Centre for Internet and Society

First Urdu Wikipedia Workshop at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad

syed — 2014-04-07T01:06:31Z

During the second week of February, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore received a call from Dr Faheemuddin, Assistant Professor, Department of Translation Studies, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad requesting an Urdu Wikipedia Workshop in University. We were informed of special interest of Dr Zafaruddin , Head, Department of Translation studies in holding the event as any effort aimed at expanding the Urdu Wikipedia will benefit the Urdu language community across the world.

The event was covered by Taemeer News, Aalami Akhbar, and Firokhabar on March 5, 2014.

During the course of discussion and further communication, CIS agreed to hold a day-long workshop for about 20-30 students. The day-long workshop was scheduled on March 4, 2013 for 28 students. These students came from different levels such as MA, M Phil and Ph D offered by the Department of Translation Studies. All the participating students had opened their accounts on Urdu Wikipedia prior to the event. They were well-versed in the Unicode typing for Urdu.

Prof. Mohammed Zafaruddin said during the inaugural session that the Dept. of Translation Studies wants its students to impart training for writing material for Urdu Wikipedia so that Urdu could be made compatible with the modern technology. Later, Mr. Vishnu Vardhan, Director, Access to Knowledge, addressed the students through Skype. He told that Wikipedia has become an important source of communicating information. Millions of people throughout the world are getting information through Wikipedia in 287 languages. Urdu is an important language of the world, the speakers of which are spread all over the world. In view of its importance, it is obligatory on the part of Urdu speakers to preserves their language and culture by using and contributing to Urdu Wikipedia.

The initial session of the workshop included a general introduction to Wikipedia, the encyclopaedic content it showcases and the ways in which the students can contribute. This was followed by a practical demonstration round. For this purpose, the students witnessed the creation of the article on the famous Urdu poet and Bollywood lyricist Kaif Bhopali. It was pointed out that while the English Wikipedia already had article on the poet, Urdu Wikipedia got its version only during the current workshop. The students were later surprised to see that in the context of many Urdu poets, more content was available on Wikipedia in English than in Urdu. In the case of some of the famous poets, even an article entry is missing in the Urdu Wikipeda while English Wikipedia has full length articles.

During the hands-on session, each of the students was given a bitly link of an Urdu Wikipedia article. The students were asked to edit the article and expand the content. The students enthusiastically participated in the event with some of them creating their own articles. They also asked questions pertaining to an advanced level of editing such as uploading images. A student named Mohammed Asif had taken pictures of the event which he later uploaded on Wikimedia Commons (http://bitly.com/urduworkshop).

The departmental staff present on the occasion included Dr. Mohammed Khaled Mubbashir-Uz-Zafar, Associate Professor, Dr. Mohammed Junaid Zakir, Dr. Khakashan Lateef (Asst. Professors), Prof. Syed Khwaja Moinuddin and Dr. Shaik Sadi Arshad (Translator). Convener of the workshop, Dr. Faheemuddin Ahmed, proposed vote of thanks.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-urdu-wikipedia-workshop-hyderabad

Workshop on Open Data for Human Development

sumandro — 2015-06-02T15:34:06Z

Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Sunil Abraham will take part in the workshop being organised for government officials from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Tripura, by the International Centre for Human Development (IC4HD) of UNDP India, during June 3-6, 2015. The workshop will be held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies Campus in Bengaluru. Sunil will be one of the panelists in the opening discussion on 'data and transparency in governance,' and Sumandro will provide input for and lead the sessions on developing the draft implementation plan for the Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy. Sumandro worked with the IC4HD team to design the objectives and the agenda of the workshop.

Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy

Government of Sikkim passed the SODAA Policy in 2014 so as to streamline and open up the availability of “authentic data to buttress the achievements of the Government of Sikkim and to gather data on key metrics to be able to spur growth in all the areas of human development.” The Policy mandates setting up an open data portal, hosted by the State Data Centre of Sikkim, where data contributed by all the state government agencies will reside, and from which the same data will be made openly accessible to government agencies, non-government organisations, and private individuals alike. Only data that is shareable – data that is not part of negative list prepared by any government agency – and that is non-sensitive – data that does not contain information that can be used to identify any private individual – will be made available through this Sikkim open data portal. The Department of Information Technology of the Government of Sikkim has been assigned the role of being the nodal agency for coordinating and monitoring the implementation “of policy through close collaboration with all State Government Departments and agencies.”

Objectives of the Workshop

The Government of Sikkim understands that data collection, management, and reporting processes at the different departments must go through a structural reconfiguration before systematic and sustainable publication of data through this open data portal can be possible. This work will of course involve a long duration of change, and participation of a wide range of actors. The International Centre for Human Development, at UNDP India, is organising this workshop for Sikkim government officials to conceptualise and develop the outlines of an action strategy towards this goal of streamlining data acquisition and publication processes across government departments.

Discussions in this workshop will focus on the activities of four departments of the Government of Sikkim – Department of Health, Rural Management and Development Department (RMDD), Human Resource Development Department (HRDD), and Department of Agriculture. At least two officials from each of these departments would take part in the workshop. Apart from these departments, officials from Department of Information Technology (DIT), Department of Economic Statistics, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DESME), and others, will also participate.

Apart from government officials from Sikkim, those from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, and Tripura will also attend the workshop, so as to think ahead towards their respective open data initiatives.

Agenda of the Workshop

Day 1: June 3, 2015

Time	Session
0930-1000	Welcome and Introductions A.K. Shiva Kumar, Director, IC4HD P.D. Rai, Honourable Member of Parliament (LS) from Sikkim
1000-1100 Session 1	Panel Discussion Data and Transparency in Governance Moderator: P. D. Rai Panellists: Srivatsa Krishna, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka B. Gangaiah, Additional Director General, Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society
1100-1130 Session 2	Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy Moderator: P. D. Rai Presentation by: T. Samdup, Joint Director, Department of Information Technology, Sikkim
1130-1200	Tea Break
1200-1300 Session 3	Implementing an Open Data Policy - Key Components Moderator: A. K. Shiva Kumar Presentation by: Sumandro Chattapadhyay, The Centre for Internet and Society
1300-1400	Lunch
1400-1430 Session 4	Group Exercise 1 Challenges of Opening up Government Data in Sikkim Facilitated by: Sumandro Chattapadhyay
1430-1530 Session 5	Mobile Phone-based Data Collection Introduction to Akvo FLOW Moderator: Meenaz Munshi, IC4HD Presentation by: Joy Ghosh and Amitangshu Acharya, AKVO
1530-1600	Tea Break
16:00-1730 Session 6	Group Exercise 2 Collecting Data Using Akvo FLOW Facilitated by: Joy Ghosh and Amitangshu Acharya, AKVO

Day 2: June 4, 2015

Time	Session
0930-1000 Session 7	Analysing, Visualising, and Publishing Data Moderator: Amitangshu Acharya Presentation by: Thejesh GN, DataMeet
1000-1045 Session 8	Collecting, Visualising, and Publishing Geographic Data Moderator: Amitangshu Acharya Presentation by: Shiv Ramachandran, MapBox
1045-1145 Session 9	Group Exercise 3 Organising, Analysing, Visualising, and Publishing Data Facilitated by: Thejesh GN and Shiv Ramachandran
1145-1200	Tea Break
1200-1300	Group Exercise 3 Organising, Analysing, Visualising, and Publishing Data (Continued)
1300-1400	Lunch
1400-1500 Session 10	Open Data and Health Management Presentation by: Dr. Shiban Ganju, Consultant, Ingalls Health, Harvey, Illinois, Chicago; Chair, Atrimed Health Consulting, Bangalore
1500-1600 Session 11	Open Data and Primary Education Presentation by: Gautam John, Karnataka Learning Partnership

Day 3: June 5, 2015

Time	Session
0930-1030 Session 12	Panel Discussion Regional Experiences and Reflections on Open Data Panellists: representative from Bhutan, and from Meghalaya
1030-1115 Session 13	Implementing National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy Presentation by: D. P. Misra, National Informatics Centre
1115-1130 Session 14	Group Exercise 4 Drafting the SODAAP Implementation Plan Facilitated by: Sumandro Chattapadhyay
1130-1200	Tea Break
1200-1300	Group Exercise 4 Drafting the SODAAP Implementation Plan (Continued)
1300-1400	Lunch
1400-1500 Session 15	Group Presentations Draft SODAAP Implementation Plan Moderator: P. D. Rai Facilitated by: Sumandro Chattapadhyay
1500-1530	Wrap-Up and Vote of Thanks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/workshop-on-open-data-for-human-development-2015-06

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha

Jadine Lannon — 2012-10-10T07:15:27Z

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The workshop aims to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

The following are the summaries of the Habits of Living Thinkathon’s PechaKucha presentations. These are short introductions presented by the participants on their research interests and how they are grappling with the questions posed by the themes of the Thinkathon:

Rijuta Mehta begins the discussion on a serious note by bringing up critical issues of violent Hindu nationalism and citizenship, demonstrating how community networks are being formed around injury from an imagined "other". She also argues that technology allows the soldier to become an agent of civic violence, and discusses how networks make civic malfunctions mobile. In a post-9/11 world, internet platforms have created spaces where global and local hate-speech can cross-pollinate. Rijuta grapples with a question posed online: Where is the Hindu Holocaust Museum? For Ritjuta, this museum actually is located in the networks that ask this question.

Joshua Neves continues the discussion by sharing his thoughts on producing a different kind of self-relationality through media archipelagos. Inspired by island studies, Neves encourages us to think of a set of relations between islands, an alternative cartography of relationships. Drawing from sources as diverse as ephemeral film festivals across the world, Neves ask us: what does it mean to become each others' reference?

Maesy Angelina brings the discussion to the domain of popular culture. While people try to romanticize networks as a site of activist resistance, the reality of the situation is that the majority of tweets produced are about celebrities. Instead of viewing this as deafening banality of the masses, Angelina questions the claim that pop-culture consumers can only be mindless. She suggests that celebrities can actually serve as a medium for citizenship expression of the masses, especially in the Indonesian context. Celebrities may be surrogates for citizen practice. Her presentation encourages us to think about alternative discourses beyond the lexicon of the Academy and 'activism' as we understand it.

Namita Malhotra follows by reviewing cultural texts produced in India, with a particular emphasis on how particular stories of India tie up with meta-narratives of technology. She shows how these texts provide a space in which we can think about our affective relationships with technology.

Deepak Menon asks: how do we build knowledge networks? This is particularly pertinent for NGO groups like his own who are trying to do their work without necessarily getting into a donor relationship with the groups he works with. He is concerned with what happens to the networks if the donors move out. Deepak challenges us to think about important practical questions about networks, including the historical nature of networks, whether networks create knowledge that is network-specific, and how online networks differ from offline networks.

Eivind Rossaak encourages us to think of archives in motion. Archives are traditionally viewed as working towards the preservation of objects and knowledge that are static in time — making the preservation of technological artifacts very difficult for this archival structure. In order to document ideas and items that are constantly in motion, archives need to be in motion, as well. To help us conceptualize this, he challenges us to think of YouTube as both an archive and a site of construction and knowledge creation. Elvind asks us: how do media and social websites forge new associations between 'human' and 'objects'? We have to redefine the notion of 'life' and 'person' to understand these phenomena and construct a new way of thinking about memory, archives, and identities.

Saumya Pant speaks to us about surrogacy in India, and challenges the mainstream narratives of either understanding surrogacy as a reward or gift that only certain types of women can participate in, or as completely unnatural. To study this, she has spent the last two years recording the stories of Indian women who have been surrogates. Her methods include participatory theater, participatory photography, and life histories. This work is highly relevant, as India is set to pass new legislation on surrogacy in India.

Renée Ridgway draws our attention to crowd-funding, the idea that 'big society' can function on volunteerism. In a crowd-funding structure, the social funding and subsidies traditionally provided by the state in a socially-democratic society begin to be replaced by groups of people contributing their wealth to particular projects. In this method of wealth distribution, those who need funding for projects solicit financial support from their friends and family in exchange for some kind of incentive (for example, an artist may produce small art objects in return for receiving funding). This solicitation usually takes place through the use of social media networks. Renee is concerned with how our social and familial networks become monetized in this structure of funding.

Oliver Lerone Schultz brings our attention to counterculture and how these are created by re-interpreting and queering networks. Countercultures can create contradictory space — images that queer and remask and create new alternative geographies. He points out that physical and social creations, especially images, are forms of networks that we create both socially and physically, and that images in particular can be sites of network creation. Everything, from thoughts to highways, can be seen as a node in a network. He is interested in how images relate to global networks, and how they are both created by them and represent these networks.

Akansha Rastogi compels us to think about the artistic domain. She grapples with questions of networks and surrogacy by asking: how does one creates an exhibition, an archive of space?

Gita Chadha remarks that the two major affects of modernity are the self and truth. Considering this, she asks: where do we position ourselves in a post-colonial context in feminist science? In the post-modern discourse, both nature and the body becomes completely plastic and unbound. Gita states that there must be a middle ground, especially in feminist studies. We must recycle lineages of thought and think critically of the feminist politics of surrogacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-1-pecha-kucha

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 3 Live Blog: Joshua Neves on Media Archipelagos

Jadine Lannon — 2012-10-09T06:04:53Z

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

Joshua Neves presents two areas of his work today. The first presentation is about his research on what he calls “media archipelagos,” a project that was inspired by island studies and grew into a focus on inter-Asian film festivals. The use of the term “archipelagos,” Neves argues, is a much more useful way of conceptualizing islands and “edge” communities—regions that are often thought about in terms of their isolation or juxtaposition against the mainland—than the current understanding of these regions as disconnected or “fringe.”

The idea of an archipelago of these fringe regions becomes particularly useful when we attempt to realize, or even map, the networks that are beginning to characterize the media industries in these areas of the world, especially in the study of film festivals. Exclusively Asian film festivals like BUSAN represent the emergence of what Neeves calls “minor media capitals” in the periphery, which are significant entry points (nodes) in a network or multitude of networks that exist outside of or even parallel to the core’s networks (the implications of the use of dependency theory terms was not discussed). Increasingly, these minor media capitals are becoming important sites of the production of Asian experience and Asian identity.

Of course, true to network theory, the mapping of these media networks, even within the archipelago framework, only leads to the discovery of more networks, or at least ways of thinking about these networks. Joshua asks us: are these networks at the edge or networks made up of edges? Do different networks characterize continental islands and oceanic islands? The only certainty is that there are many different ways of imagining these networks.

In his second presentation, Neves discusses with us another one of his research projects focused around mobile TV in post-socialist China. Mobile television has become common-place in most public spaces in urban China. Public squares, train stations, subways and buses—Television screens, and almost constant programming, can be found in all of the spaces. Many of these screens are aimed towards capturing the gaze of migrant populations, which Joshua finds particularly interesting and has become a major site of inquiry in this work.

Because mobile TV is tailored to time and location, the common model of televisuality as being distant and uninfluenced by the individual viewer has been reconstructed. Specific viewers at specific places are viewing programming that has been created specifically for their consumption, and the experience is becoming seamless, in that the average urban Chinese individual moves from one screen to the next throughout their daily activities. Joshua asks: what is it to be seamless? How do we become seamless? How does homelessness interplay with seamlessness in this context?

In the discussion, participants debated the use of the term “archipelagos,” particularly for islands, because there was a worry that the term did not invoke the complexity of many of the regions that it could encompass. Issues were also brought up with conceptualizing periphery media centres in the same way as core media centres, the structures of power in the dependency theory framework, and whether or not seamlessness could be invoked in the characterization of archipelago networks. Discussions about the habits of living as being temporal or spatial were also brought up, which led into a discussion of habits versus practice and habitus.

I actually found Neves' use of the word Archipelagos to be very useful for the conceptualization of "fringe" networks, as I felt that it was a term that invoked geography more than essence. I was troubled by the use of dependency theory in his presentation, but his reasoning for its use ("I like using problematic terms; they create dialogue") was satisfying for me. I think, though, that we must look closer at the film festival as a site of identity creation. How is this process happening? Why? Through films or the event itself? What type of films, then, are being rewarded? Is this influencing the types of identities being produced? Are these sites also producing restrictions on what is acceptable as "Asian" and asian identity?

I was also very intrigued by the participants’ further discussion of habitus and its relation to the entrenchment of power relations and unequal systems. Development, participants reasoned, is impeded by habits as they reinforce an understanding of the socio-cultural world. Without getting into a discussion on highly troublesome use of the word development, this is a problematic claim for me, as it infers that habitus is homogenous across multiple individuals. While I do not disagree that there must be patterns of habitus in certain groups or networks, the experience of socialization that leads to habitus must be different for each individual, especially overtime as their navigate the creation of their own identity. This idea of habitus-as-impediment also gestures towards a set of habits that are static over time.

This is an interesting claim for development theory, especially in the context of relating networks to habits, as the starting point of development would then be to identify the cultural habitus (i.e. map the network), which would cause the network to fall into crisis. Is this not similar to the colonial process of dismantling local culture?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-3-media-archipelagos

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 3 Live Blog: Akansha Rastogi's Performance on Exhibition Space

Jadine Lannon — 2012-10-09T06:09:29Z

Akansha Rastogi changes the pace of the afternoon session with a lecture—nay, a performance—on the form in exhibition spaces. Using language that can only be called poetry, she leads us through the biology of an image, and asks us to archive the image to the point of exhaustion and non-meaning. Though image analysis, she helps us to think about images through how they are accessed, to read their stories through their creators, their viewers, their past and present and their correspondences with the elements inside and out of the exhibition space—everything but the actual meaning of the image as art.

Towards the end of her presentation, Rastogi switches from prose to a discussion of her work, in which she divulged to us that many of the images she works with are from events that she was not involved in, and that she approached them as an outsider, a lurker. This allowed her to imagine and map the networks that were implicated in the exhibitions.

The participants were very pleased by the form that Rastogi had used in her presentation, though a debate was generated around whether or not it was art piece. Another artist in the crowd interpreted it as a performance lecture, and was critical of the discussion of Rastogi’s work in the end. Other participants and Rastogi herself defended the discussion of the project in the end, as it was useful in helping the participants understand the layers and context of the documentation.

Another large discussion that was spurred by the performance was centered on the method of network mapping that Rastogi put forward, and whether or not the claim that we must be outside of a network to see it is valid or not. Further, participants debated the role that locationality played in the mapping of networks, especially if networks could be mapped from within.

Participants were also interested in the concepts of “parasite” in the performance and its relation to surrogacy. While it was almost universally agreed that surrogacy was a troublesome concept that required further study, there was general contention around whether characterized terms like “parasite” or “epiphyte” were useful for discussion of surrogacy, and if more useful conceptualizations of surrogacy needed to move beyond the use of bounded language.

I was very intrigued by the discussions of inclusion and exclusion in the viewing and mapping of networks. Like many participants, I found the claims of required exclusion in order to view a network to be problematic. I agree that it may be easier to perceive a network when we are on the outside of it, but I don’t agree that it’s a pre-requisite. I think that this sort of “logical-academic” way of thinking about networks—that we need to be in a position of study, which requires an overview of all the various bits and pieces—places networks in an essence of structure that I am not sure is useful or not. Maybe the ability to see only certain parts of a network, which may be a position we find ourselves in when we are part of the network, is a better way of understanding the network, particularly its locationality, its presence, and its purpose, than comprehending it through the identification of all of its parts (i.e.: mapping).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-3-exhibition-space

Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media

praskrishna — 2013-01-31T03:10:05Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Odia-Wikipedia and Academy for Media Learning organized a workshop on January 29, 2013. This was covered in Sambad on January 30, 2013.

This was published in Sambad on January 30, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sambad-e-paper-january-30-2013-odia-wikipedia-workshop-coverage

Launch of Public Juris (An Online Archive of Legal Resources)

aparna — 2015-04-24T12:07:59Z

Aparna Balachandran, Rochelle Pinto, and Abhijit Bhattacharya announce the launch of Public Juris, an online archive of legal resources.

We are pleased to announce the launch of Public Juris, an online archive of legal sources and would like to elicit the active participation of the scholarly community in conceptualizing and building Public Juris as a site where we are able to provide access to material needed for law and social science research in South Asia. We would very much appreciate feedback, support and collaboration as we develop this project.

Who we are: We are two historians (Rochelle Pinto and Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore) and an archivist (Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Kolkata) who are interested in issues of technology, users and access in relation to state and private archives in India (see blog).

The Project: We are soliciting contributions for an online digital archive of legal sources called “Public Juris” focusing on, but not limited to, South Asia. We hope this archive will be a useful and easily accessible resource for historians and other scholars interested in the study of different aspects of the law. We see this archive as particularly useful to students and teachers in South Asia and elsewhere who for logistical, economic or political reasons may not be able to travel to libraries and archives in order to access material of this kind. Eventually, we envisage that an online archive of this kind will allow students to broaden the thematic and regional range of their research.

How it will work: We do not have any strict definition of what constitute legal sources — they could range from acts and regulations to court cases, police records and petitions. For example, one set of records that has already been contributed to the archive centres on disputes over ceremonial privileges between the Valangi and Idangai castes in the city of Madras in the early nineteenth century. Documents that are not usually archived, such as leaflets, pamphlets, people’s enquiry reports, photographs, and advertisements, but which are critical to understanding the relationship between law and the public, can also find a space here. The material could be in any language.

As a community of scholars we are in possession of resources that can be harnessed usefully and inexpensively. All of us, for instance, have material collected from different locations that we have already used for our research or which is simply superfluous. This research could be shared. Since the archive inevitably leaves different traces for specific readings by different researchers, our research material could be put to other uses in other works. Hence, just as the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance has asked for your writings for their library, we would like to extend our request for collaborative energies within the LASS community to contribute to constructing a shared resource. Please do claim authorship of this archive by sharing with us material that you think should define and belongs in Public Juris.

Modalities: If you would like to contribute to this online archive, we request you to either bring the material with you when you attend the inaugural LASSNET conference in January, or if you prefer, send it by post to the Centre for Internet and Society (Centre for Internet and Society, No. D2, 3rd Floor, Sheriff Chambers, 14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore, Karnataka 560052, India). We will undertake to scan the material and make it available on the Public Juris website which is in the process of being constructed and designed. We will acknowledge the contributor on the website, unless specifically asked not to do so. We will also make sure that once scanned, the material will be sent back to the contributor

If you have any questions about this initiative, please do contact aparna@cscs.res.in or rochelle@cscs.res.in. If you would like to contribute to the archive, please do contact us and let us know what kind of materials you would be willing to provide. We look forward to hearing from you.

Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Rochelle Pinto, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences

In conversation with

Pratiksha Baxi, Anchor, LASS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/announcing-the-launch-of-public-juris

Tulu Wikipedia Editathon

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T05:12:18Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with Karnataka Theological College, Mangalore is organizing a Tulu Wikipedia Editathon on April 19, 2014 at Balmatta Computer Centre, Karnataka Theological College, Mangalore. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is conducting the workshop.


Above: Photo from Tulu Wikipedia editathon program at Mangalore on Apr 19, 2014 (by U.B.Pavanaja, CC-BY-3.0 S.A.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/tulu-wikipedia-editathon

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Udupi

praskrishna — 2013-04-26T06:29:15Z

The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society is organizing a Kannada wikipedia workshop at the MGM college in Udupi. Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi is sponsoring the event.The workshop will begin at 10.00 a.m. and end by 5.00 p.m. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja will give a talk on Kannada wikipedia.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

What is Wikipedia?
Who edits Wikipedia?
How does Wikipedia work?
HOW TO EDIT?
What can I edit?
Why to contribute to Wikipedia
Kannada specific topics
Brief on Creative Commons
Hands-on

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-udupi-april-29-2013

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Suvarna Times of Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T06:10:01Z

Suvarna Times of Karnataka covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/suvarna-times-of-karnataka-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-workshop

Digital Security Workshop for Journalists

praskrishna — 2015-03-08T05:25:34Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Mumbai Press Club are jointly organizing a workshop for journalists on February 7, 2015, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. at Mumbai Press Club, Azad Maidan.

Event Flier

The event would cover these topics:

Why should journalists care about digital security?
The threat model: assessing digital security risks and responses.
Security measures and solutions: alternatives to unsecure software and tools, good security practices, computer hygiene etcetera.

Event Pictures

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/digital-security-workshop-for-journalists

Edit-a-thon at DSERT Bengaluru to improve Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia

Ananth Subray — 2016-08-16T08:31:50Z

We have been working with the Department of State Educational Research and Training of Karnataka (DSERT), a Government of Karnataka-run research and training institution headquartered in Bengaluru. With the hope of expanding the reach of Science-related content in Kannada Wikipedia, we organised an edit-a-thon spanning over three days from the 11th January through the 13th.

This edit-a-thon was part of many ongoing outreach programmes at DSERT and had engagement with faculty members from several schools and colleges in Karnataka, and help them contribute to the Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia. The edit-a-thon was organised by the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge programme and 12 educators participated in the programme. In total, 53 articles were created/improved during these three days. With six female educator-editors actively participating in this event, there was a fair balance in the gender demography. More details about the event can be read in the event page here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/edit-a-thon-at-dsert-bengaluru-to-improve-science-related-articles-in-kannada-wikipedia

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

jayanta — 2018-12-10T15:08:56Z

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily

Volunteers from various Indic Wikisource projects took part in a discussion organized by Centre for Internet and society: access to knowledge (CIS:A2K) in Kolkata recently. Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi participated in this consultation on behalf of the Assamese Wikisource which included other Indic languages like Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Sanskrit. It is worth mentioning here that Wikisource is another important project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc operated by Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can contribute to this wikisource project which stores copyright-free books, plays, lyrics, speeches, translated works etc. Such works are first scanned and digitalized and then converted to unicode so that everything becomes searchable. Assamese Wikisource (as.wikisource.org), started in 2013, so far includes various literary works of Guru Sankardeva and Madhavdev, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Padmanath Gogain Baruah, Chandraprasad Agarwala, Amulya Barua, Dandinath Kalita etc. Measures to popularize Wikisource among masses, increasing numbers of readers and contributors, correct techniques to digitalize a book etc were discussed at the event in Kolkata.

Translated from Assamese by Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/indic-wikisource-community-consultation-2018-report-at-asomiya-pratidin-epaper-highest-circulated-assamese-daily

Centre for Internet and Society

First Urdu Wikipedia Workshop at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad

Video

Workshop on Open Data for Human Development

Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy

Objectives of the Workshop

Agenda of the Workshop

Day 1: June 3, 2015

Day 2: June 4, 2015

Day 3: June 5, 2015

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 3 Live Blog: Joshua Neves on Media Archipelagos

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 3 Live Blog: Akansha Rastogi's Performance on Exhibition Space

Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media

Launch of Public Juris (An Online Archive of Legal Resources)

Tulu Wikipedia Editathon

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Udupi

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Suvarna Times of Karnataka)

Digital Security Workshop for Journalists

Event Flier

Event Pictures

Edit-a-thon at DSERT Bengaluru to improve Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia

Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 report at Asomiya Pratidin ePaper- Highest Circulated Assamese Daily