li>Deliverable 2: Submit a two-page typed article in Assamese</li>
<li>Deliverable 3: Students will select one article each and start editing their articles</li>
<li>Deliverable 4: Students will continue enhancing their articles and will start adding references, wiki markups and pictures, if desired.</li>
</ul>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Assam1.jpg/@@images/e24483a8-26fa-40d2-b814-2b3769562139.jpeg" alt="Assam Wikipedia Workshop 1" class="image-inline" title="Assam Wikipedia Workshop 1" /></p>
<p>Assamese Wikipedia Education Program initiated in Guwahati University</p>
</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">On Oct 14, 2012 at 11 a.m., the program was initiated with an introduction about Assamese Wikipedia and Wikipedia Education Program. Students were completely thrilled with the idea of them contributing to Wikipedia articles and created their usernames during the session. Since students were not familiar with Assamese typing a larger part of the session was dedicated to teach students on how to type in Assamese using Rudali. As a deliverable, students will be submitting two-page article typed in Assamese on paper before the first week of November. Thereafter, a second in-class session will be organized where students will be taught editing Assamese Wikipedia.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Assam2.jpg/@@images/531afaa1-f266-4bab-805d-280bfa654302.jpeg" alt="Assam Wikipedia 2" class="image-inline" title="Assam Wikipedia 2" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Students learn Assamese typing using typing tool Rudali.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All the students have willingly enrolled themselves in the program and have not been forced by the faculty members. Indeed, three students were not studying in Guwahati University but still wanted to be a part of the Assamese Education Program. A loud cheer and good wishes to the Assamese Wikipedia community!</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Video</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Gn2cJStjQSM" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2013-07-26T11:43:37ZBlog EntryWikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad
<b>The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet & Society was approached by Gaurav Prashar, Assistant Dean at Inmantec College, Ghaziabad to organize a Wikipedia workshop. Accordingly, a workshop was organized on October 17, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was quite overwhelming to see the amount of effort the institution had put in to organize this event. It took place in a large auditorium which was well equipped with all modern facilities like projector, internet, good sound system, each student had a laptop with access to stable internet connection.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 120 participants attended the workshop including MCA, BCA, BBA students and faculty members. The workshop included a brief introduction about - what is Wikipedia, who edits Wikipedia, why do they edit Wikipedia, how can one contribute to Wikipedia articles. The presentation was followed by a hands on editing training session where some participants created usernames and tried minor editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">During the session participants also created a new article, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmantec" target="_blank">Inmantec</a>, and have taken it as a challenge to edit and improve this article over the period of next one month.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/W1.png/@@images/6a6632cb-31a7-4770-ad54-1114320a449c.png" alt="workshop ghaziabad1" class="image-inline" title="workshop ghaziabad1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants listening to the proceedings at the Wikipedia workshop</p>
</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p><br />The session was highly interactive and students asked a lot of queries regarding other projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation, when and who started Wikipedia, the demographics of existing Wikipedia editors, edit wars, collaborative editing, how they can participate in other activities organized by the A2K team and more.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the session many students showed interest to organize a follow up workshop where they could get to know about Wikipedia Clubs and how they could initiate one at Inmantec college.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Overall, the workshop was a huge success. The A2K team will be in regular touch with the participants through mail and Facebook to provide editing support. The participants will also be sent regular invites about Wikipedia events organised in NCR. The follow up session might be organized sometime in the month of November. Please watch out for more updates.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/W2.png/@@images/c4fecf43-4bc7-44cb-ac49-f96ef8e1e54f.png" alt="w2" class="image-inline" title="w2" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Presentation being given during Wikipedia workshop held in Ghaziabad</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p><b>Video</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="141" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lOqLqPE-MrE" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2013-01-07T16:30:36ZBlog EntryProfit by Sharing: Anatomy of an Open Source Hardware Business
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/anatomy-of-an-open-source-hardware-business
<b>Ian Lesnet, founder of DangerousPrototypes will give a lecture on open hardware and open source at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bengaluru on October 24, 2012, 3.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. </b>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Dangerous Prototypes</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dangerous Prototypes started as a hobby on a kitchen table, but now five team members develop new open source electronics projects every month. Open source hardware means every part of an electronic device design can be changed and reused in other projects. Despite giving everything away to users and competitors, open source hardware businesses still flourish. Learn how Dangerous Prototypes started, our development process, the underlying open source business philosophy, and how the business is structured today.</p>
<h3><b>Key Concepts</b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open hardware businesses grow by sharing. Companies share design information with customers, the customers create communities that give improvements and fixes back to the company. Sharing is mutually beneficial to the company and community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An open development process is a further extension of open hardware. The company designs products publicly, with active support and input from the community. Sharing extends to design review, improvements, and even testing before the project is launched.</p>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Ian Lesnet</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ian builds a new open hardware project every month at <a class="external-link" href="http://dangerousprototypes.com/">DangerousPrototypes.com</a>. Copies of the projects are available from Seeed Studio's open hardware manufacturing service.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/anatomy-of-an-open-source-hardware-business'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/anatomy-of-an-open-source-hardware-business</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaLectureEvent TypeOpenness2012-10-17T09:58:06ZEventBengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia
<b>Kannada Wikipedia is one of those Indic language wikipedias which has seen many readers coming up every month. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the experiences of some of the very active Kannada wikipedians from the recent Kannada Wikipedia meetup held in Bengaluru on October 7, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Seven Kannada wikipedians (a couple of them also contribute to Sanskrit Wikipedia) participated in this <a class="external-link" href="http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%95%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AA%E0%B3%80%E0%B2%A1%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%AF:%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%AE%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%AE%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%B2%E0%B2%A8/%E0%B3%AB">event</a>. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi from the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet & Society and Jessie Wild from the Wikimedia Foundation also participated in the event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After a brief introduction about the theme of the meetup, Omshivaprakash, one of the active contributors for community building who also solves technical issues besides contributing articles explained the history and happenings of Kannada Wikipedia said “the only reason all of us joined together to contribute for Kannada Wikipedia is because we love our mother language, Kannada.” He explained how he reached out to a renowned Kannada writer asking him to document his own writings and books to become active on Kannada Wikipedia and start contributing. In the recent past Kannada community has organized many outreach events. The presentation for each outreach has been translated and customized for effective presentation. In the past they struggled for the six username creation barrier. Om also spoke about the scope of government partnership for including Kannada Wikipedia in the school syllabus (which worked out really well in Kerala) for which he is willing to meet the government officials. Additionally, he also shared the idea of recording an outreach session and presenting it to the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another active wikipedian, Tejas emphasized the importance of having Kannada Wikipedia as part of the syllabus where lecturers and teachers will be learning to teach about Wikipedia in the classroom. As this will be mandatory, both students and teachers will take it seriously and it would be a sustainable practice. To show the results about 4-5 schools could be shortlisted for a pilot program. Tejas also proposed the idea of including Kannada typing in schools because that is something most people are not taught.</p>
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<p><i> </i></p>
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<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/wkp2.jpg" alt="bengaluru wikipedia" class="image-inline" title="bengaluru wikipedia" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><i>The above picture shows some participants working on their laptops during the meetup.</i></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The wikipedians further discussed about Kannada Wiktionary and how collaborations will work to bridge the gap of wikipedians who contribute separately for Kannada Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Frequently Used Entries for Localization (FUEL) is a great project for creating content on Wiktionary, which will involve bringing new people to the community. In Bengaluru, CIS and <a href="http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsanchaya.net%2F2012%2F05%2Ffuel-kannada-workshop-on-kannada-computing-terminology%2F&ei=8L93UMrzD4iHrAfIsICQCg&usg=AFQjCNFfXFz-D48NPY27lCwY-cx_O4OoSw&sig2=_PkJ_65fL-q5XrczMchblg" target="_blank">Sanchaya</a><i> </i>co-hosted a two-day workshop for discussion regarding the same. Involving more wikimedians for such workshops would be helpful for both the projects, Wikipedia and Wiktionary. “I was always keen to do something for Kannada language on the web, being a software professional nothing leaves me a better chance to work for such a project like Wikipedia in my own language,” expresses Pavithra, another active Kannada Wikipedian who has supported many outreach events and translation projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedians, those who were a few weeks older, spoke about the problems they are facing when searching databases. Even the experienced wikipedians face the same problem. Options, such as having a central place, like a list of templates with little description and templates which could be standardized so that anyone could contribute to the translation and other things which need contribution, were discussed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Tejas, a long-term Kannada Wikipedian discussed about the non-standard nature of the South Asian language wiktionaries. If Wiktionary could be standardized it could be easier to ask other communities to collaborate and contribute in their respective languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Discussion on Sanskrit Wiki projects:</b><br />Abhiram, another wikipedian who initially began with editing Sanskrit WikiSource and then started contributing to Kannada Wikipedia explained the hurdles they faced while spreading the word about Sanskrit WikiSource in Karnataka. Being closely associated to <a href="http://samskritabharati.in/" target="_blank">Samskrita Bharati</a> and contributing largely to the Kannada WikiSource project, Abhiram feels not many people can write in Sanskrit though they can speak because of their fluency in the Devanagari script. People who study Sanskrit lose their grip of it after they pass 10<sup>th</sup> or 12<sup>th</sup> grades. “As Sanskrit is rarely found as a spoken language a lot of ground work and motivation for the contributors are needed to cultivate a community. We could plan for 10 spoken Sanskrit sessions in a month to kick-start before we teach how to edit Sanskrit Wikipedia”, Abhiram added.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherSubhashish PanigrahiOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-11-04T14:03:49ZBlog EntryAccess To Knowledge/Programme Plan
https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan
<b>Pursuant to the announcement made on July 30, 2012 and as reflected in the FAQ accompanying the announcement, the India Program will become a project of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) an established non-profit organisation working in India whose own goals and objectives are in close alignment with that of the Wikimedia movement.</b>
<hr />
<h2>Context to the CIS A2K programme plan</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Between 80 to 120 million Indians have Internet access, and by 2015 that number is expected to increase to 237 million. Correspondingly, between 400 and 700 million Indians have mobile phones, and the number that have mobile-data access to the Internet is increasing exponentially. India is a country with tremendous knowledge resources to contribute to humankind. While the majority off Indians face income-related technological barriers against accessing and contributing to the global storehouse of knowledge, there are a significant number of people in the country who have both the capacity and ability to do both.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For the Wikimedia movement, India represents a largely untapped opportunity to dramatically expand our impact and move toward our vision of a world where everyone can freely share in – and contribute to - the sum of human knowledge. Although the Indian population makes up about 20% of humanity, Indians account for only 4.7% of global Internet users, and India represents only 2.0% of global pageviews and 1.6% of global page edits on Wikimedia's sites. Despite such a disproportionately small presence on Wikimedia, English Wikipedia, our flagship project, ranks in the top ten of the most visited websites in India. We also have Wikipedia projects in 20 Indic languages, which will become increasingly important as the next 100 million Indians to come onto the Internet, given that they are likely to be increasingly using the Internet in languages other than English. Demographically, Indic languages represent a good growth opportunity since estimates suggest only about 150 million of the total Indian population of 1.2 billion have working fluency in English.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 2010, the Wikimedia movement developed its first strategic plan and set India as a priority geography for growth and investment. At the conclusion of the strategy process, the Wikimedia Foundation created a Global Development team that immediately started laying the groundwork for the India Program. In 2012, the strategic plan was updated and revised to reflect experiences from the initial phase of the India Program and changed realities on the ground.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Objectives</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Support the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects (e.g. donations of encyclopaedias and other useful texts, education partnerships and other institutional partnerships) Support India-focused efforts to improve quality of India-relevant content on Indic language and English Wikimedia projects (e.g. university outreach, institutional partnerships and India-relevant thematic contribution campaigns) Drive and complement access to free knowledge across India through alternative technological means (e.g. mobile-based Wikipedia and offline Wikipedia) Help the Indian community and chapter share experiences and tell their stories to the wider Indian and global communities within the Wikimedia movement Generate and document lessons from activities in India that can inform the work of Indian communities and similar programs in other countries Support the Wikimedia community on an on-going basis as and when needed and possible, and by cross-pollinating ideas, encouraging volunteer initiatives and transferring best practices. Partner with formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India, for example, the Wikimedia India chapter, language communities, WikiProject India, etc.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Impact</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In measuring impact, it is important to differentiate between outputs and outcomes. Desired outputs of the CIS-A2K programme are described in more detail in the sections that follow, and are likely to be re-callibrated, given the customised, changing and experimental nature of the work. Outcomes, on the other hand, relate to expected/desirable impacts that the work seeks to achieve. Both outputs and outcomes can only be achieved through a cooperative effort involving the CIS-A2K programme team, the Wikimedia India chapter, the Wikimedia community, and the other important community groupings that exist online and offline. In other words, the goals can be met if<br /><br /><b>Desired outputs</b>:<br />To expand the Indian editing community to 5,000 active editors by June 2015, with at least 1,000 active editors in the Indic language projects. To enable the building of Wikipedia projects (and sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource) while keeping in mind reasonable quality, and have 5 Indic language Wikipedias reaching 50,000 articles, and 5 more reaching 25,000 articles, while also enabling 5 Indic language communities to have 100 active editors, and 5 more to have 50 active editors. To expand Wikipedia readership to 100 million unique visitors per month by June 2015. To ensure Wikipedia is accessible to all literate Indians through mobile and/or offline platforms. To expand the base of India-related articles on English Wikipedia from 115,000 to 165,000 by June 2015, and to halve India-related stubs in the same period.<br /><br /><b>Desired outcomes</b>:<br />Foster a strong relationship with and within the Indian Wikimedia community through transparency and communication, and by providing support for community-led activities and facilitating community participation and ownership Expand the Indic language editing community and build interest in Indic language Wikimedia projects Grow high-quality Wikipedia projects (and sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource) Expand Wikipedia readership in India including on mobile and offline platforms Grow India-focused articles across Wikimedia projects.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Program goals</h2>
<h3><b>Catalyst Project Approach</b></h3>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>The India Program started out as a partnership with the Indian Wikimedia community, which includes the Wikimedia India chapter. The initiative was intended as a means through which the Wikimedia Foundation can help the community grow, improve and expand the projects. This was an experimental effort, as the Wikimedia movement does not have a set of proven programs that can guarantee the growth of a community or project and the India Program was the first catalyst project being undertaken by the movement (further efforts have since got underway in the Middle-East and Brazil). Subsequent to the India Program becoming a project of CIS' A2K program, the aim is to identify pilots that work in achieving impact goals. This will be useful for sustaining the long-term success of the projects and will provide guidance for the development of other languages.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><img class="thumbimage" height="300" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Wikimedia_Catalyst_Programs.pdf/page1-400px-Wikimedia_Catalyst_Programs.pdf.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>Catalyst Project Approach</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Specifically, the A2K Team will focus on testing pilots that tackle the following challenges:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Building editor communities of sufficient critical size to accelerate and sustain growth in Indic languages</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Connecting the Wikimedia community to new networks, building awareness of the Wikimedia projects and how they work</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Building partnerships with educational and other groups to encourage new users to join the community as editors and content contributors</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Encouraging editors of English Wikipedia in India, and strengthening coverage of India-relevant topics therein</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Reaching communities with limited Internet connectivity to create access to Wikipedia's educational content</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The A2K team will answer the following general questions in its pilot work that will help inform program design in India and in other geographies where the Wikimedia movement is active:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Editing growth: Are there certain types of proactive programming that work well in garnishing editorship in India? Indic languages and English: Is there a difference in strategies/opportunities for growth between Indic language communities and the EN:WP community in India? Program evaluation: Why are the programs in India successes or failures? Pilot testing and learning: Why do some program pilots succeed and others struggle? Community partnership: What is the best way to partner with the community in the individual pilots and the overall program? Ability to replicate in India: What are the features/programs that have succeeded and can succeed elsewhere in India? Ability to replicate internationally: What is replicable from the India experience? What are the cultural factors that should be accounted for before expanding? Capacity: Is it possible to maintain the program's activities within the volunteer community or is staff capacity needed? Return on Investment: Is the financial investment justified by the results of the program? Scale: Are pilots that are being tested scalable within a particular community, and adoptable by other language communities?</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Current year plan - July 2012-June 2013</h2>
<h3>General community support and communications</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The A2K team will provide support to the Indian Wikimedia community, which includes the Wikimedia India chapter, on various community-led activities, including outreach events across the country, meetups, contests, conferences, and connections to GLAMs and other institutions. This support will extend to all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement. Henceforth, requests of support from the community and the chapter will be managed transparently and publicly so that the A2K team can meet expectations, keeping in mind that not all community events will seek A2K program support, and that the A2K program will not always be able to support all requests made. In general, community support is intended to solve a problem or help or add to an existing community or chapter initiative; the A2K team will provide any level of reasonable help as needed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The A2K team will also provide services to the community with regard to intra- and inter-community communications--most visibly through the quarterly Indian community newsletter, Wikipatrika, and also through direct efforts to cross-pollinate ideas and make connects between projects. The team will support the community to tell its story on the global Wikimedia blog, Wikimedia.in, Wikipedia Village pumps and use all available channels to reach out to the community. The team also will build a formal public relations plan that will advocate the values of the movement and encourage new editors. In all cases, the communication efforts will be such that they stay in facilitation/support mode, allowing full ownership and participation by the community.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Indic language community building</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The India Program began work on Indic language community building in October 2011. This area is a top priority of the A2K team, as Wikimedia's reach in India will always be limited by language barriers. The Indic language projects remain small, with the most successful having fewer than 50,000 articles and fewer than 100 active editors on a monthly basis. The primary challenge is to strengthen communities to build and sustain each Indic language project. To date, community building has focused on working closely with some really small but promising project communities (some with fewer than five editors) to help them take the initial steps to expand their communities. This will entail supporting the organization and design of outreach events, projects and pilots to aid the community in catalyzing activity. See Indic Language projects for more info on recent and current activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the next year, Indic community building will continue to focus on deep engagement with 7-10 Indic project communities, with the addition of systematic digital outreach pilots focused on encouraging new editor engagement. Digital outreach represents a powerful channel to invite and encourage new editors, especially given the increasing readership of various projects in India. The current reader base is the most logical place to foster new editors. A combination of geo-targeted banners, linking to online tutorials and other training material, supported by online help points such as the Teahouse, will be piloted in an Indic language and then rolled out to other languages as well as the English Wikipedia community in India. Digital outreach will be conducted in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation's newly established Editor Growth and Contribution Program.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Community building will be done by:</p>
<ol>
<li>Encouraging communication between editors through establishing connections between editors, facilitating meet-ups and encouraging on-wiki discussions on talk pages or forums such as village pumps</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Organising collaboration amongst editors through Wikiprojects that are either subject-specific or task-specific (an example of this process can be seen in the Wikiproject to create and improve articles of the 80 most-read medical topics on English Wikipedia that is now active in 5 different Indic languages--Assamese, Bangla, Odia, Telugu and Marathi)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Cross-pollinating ideas across communities by sharing experiences and success (or otherwise) stories in relevant forums such as the various village pumps, as illustrated in this example for Hindi</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Supporting Indic language community events such as the Malayalam conference, Sangamothsavam, held at Kollam in May 2012. The A2K team will also offer support to larger events such as Wikiconference, the national conference of Wikimedians in India, but this will be a secondary focus as priority will be placed on Indic-specific activities.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Content addition/donation in Indic languages</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though the A2K team will work with Indian content in all languages, particular emphasis will be placed on generating and improving content in Indic languages. The team will work to find content that is relevant and useful to the Wikimedia movement that is (a) already in the public domain and (b) contributed to the movement under an acceptable copyright license. Such content will include, but not be limited to, dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias and any other encyclopedia-like compilations. The rationale for making content addition/donation a key part of the A2K program work (with the full consent and engagement of the relevant Wikimedia communities involved) is that many smaller Wikipedias need a 'shot in the arm' of content to create sufficient momentum in the projects. In English and other European-language Wikipedias, bot-created content (an integral part of the growth of these Wikipedias in their early years) was possible because sufficient electronic/digital resources existed at the time outside of Wikipedia. For many Indic languages (and indeed, India-related topics in any language), the same is not necessarily true, and content addition/donation may be seen as a necessary intervention--it can be likened to performing the work of a bot in the physical world, with physical texts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A precedent for content addition/donation exists in the gift of an encyclopedia that the government of the state of Kerala contributed to the Wikimedia movement in December 2008. The gift was received by Jimmy Wales on behalf of the movement and is in the process of being integrated to Malayalam Wikipedia.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">New editor cultivation with campaigns on Indian topic areas on English Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">English Wikipedia is a global resource of nearly 4 million articles. However, only around 115,000 articles (or less than 2.9%) of all articles directly cover topics of relevance in India, and 60,000 of those articles are stubs or articles of poor quality. There is a tremendous opportunity to deepen contributions on India-related topics including areas such as Indian history, geography, law, public policy, politics, art, culture, contributions to the sciences, popular culture, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the coming year, in partnership with the Indian Wikipedia community, the Wikimedia India chapter, other groupings (such as WikiProject India) and appropriate national or regional institutions, the CIS A2K team develop campaigns to promote contribution to Wikipedia on specific topic areas. The initial campaigns will involve focused pilots to develop approaches to supporting and cultivating new editors with strong content knowledge. Partnerships will be explored with interest groups outside the existing Wikimedia community to document and celebrate these interests, which could be anything Indian, from efforts that fall under the work of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs), like handicrafts and art, to movies, cricket, history, etc.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Pilot programs</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In general, the bulk of the work of the A2K program team will be to run controlled and well-designed pilot programs with the full engagement of the communities involved. These will be developed and carried out in addition to projects focusing on goals A to D. The A2K team will actively design and implement new pilots on the basis of desired impacts and stated goals as outlined through this document. To borrow a phrase from the software development world, the idea behind these pilots will be to continually ensure better design, better engagement and therefore greater chances of success, and to maintain a healthy degree of innovation and experimentation that will allow us, in some cases, to 'fail fast, fail early'.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Built in to the program structure is a speedy evaluation of these pilots that will enable us to document learnings from less successful projects and expand and scale-up more successful attempts. For instance, the India Program, in partnership with the Global Education Program, conducted a pilot project between June-November 2011 with three universities in Pune. The pilot aimed to generate useful content for English Wikipedia and provide lessons for the future growth of education programs within India. The project failed to generate useful content and created significant costs for a variety of reasons, but a thorough evaluation of the pilot was conducted and reported on publicly, and many lessons were learned that will inform future strategies of projects in the same genre. For example, in the coming years, subsequent phases will identify scalable approaches to working with professors and students while taking into account the limitations that were evident in the first attempt; focus will be placed on shifting the design away from English Wikipedia toward Indic languages; work will only be added to Indic language Wikipedias or English Wikipedia if it is of an acceptable quality; students’ training will be made more rigorous; greater and more consistent support from Campus Ambassadors will be provided; and any subsequent project phases will be discussed with the community/ies involved in order to ensure greater community participation in the project right from the outset.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In another instance, the India Program team began two small projects on Facebook in April focused on supporting new editors in English and cultivating community connections and new editors in Odia, as part of a social media pilot. Through these projects, we have learned that social media requires considerable efforts on the part of not just a program team, but instead a whole community. Consequently, in order to succeed, the A2K team will continue to actively engage in the space, and work towards making a cohesive, productive social media space across platforms that is driven and populated by community members, including the chapter, who are already using social media as an extension of their Wikimedia work. One potential pilot project that can work with broad community involvement is an India-focused virtual apprenticeship, building on the Teahouse project.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Approach to measuring results and evaluation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the work that is being done by the A2K team is of an experimental nature, it is critical that there are clear objectives, robust program design, strong measurement techniques, rigorous documentation, ongoing performance improvement, constant community capacity building and periodic rigorous outside evaluation. Every substantive initiative of the A2K team will have associated pilot designs which will be publicly and regularly developed with and reported to the community. These measures will serve to achieve five objectives:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Increased transparency with the community and chapter so that there is both visibility as well as ownership (and more active involvement of as wide a cross-section of community members as possible)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Discipline of detailed program design to improve the odds of success--especially in the context of the uncharted waters of virtually everything the India Program will be undertaking--with a clear understanding that for any set of experiments, there will be failure and success, though effort will be put towards decreasing failure and increasing success</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Facilitation of transfer of capability and best practices within a community, across Indic languages and with communities beyond the India-centric ones</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Accountability to community and donors so that a prudent balance is maintained between impact and resources</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Fostering of a spirit of learning and continuous improvement, which can only happen if there is detailed and public documentation, communication and training, and an understanding and acceptance that failures will happen with any given set of experiments and that the important thing is to minimise them as well as learn from them.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> will be supported by a team of five people who will be employees of CIS out of offices in Delhi and Bangalore. The team will be managed by a Programme Director, and consist of individuals working on participation, Indic languages, communication and community and programme support.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Budget</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first year of operations will be supported by a grant from WMF to be administered by CIS for a total of INR 11,000,000. The budget will be spent on team salaries, travel, community events, merchandise for volunteers, and other services as needed.</p>
<hr />
<p>Read the original <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Programme_Plan#Context_to_the_CIS_A2K_programme_plan">published</a> by the Wikimedia Foundation.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to Knowledge2012-09-30T13:25:14ZBlog EntryWikipedia comes to Hyderabad!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report
<b>This post is a report on the series of Wikipedia meets organized in the city of Hyderabad on September 29-30, 2012. These workshops were a a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The city of Hyderabad is not only an IT hub but also home to many English and Indian language Wikipedians. In a recent series of weekend workshops and meet-ups conducted within the city, I had the opportunity to interact with many of them. We conducted a Wikipedia workshop at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, an Odia Wikipedia workshop as well as a general Wikipedia workshop for people interested in contributing to all language Wikipedias. I would like to convey my gratitude to the Computer Science department students at BITS, Hyderabad, Odia Wikipedians Swetapadma and Amaresh and English Wikipedians Tausif and Abhijith for making these events happen despite festivities and protests in the city.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To provide a brief report on the events, the BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad workshop was organized as a general introduction to Wikipedia. The event was organized with the support of the Computer Science department at the college and saw a presence of more than 60 students. It was 2 hour session where 6 students created their Wikipedia user accounts and entered their names on the BITS project page. They were also shown how Wikis work – live and global.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Students were encouraged to make changes to their college article and they discovered how to view recent changes, page views and other functions. It was a particularly informative session because majority of the group did not know that Wikipedia articles are written by common people from all walks of life! The session ended with a proposal to start a Wiki club for their college. The Odia Wikipedia meetup organized on the same day registered 11 participants while the general meetup on the next day had over 20 participants. In all three workshops, the majority of participants were not aware how one could contribute to Wikipedia articles.</p>
<h3>Next steps:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was great to see existing Wikipedians discuss the idea of having a Hyderabad SIG (special interest group) to conduct regular meetings, workshops, photo walks and more! Since the participants have shared their email-IDs, we will stay in touch and inform them about upcoming Telugu and English editing workshops. Students at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad have also requested a Wikipedia workshop and hackathon for their upcoming techfest this month. A Telugu Wikipedia workshop has been proposed for the second week of October.</p>
<hr />
<p>For more information on how to conduct a Wikipedia workshop in your city, you could contact <a href="mailto:noopur@cis-india.org">noopur@cis-india.org</a></p>
<hr />
<p>There was newspaper coverage about this event:</p>
<ul>
<li>Wiki Meetup, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/drumming-session/article3943855.ece">Hindu</a>, September 28, 2012</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-02-13T11:40:06ZBlog EntryPunjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar
<b>After Ludhiana and Patiala we came to Amritsar, which we all know is home to the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of Sikh religion, to introduce Punjabi Wikipedia. The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When we decided to conduct a Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop at Amritsar, the location was an issue. We tried to contact many institutes (mostly colleges) over phone. We couldn't get the permission. Finally, Punjabi Wikipedian G.S. Guglani directly approached the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.springdaleeducation.com/">Spring Dale senior school </a>management with the request for a space to do the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop. Spring Dale is a famous English medium school in Amritsar. The school principal, Rajiv Sharma not only agreed to host the workshop but also made arrangements to bring selected students and teachers from eight other schools in Amritsar to join the workshop. Actually this was a bonus for us since we asked just a meeting place to host our workshop but not only we got the meeting place, we got assured participation from eight other schools and the permission to use the computer lab to conduct the hands-on wiki editing session.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; ">Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh lead the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.</div>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The event started with a formal opening talk in Punjabi by a student of Spring Dale. The Principal of the Spring Dale Senior School Rajiv Sharma introduced the guests to the audience and briefed the participants about the workshop. Guglani took the participants through a brief presentation (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Rnki2r">http://bit.ly/Rnki2r</a>) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Few participants were invited to create user account in Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani demonstrated Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing. There was a question-answer session where participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012-10.JPG" class="decoded" height="671" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012-10.JPG" width="894" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><i>Participants asking questions in the Question-Answer session</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After a short break and students and teachers gathered in the computer lab. Booklets containing Punjabi typing scheme were distributed among the participants. Guglani, Shiju, and Subha supported them with editing various articles in Punjabi. As none of the students was exposed to Punjabi typing before they took much interest to type Punjabi. We were able to see the surprise in the eyes of the students and teachers when Narayam converted the typed words to Gurumukhi Punjabi. However, all the present typing tools integrated to Punjabi Wikipedia have some issues. After getting inputs from users I logged some bugs to enhance it. Bug 1 (<a class="external-link" href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39523">Phonetic keymap update</a>), Bug 2 (<a class="external-link" href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39218">My Best Keyboard update</a>). Hope WMF developers will look into it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the session email addresses were exchanged for future communication. New wikipedians were given pointers to stay in touch and ask questions when they face problems with editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This workshop involving school childern was really a very good experince for us. I would like to thank the Spring Dale Senior School management for the warm hospitality that they extended to us. We are touched. I could see the possibility of doing programs there.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After conducting three workshops for Punjabi (two workshops (Luhiana and Patiala) involving college students and one workshop (Amritsar) involving school children), I am sure there is bright future ahead for the Punjabi Wikipedia if community can come forward to build the community further. <a class="external-link" href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/">From the statistical report of last year</a> we can see that it was only Guglani editing Punjabi Wikipedia. Now Guglaniji and Surinder came forward to build it and we have around 6-7 active users now. For a language with almost 3 crore speakers 7 active users is not an encouraging number. So we need to have more programs to build it further. Hope community will be able to come forward for that.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">More pictures of this workshop is available at: <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Note:</b> Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; "></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-10-04T16:11:34ZBlog EntrySeptember 2012 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2012-bulletin
<b>Welcome to the newsletter of September 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a second analysis by Snehashish Ghosh on the latest list of sites blocked by the Indian government from August 18, 2012 to August 21, 2012, a research on the issues of internet governance by Smarika Kumar, publication of a report on Accessibility of Government websites in India by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, the Access to Knowledge programme plan and updates from the Wikipedia community in India on Indic languages, updates from the Habits of Living workshop organised in Bengaluru, the events connected to the visits of international DNA experts, Helen Wallace and Jeremy Gruber in India, and introduce you to our Access to Knowledge team members. </b>
<hr />
<h3>Announcements</h3>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="visualHighlight"><b>Office in Delhi</b></span><br />CIS now has an office with a five-member team for the Access to Knowledge programme in Delhi at G 15, top floor, behind Hauz Khas G Block Market, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, Ph: + 91 11 26536425.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="visualHighlight"><b>New Team Members</b></span></p>
<hr />
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/staff/cis-staff">Nitika Tandon</a>: Nitika Tandon is a Program Officer with CIS. She has an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands and is a recipient of Dean's Fund Scholarship Program, Erasmus University.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/staff/cis-staff">Shiju Alex</a>: Shiju Alex is a Consultant. His background is technical writing and he is interested in Indic language computing and community building for Indic language Wiki projects. Presently he works out of CIS office in Bengaluru.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/staff/cis-staff">Subhashish Panigrahi</a>: Subhashish Panigrahi is a Programme Officer to CIS's Access to Knowledge programme and works out of CIS's Delhi office. His background is Business Development in Corporate Communications. He works on designing and implementing programs to provide on-wiki and off-wiki support for new editors.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/staff/cis-staff">Noopur Raval</a>: Noopur Raval is working as Consultant - Communications for the Access to Knowledge team at CIS. Having previously worked in the media, she is currently pursuing her M.Phil in Cinema Studies from JNU, New Delhi.</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Jobs</b><br />CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the posts of <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/research-manager">Research Manager</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/vacancy-for-researcher-accessibility">Researcher/Editor</a>, and <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/programme-officer-internet-governance">Programme Officer – Internet Governance</a>. To apply for these posts send your resume to Sunil Abraham (<a href="mailto:sunil@cis-india.org">sunil@cis-india.org</a>) with three references. Archives of our bulletins can be <a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/">found here</a>. Click to read the newsletter on our website.</p>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a></h2>
<hr />
<p>India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:<br /><b>Featured Research</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-of-government-websites-in-india">Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report</a> (by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, September 26, 2012): This is a report on the accessibility of government websites in India. It was published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. The report consists of an executive summary, introduction, methodology, findings and recommendations and interpretation and recommendations. Examples of errors are given as appendices. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Project</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/creating-a-national-resource-kit-for-persons-with-disabilities">Creating a National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities: An Introduction</a> (by Anandhi Viswanathan, September 28, 2012): CIS is engaged in a two-and-a-half year project starting from August 2012 to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. This project is supported by the Hans Foundation. The Resource Kit will be brought out in both English and Hindi and disseminated to policy makers from panchayat to ministry levels throughout India. Anandhi gives an introduction to the project in this blog entry.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/wipo-treaty-for-the-visually-impaired">WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground</a> (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/breaking-news-on-electronic-accessibility">Breaking News on Electronic Accessibility</a> (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): The Parliamentary Standing Committee constituted to study the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill has in its report explicitly recognized the concept of electronic accessibility and reasonable accommodation. This is the first time in the country that these two concepts have been reflected at the level of a Parliamentary Standing Committee in relation to a non-disability specific law.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:</p>
<p><b>Submission</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/feedback-to-draft-copyright-rules-2012">Feedback to Draft Copyright Rules, 2012</a> (by Pranesh Prakash, September 29, 2012): submitted its written comments on the Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 to Mr. G.R. Raghavender, Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP&CR), Ministry of Human Resource Development. Pranesh does a detailed analysis and provides recommendations on Rules 8,9,10, 29(6), 34(2), 37, 71(3), 72, 74(1), 74(6), 75, and 79 (3) and (4).</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Projects</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">Access To Knowledge/Programme Plan</a>: Pursuant to the announcement made on July 30, 2012 of a 22 months ‘grant’ (beginning from September 1, 2012 to July 31, 2014) of upto INR 26,000,000 and as reflected in the FAQ accompanying the announcement, the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program will become a project of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS. The prime objective is to support the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects and supporting India-focused efforts to improve the quality of India-relevant content on Indic languages and English Wikimedia projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-access-to-knowledge-in-the-market-place">Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 25, 2012): Jadine Lannon gives an introduction to the new A2K research initiative. Pervasive technologies have flooded the Indian market and are changing the ways in which the average Indian accesses knowledge but very little is understood about these technologies, particularly when it comes to their legality. CIS hopes to do a research that aims to understand how pervasive technologies interact with Intellectual Property laws and what can be done to protect these technologies from being labelled “illegal” and eradicated from the Asian market.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Event Participated</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/info-justice-public-events-flexibility-network">Meeting of the Global Network on Flexible Limitations and Exceptions</a> (organised by American University Washington College of Law, Washington D.C., September 12 to 15, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>Featured Research</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/issues-in-internet-governance">An Introduction to the Issues in Internet Governance</a> (by Smarika Kumar, September 23, 2012): Smarika provides a detailed analysis to the issues that we face in Internet Governance today. She tries to canvass the controversies in the areas of internet governance that broadly focus around the institutional structures to govern the internet, discusses the evolution of these models against the historical background of internet governance and then proceeds to present the criticisms of each of these models with an emphasis on the interests of the regular internet user.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-and-rioting-edition-part-ii">Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II</a> (by Snehashish Ghosh, September 25, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”). This analysis was <a href="http://www.medianama.com/2012/09/223-analyzing-the-latest-list-of-blocked-sites-communalism-rioting-edition-part-ii/">re-posted</a> by Medianama on September 26, 2012.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Columns</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-deccan-chronicle-sep-16-2012-sunil-abraham-the-five-monkeys-and-ice-cold-water">The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water</a> (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Chronicle, September 16, 2012): “The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.”</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-the-hindubusinessline-op-ed-sep-1-2012-chinmayi-arun-sms-block-as-threat-to-free-speech">SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech</a> (by Chinmayi Arun, Hindu Business Line, September 1, 2012): If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<ul>
<p class="callout"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/dna-india-sep-27-2012-dilnaz-boga-censorship-makes-india-fall-two-places-on-global-internet-freedom-chart">Censorship makes India fall two places on global internet freedom chart</a> (by Dilnaz Boga, Daily News & Analysis, September 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-september-25-2012-surabhi-agarwal-pitroda-seeks-to-put-govt-information-in-public-domain">Pitroda seeks to put govt information in public domain</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 25, 2012): “One government bureaucrat available on Twitter for a fixed period doesn’t make up for the non-existence of the government on social media…they (government) should be available all the time.” — Sunil Abraham.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-sep-19-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-plans-inter-ministerial-panel-on-internet-policy">Govt plans inter-ministerial panel on Internet policy</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 19, 2012): ““The thumb rule with governance, be it international or national, is that coordination policy formulation bodies is a good idea, but we can’t damn or praise them over the process...We have to see what coordination results out of the body.” — Sunil Abraham.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-times-of-india-sept-16-2012-atul-sethi-mind-of-the-millennium-teen">Mind of the millennium teen</a> (by Atul Sethi, The Times of India, September 16, 2012): “We live in accelerated times...The breathlessness of our times is evident in everything — from the kind of movies we make to the ways in which our news and information travel. At the end of the day, our younger generations are also products of our times.”— Nishant Shah.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-firstpost-com-sep-6-2012-china-outranks-india-in-worlds-first-ever-web-index">China outranks India in world’s first ever web index</a> (First Post, September 6, 2012): ““The Internet today doesn’t work according to the idealistic principles of openness, and democracy of information that Berners-Lee envisioned for it, and in India in particular, although the Internet has helped us rethink what the government can do, the attitude is that that Internet can only be used in ways that the government sees fit.” — Nishant Shah.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-surabhi-agarwal-sep-4-2012-need-a-strategy-to-deal-with-web-issues">Need a standard strategy to deal with Web issues: Chandrasekhar</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-kunal-majumder-tehelka-magazine-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-political-war-on-the-web">Political war on the web</a> (by Kunal Majumder, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “The fact remains none of the blockings were politically motivated.” — Pranesh Prakash.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-com-shalini-singh-sep-4-2012-govt-to-hold-talks-with-stakeholders-on-internet-censorship">Government to hold talks with stakeholders on Internet censorship</a> (by Shalini Singh, The Hindu, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-shougat-dasgupta-the-state-and-the-rage-of-the-cyber-demon">The state. And the rage of the cyber demon</a> (by Shougat Dasgupta, Tehelka, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “While some people may see Twitter as akin to friends talking in the pub, others use the service as a bulletin board.” — Pranesh Prakash.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/www-business-standard-rohit-pradhan-sep-1-2012-watch-out-for-fettered-speech">Watch out for fettered speech</a> (by Rohit Pradhan, Business Standard, September 1, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Organised</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="visualHighlight">DNA Profiling Bill</span><br />International DNA experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States visited Bengaluru and Delhi and shared their experience in DNA sampling and gave feedback to the DNA Profiling Bill. Meetings were conducted with lawyers and the plaintiff in the Pascal Mazurier's rape case and with VR Sudarshan and Hormis Tharakan. There was a coverage of the event in <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/cadcbecb0ca4caf-ca1cbfc8eca8ccdc8e-caaccdcb0cabcb2cbfc82c97ccd-caecb8cc2ca6cc6caf-cb8cb3cc1ca8c9f">Kannada media</a>. Public lectures were organised in Bengaluru and Delhi:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/uk-dna-database-and-european-court-of-human-rights-lessons-that-india-can-learn-from-mistakes">UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes</a> (organised by CIS and Alternative Law Forum, September 24, 2012): Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States gave a public lecture.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/the-dna-profiling-bill-developing-best-practices">The DNA Profiling Bill: Developing Best Practices</a> (India International Centre, New Delhi, September 27, 2012): International experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States gave a public lecture. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/public-meeting-on-dna-profiling-bill">A Public Meeting on DNA Profiling Bill in Delhi</a> (by Elonnai Hickok, September 29, 2012): Elonnai has blogged about the public lecture delivered by Dr. Helen Wallace, Jeremy Gruber and Dr. Anupuma Raina.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Upcoming IGF Events</b><br />At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-ig-mechanisms">National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues</a> (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sunil Abraham will be a panelist in the following workshop:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/new-trends-in-industry-self-governance">New Trends in Industry Self-Governance</a> (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m).</li>
</ul>
<p>CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/intgovforum-cms-w2012-proposals">Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights</a> (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/intgovforum-cms-w2012-proposals-governing-identity-on-the-internet">Governing Identity on the Internet</a> (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.).</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Participated</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/second-freedom-online-conference-in-nairobi">Second Freedom Online Conference</a> (organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications, Republic of Kenya in partnership with the government of Netherlands at UN complex in Gigiri, Nairobi, September 6 and 7, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on Access to Internet: Challenges and Opportunities. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/multi-stakeholder-discussion-on-indias-position-in-the-un-for-un-cirp">Multi-stakeholder Discussion on India’s Position in UN for Internet Governance UN Committee for Internet Related Policies</a> (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, New Delhi, September 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/seventh-meeting-of-group-of-experts-sept-18-2012-under-chairmanship-of-justice-shah">Seventh Meeting of the Group of Experts on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah</a> (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting. This was the final meeting of the series.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Talk</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Talk at Yale University (New Haven, September 19, 2012): Pranesh Prakash gave a talk on censorship, intermediary liability, and the way forward. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Video</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/conference-apnic-net-aug-28-2012-internet-governance-plenary">Internet Governance Plenary</a> (August 28, Tokyo, Japan): Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator. </li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/openness">Openness</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:<b><br />Featured Research</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012">Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report</a> (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex, September 25, 2012): Shiju Alex provides a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. He provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Workshop Reports</b><br />Although most of the following workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the report for all of these was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring these.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop">The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012. Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. Long-term Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani also joined this workshop. The event was covered in the <a href="http://bit.ly/UMrDvs">Tribune</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/UMrNTn">Hindustan Times</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/UZhoT8">Punjab Infoline</a>, and <a href="http://bit.ly/OcMANc">YesPunjab.com</a>. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012. Veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani came forward to spread the message of Punjabi Wikipedia among Punjabi speakers.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012): The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012. Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh led the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library">Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian. The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university">Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University</a> (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012): This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur. Prof. Ashwin Kumar from the Department of English, Tumkur University and Kannada wikipedians, Om Shiva Prakash, Hareesh, Tejus and Pavithra played vital roles in organising this workshop. Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. About 30 participants including students and teachers participated in this workshop.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia">Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia</a> (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012): Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-hyderabad-report">Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad!</a> (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012): A series of Wikipedia meetings were organized in Hyderabad on September 29 and 30, 2012. These workshops were a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community. There was coverage about this event in the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/drumming-session/article3943855.ece">Hindu</a> on September 28, 2012.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Event Organised</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/thinking-with-data">Thinking with Data@CIS</a> (CIS, Bengaluru, September 16 – 18, 2012): The course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies was screened in CIS office.</li>
</ul>
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>HasGeek</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the <a href="http://fifthelephant.in/2012/">Fifth Elephant</a>, <a href="http://droidcon.in/2011">Droidcon India 2011</a>, <a href="http://androidcamp.hasgeek.com/">Android Camp</a>, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of September:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/cartonama-conference">Cartonama Conference</a> (TERI Complex, Bengaluru, September 22, 2012). The event was organised by HasGeek with support from CIS.</li>
</ul>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> </p>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives">Digital Natives</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:</p>
<p><b>Newspaper Column</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/www-indianexpress-com-one-zero">One. Zero.</a> (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, September 16, 2012): “The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak.”</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways">Pathways to Higher Education</a></h3>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Pathways Project to Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and CIS. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in nine undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India. Training workshops were organised in the month of September at Xaviers in Mumbai on September 6, 2012 and in Newman College, Thodupuzha from September 17 to 20, 2012. Each workshop had 25-30 undergraduate students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They were trained to use digital technologies in order to think through problems of social justice.</p>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw">Researchers at Work</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects is a global collaborative project to renew the conceptual power of networks. It concentrates on changing the habits of living. The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University is an important locus.</p>
<p>CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Jadine Lannon and Alok Vaid-Menon live blogged about the event:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-live-blog-introduction" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Introduction</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-1-pecha-kucha" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-globalising-lady-gaga" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Globalising Lady GaGa</a> (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-2-water-in-india" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Deepak Menon on Water in India</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-2-technology-and-feminism" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: On Technology and Affective Indian Feminism(s)</a> (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-radhika-gajjala-lectures-on-e-philanthropy" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Radhika Gajjala Lectures on e-Philanthropy</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/habits-of-living-thinkathon-day-3-live-blog-joshua-neeves-on-media-archipelagos">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Joshua Neves on Media Archipelagos</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-finding-and-funding-the-masses" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Finding and Funding the Masses</a> (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 26, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-3-exhibition-space" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Akansha Rastogi's Performance on Exhibition Space</a> <br />(by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-wendy-chun-on-friends" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Wendy Chun on Friends</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-amateur-photography" class="external-link">Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Namita Malhotra on Amateur Pornography</a> (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:</p>
<h3><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/knowledge-and-capacity-around-telecom-policy">Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India</a></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.</p>
<p><span class="visualHighlight">The following are the new outputs:</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/associations-regulating-broadcasting-in-india">Associations Regulating Broadcasting in India</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): Broadcast regulation in India is currently an intricate web, with multiple agencies involved in formulating and implementing policy, drafting and enforcing legislation.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-1/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/optical-fibre">Optical Fibre</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): This unit tells us what is optical fibre, the types of optical fibres, how does an optical fibre work, fibre-optic relay system, and why are optical fibres uses in telecommunication systems.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-1/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/direct-to-home">Direct to Home</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit tells us about Direct to home television, its history, how it works, the programming, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in this module.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-1/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/cable-tv">Cable Television</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit brings you the history and evolution of cable television in India, talks about other cable based services, cable television digitization rule and the end consumer in India.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-1/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/private-fm">Private FMs</a> (Commercial, Campus and Community Radios) (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 24, 2012): This unit introduces us to AM and FM, tells us the role of private FMs including what is a community radio and what is a campus radio.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/types-of-radio-broadcasting-in-india">Types of Radio Broadcasting in India</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 28, 2012): This unit tells us what is radio broadcasting, takes us through the history of radio broadcasting in India, explains what is AM and FM in the Indian context.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/home-1/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/air-and-its-operations">A History of All India Radio and Its Operations</a> (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 29, 2012): This module gives us a picture of the history of All India Radio and its operations. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Newspaper Column</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/organizing-india-blogspot-in-shyam-ponappa-sep-5-2012-changing-our-game">Changing Our Game</a> (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, September 5, 2012): “Adopting 'co-ordination models' like the Stag Hunt could reduce contention and improve outcomes.” This was re-posted in <a href="http://organizing-india.blogspot.in/2012/09/changing-our-game.html">Organizing India blogspot</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Event Participated</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.mach.com/en/News-Events/Events/Insights/Insights-India-2012">Insights India 2012</a> (organised by MACH, Bangalore, September 26 – 28, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh and Srividya Vaidyanathan participated in this event.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/">About CIS</a></h2>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-handbook">e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities</a> with ITU and G3ict, and <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/front-page/blog/dnbook">Digital Alternatives with a Cause?</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/front-page/blog/position-papers">Thinkathon Position Papers</a> and the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/front-page/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-a-report">Digital Natives with a Cause? Report</a> with Hivos. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/cis-analysis-july2011-treaty-print-disabilities">WIPO Treaties</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/analysis-copyright-amendment-bill-2012">Copyright Bill</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/front-page/blog/cis-feedback-to-nia-bill">NIA Bill</a>, etc.</p>
<p>CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-award">National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities</a> from the Government of India and also received the <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/nirmita-nivh-award">NIVH Excellence Award</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p><b>*Follow us elsewhere*</b></p>
<hr />
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter</li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/28535315687/">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="https://cis-india.org/">http://cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<hr />
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2012-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceCISRAWOpenness2012-10-09T06:48:33ZPageAccess to Knowledge — September 2012 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin
<b>This is the first newsletter from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. The issue introduces you to the CIS Access to Knowledge program, the team members in Delhi and reports from Workshops conducted by the Wikipedia community.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India:</p>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">Access to Knowledge Programme</a></h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS. </li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">CIS Office in Delhi</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> consists of four members: <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Nitika Tandon</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Shiju Alex</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> and <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">Noopur Raval</a>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Statistical Report</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012">Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report</a> (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Wikipedia Workshops</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="visualHighlight"><b>Note</b>: Although most of these workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the reports for all of these were written during September, hence we are featuring these:</span></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop">The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012). </li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar">Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar</a> (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library">Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university">Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University</a> (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-hyderabad-report">Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad!</a> (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012). There was coverage in the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/drumming-session/article3943855.ece">Hindu</a> on September 28, 2012.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Blog Entry</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia">Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia</a> (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness">Openness</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a>, and <a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom">Telecom</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i> </i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Follow us elsewhere</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/28535315687/">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/">http://cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-september-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessNewsletter2012-12-14T06:18:01ZPage