The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 811 to 825.
Kannada Wikipedia Orientation Workshop at IISc, Bengaluru
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru
<b></b>
<p>A Kannada Wikipedia orientation workshop was held at the Entrepreneurship Centre, SID, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on 26 November, 2017. The day long event was aimed at adding content to Kannada Wikimedia projects on topics such as ecology, environment, wildlife and sciences of Karnataka. The event was organised by Gubbi Labs in conjunction with CIS-A2K. Gubbi Labs is a research collective and social collective run by environmental scientists. The event was attended was attended by 8 participants of which one member was female.</p>
<p>The participants created six articles and expanded one article. The impact of this workshop was the fact that participants were made aware of the importance of open access data. It helped initiate another similar workshop in Mysuru. Upon sharing the idea for projects like Wiki Loves Butterfly Idea, a participant was interested in starting a project titled 'Wiki Loves Spiders'. We are hoping to take this project forward on Kannada Wikipedia.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru</a>
</p>
No publisherGopalakrishna ACIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2017-12-19T16:16:29ZBlog EntryMarathi Wikipedia - Vishwakosh Workshop for Science writers in IUCAA, Pune
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune
<b></b>
<p>A day-long workshop was organised for science writers at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-University_Centre_for_Astronomy_and_Astrophysics Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics], Pune on 7 October, 2017. Eminent astrophysicist-mathematician couple
<span class="" id="text-1">
<a class="link-wiki-add" title="Click to add a new page" href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune/@@wickedadd?Title=en:Jayant Narlikar|Jayant&section=text">
en:Jayant Narlikar|Jayant<sup>[+]</sup></a>
</span>
and
<span class="" id="text-2">
<a class="link-wiki-add" title="Click to add a new page" href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune/@@wickedadd?Title=en:Mangala Narlikar|Mangala Narlikar&section=text">
en:Mangala Narlikar|Mangala Narlikar<sup>[+]</sup></a>
</span>
, and renowned ecologist
<span class="" id="text-3">
<a class="link-wiki-add" title="Click to add a new page" href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune/@@wickedadd?Title=en:Madhav Gadgil|Madhav Gadgil&section=text">
en:Madhav Gadgil|Madhav Gadgil<sup>[+]</sup></a>
</span>
were among the dignitaries present at the event.</p>
<p>The workshop was planned in three sessions. Presentations and discussions were conducted in first session, while second session was focused on actual editing demonstrations on Wikipedia. In the same session the new websites based on different subjects developed by Marathi Vishwakosh were presented. The process of content contribution in text, images, audio and video forms was explained in this session. The third session was to explore networking with Dyanmandals formed by
<span class="" id="text-4">
<a class="link-wiki-add" title="Click to add a new page" href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune/@@wickedadd?Title=:en:Marathi Vishwakosh|Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal&section=text">
:en:Marathi Vishwakosh|Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal<sup>[+]</sup></a>
</span>
. Insisting the expertise of invited authors to contribute the articles in their own chosen fields in a well-structured format, this session will not only train the authors in content generation but also make them understand the expectations of laymen and common readers.</p>
<p>The mete page of the event is <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Marathi_Wikipedia_-_Vishwakosh_Workshop_for_Science_writers_in_IUCAA,_Pune">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-vishwakosh-workshop-for-science-writers-in-iucaa-pune</a>
</p>
No publishermanasaraoCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaMarathi WikipediaOpenness2017-12-20T02:42:39ZBlog EntryOpen DataCamp - 2013
https://cis-india.org/news/open-data-camp-2013
<b>A two day unconference for people working with data from various sectors to come together and share their projects and idea is being organized by Open Data Camp on March 2 and 3, 2013 at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram (inside Christ University Campus), Dairy Circle in Bangalore. </b>
<hr />
<p>Read the original <a class="external-link" href="http://odc.datameet.org/odcblr2013/#about">published by Open Data Camp</a>. Sunil Abraham is a panelist.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Sessions</h2>
<h3>Day 1</h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9:00am - 10:00am</td>
<td>Registration <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10:00am - 10:15am</td>
<td><b>Introduction to OpenDataCamp</b><br />Team DataMeet <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10:15am - 11.00am</td>
<td><b>Visualizing Politics</b><br />By S Anand</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11.00pm - 11.15pm</td>
<td>Tea <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:15am - 12.15am <br /></td>
<td><b>Why Open Data is Good for Gov and Citizens alike</b><br />Panel: Alka Mishra (NIC Data.Gov.In), Meera K (CitizenMatters) and Shekhar Krishan, PhD Student, (STS at MIT) Moderated by - Nisha Thompson</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12:15pm - 01.00pm <br /></td>
<td>Ignite talks. 6 of them 5 minutes each.<br /><ol>
<li>OpenBangalore by Thejesh GN</li>
<li>The School of Data is open for admissions By Maya Indira Ganesh</li>
<li>Open Mapping for the Development of a Maoist-affected district in Orissa By Kuldip Gyaneswar</li>
<li>Aggregate and Visualize your data with Ushahidi in 15 minutes By Praveen Selvasekaran</li>
<li>DIY Weather Station By Samuel Rajkumar </li>
</ol></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>01:00pm - 02.00pm <br /></td>
<td>Lunch Break</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Room 034</td>
<td>Room 032</td>
<td>Room 117</td>
<td>Room 118</td>
<td>Room 119</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:00pm - 2:40pm</td>
<td><b>Public Problem Solving using Data: Lessons from the Daksh Survey</b>.<br />By Meera K and Rajesh Kasturirangan</td>
<td><b>SSLC data Infographics - Experiences</b><br />By Sajjad Anwar</td>
<td><b>Examining Data Practices: the case of Cyberabad's Publicly Accesseble Crime Map</b><br />By Siddharth Hande, Fellow, Hyderabad Urban Lab<br />Anant Maringanti, Executive Director, Hyderabad Urban Lab</td>
<td><b>Leveraging UIDAI data for public benefit</b><br />Tulika Khunger</td>
<td><b>Analyzing Voice Data of Community Based Organizations</b><br />By Piyush Aggarwal</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:40pm - 3:20pm <br /></td>
<td><b>Cont: Public Problem Solving using Data: Lessons from the Daksh Survey</b>.<br />By Meera K and Rajesh Kasturirangan</td>
<td><b>From Data to Evidence: How Activists Use Data in their Campaigns</b><br />By Maya Indira Ganesh, Tactical Technology Collective</td>
<td><b>Quality of Gov Data</b><br />By Amrtha Kasturi Rangan</td>
<td><b>Open Financial Data: Following the World Bank's money</b><br />By Ankur Nagar</td>
<td><b>OpenData for Non-Profits!</b><br />By Adethya Sudarsanan</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:20pm - 4:00pm</td>
<td><b>Telling Stories with Data</b><br />By Amit Kapoor</td>
<td><b>Know Your Climate: Going Open with Climate </b>Data - Part 2<br />Pavan Srinath</td>
<td><b>Adopt Open Governance</b><br />By Sridhar Pabbisetty</td>
<td><b>Big Data and Hadoop in Indian Context</b><br />By Mohan Kumar</td>
<td><b>Participatory community mapping as a tool for cumulative impact assessments</b><br />By Shashank Srinivasan</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4.00pm - 4.30pm <br /></td>
<td colspan="5" style="text-align: center; ">Tea <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4:30pm - 5:30pm <br /></td>
<td colspan="5"><b>Panel Discussion: What has Open Data got to with UIDAI?</b><br />Panelists - Sunil Abraham, Anivar Aravind and Anant Maringanti. <br />Moderated by - Sumandro Chattapadhyay.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5:30pm - 6:00pm <br /></td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Day 2</h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9:00am - 10:00am</td>
<td colspan="4">Registration <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10:00am - 10:15am</td>
<td colspan="4"><b>Welcome</b><br />Team DataMeet <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Room 034</td>
<td>Room 032</td>
<td>Room 117</td>
<td>Hall</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10:15am - 11:15am</td>
<td><b>Data and Maps</b><br />Kaustubh Srikanth and Sajjad Anwar. <br /><a href="https://github.com/geohacker/data-and-maps/blob/master/README.md">Details</a></td>
<td><b>A gentle introduction to data cleaning from Tactical Tech's course on the School of Data</b><br />By Allan Stanley and Maya Indira Ganesh, Tactical Technology Collective. <br /></td>
<td><b>An Introduction to Apache </b>Hadoop<br />By Mrinal Wadhwa</td>
<td>Blocked for Hackathon</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:15am - 11:30am <br /></td>
<td colspan="4" style="text-align: center; ">Tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:30pm - 01:00pm</td>
<td><b>Cont: Data and Maps</b><br />Kaustubh Srikanth and Sajjad Anwar<br /><a href="https://github.com/geohacker/data-and-maps/blob/master/README.md">Details</a></td>
<td><b>Cont: A gentle introduction to data cleaning from Tactical Tech's course on the School of Data</b><br /> By Allan Stanley and Maya Indira Ganesh, Tactical Technology Collective.</td>
<td><b>Cont: An Introduction to Apache Hadoop</b><br /> By Mrinal Wadhwa</td>
<td>Blocked for Hackathon</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>01:00pm - 02.00pm <br /></td>
<td colspan="4" style="text-align: center; ">Lunch Break</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:00pm - 4:00pm</td>
<td>Workshop-1</td>
<td><b>Designing a Story. How To: Look At Data and Tell A Story</b><br />By Tejas Pande <br /></td>
<td>Workshop-3</td>
<td>Blocked for Hackathon</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4.00pm - 4.30pm</td>
<td colspan="4" style="text-align: center; ">Feedback and Tea <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4:30pm - 6:00pm <br /></td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Unscheduled talks</td>
<td>Blocked for Hackathon</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>Contact</b> Nisha Thompson (nisha.thompson@gmail.com)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/open-data-camp-2013'>https://cis-india.org/news/open-data-camp-2013</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2013-02-28T11:08:14ZNews ItemKolkata Wiki Community Meetup
https://cis-india.org/news/wiki-meet-up-kolkata
<b>Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme members T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi met wikipedians in Kolkata. The event was co-organized by the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikipedian community of Kolkata.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Wikimedia community in the city of joy gathered near Salt lake during Recently <a href="https://cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a>'s <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">Access To Knowledge Programme</a> team's visit. Four Wikipedians from Kolkata, Wikimedia Foundation's mobile Developer <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Yuvipanda">Yuvaraj Pandian</a> and OPW intern <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Sucheta_Ghoshal">Sucheta Ghoshal</a> joined A2K's <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Visdaviva">Vishnu Vardhan</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> for this meetup. Vishnu addressed the wikipedians and gave a brief introduction about the programme's objectives and plans. Bengali Wikipedians <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayantanth">Jayanta Nath</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BengaliHindu">Kalyan Sarkar</a> shared the success stories and activities in Bengali Wikipedia community. They also discussed about the challenges Indian Bengali wikipedians are facing. Wikipedians discussed few of the technical aspects of Bengali Wikipedia over lunch. Vishnu and Subhashish discussed about the opportunities that could be explored to bring more good quality content relevant to West Bengal and Bengali language over lunch.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/wiki-meet-up-kolkata'>https://cis-india.org/news/wiki-meet-up-kolkata</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaWikimedia2013-10-30T10:51:57ZNews ItemWestern Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics
https://cis-india.org/news/bio-diversity-informatics-workshop
<b>The Western Ghats portal team is organising a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state on biodiversity informatics on 25 November 2011 at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore.</b>
<h2>Schedule</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">09:00 – 09:20</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Registration of participants</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">09:20 – 09:30</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Welcome / Introduction</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">09:30 – 11:15</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Plenary talks - Technology behind biodiversity informatics (3 talks)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">11:15 – 11:30</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Tea break</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">11:30 – 12:30</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Plenary talks - Scientific commons and policy (2 talks)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">12:30 – 13:00</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Discussion</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">13:00 – 14:00</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span"> Lunch break</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">14:00 – 16:00</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Biodiversity portals in India - Presentations by different teams/panel discussion</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">16:00 – 16:15</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Tea break</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">16:15 – 17:00</span></td>
<td><span class="Apple-style-span">Discussions and networking</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Spheres of the Workshop:</h2>
<h3>Plenary I: Technology behind biodiversity informatics - 0930 - 1115 hrs</h3>
<div>
<div><strong>Development of Information System, Open Data standards, Archive and Geospatial solutions, Visualization in Bhuvan - Arul Raj</strong>, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) - 20 mins + 10 mins discussion</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div><strong>Exploring the semantic web for species pages - M. Sravanthi</strong>, Western Ghats Portal - 20 mins + 10 mins discussion</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div><strong>Challenges on the emerging discipline of Biodiversity Informatics - Donald Hobern</strong>, Atlas of Living Australia - 30mins + 10 mins discussion</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Focus</strong>:</div>
<div>
<div>The objective of this session is to understand the global developments in biodiversity informatics in relation with developments in India. The session will focus on:</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<ul><li> the evolution of the discipline of biodiversity informatics and its current status</li><li>the development of standards in Indian context</li><li>the technologies for biodiversity informatics</li><li>the challenges in biodiversity informatics<br /><br /></li></ul>
<h3><strong>Plenary II: Scientific commons and policy - 1130 - 1300 hrs</strong></h3>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><strong>Commons in the context of Biodiversity Information - Danish Sheikh</strong>, Alternative Law Forum - 20 mins + 10 mins</div>
</div>
<div>
<div><strong>Open data in the scientific realm - Sunil Abraham</strong>, Centre for Internet and Society - 20 mins + 10 mins</div>
</div>
<div>Discussion on Scientific commons and Policy - 30 mins</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Focus</strong>:<br />
<div>The objective of the session is to understand the commons principle and its implications for scientific research. The session will focus on:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul><li>the experience of developing a creative commons policy in Indian scenario and the resulting impacts for scientific collaboration, open data and open access</li><li>policy and social implications of open data sharing</li></ul>
<div> </div>
</div>
<h3>Plenary III - Biodiversity portals in India - 1400 - 1700 hrs</h3>
<div><strong>Moderation</strong>: R. Prabhakar/ MD Madhusudhan<br /><strong>Panelists</strong>: (Introductory note by each of the panelists - 10 minutes each)</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Suhel Quader</strong>, Season Watch (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.seasonwatch.in">www.seasonwatch.in</a>), Migrant Watch (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.migrantwatch.in">www.migrantwatch.in</a>)</div>
<div><strong>Sanjay Molur</strong>, Pterocount (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.pterocount.org/">www.pterocount.org/</a>)</div>
<div><strong>K.N.Ganeshaiah</strong> - Indian Bioresource Information Network (www.ibin.co.in)</div>
<div><strong>Ramesh BR</strong> - Western Ghats Portal (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.thewesternghats.in/">www.thewesternghats.in/</a>)</div>
<div><strong>Shwetank Verma</strong>, Biodiversity of India, formerly Project Brahma (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.biodiversityofindia.org">http://www.biodiversityofindia.org</a>)</div>
<div><strong>Krishnamegh Kunte</strong>, ifoundbutterflies <a class="external-link" href="http://ifoundbutterflies.org/">(http://ifoundbutterflies.org/</a>)<br /><strong>Vijay Barve</strong>, DiversityIndia (<a class="external-link" href="http://diversityindia.org/">http://diversityindia.org/</a>)<br /><strong>Deepak Menon</strong>, India Water Portal (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.indiawaterportal.org/">http://www.indiawaterportal.org/</a>)<br /><strong>Chitra Ravi</strong>, India Biodiversity Portal (<a class="external-link" href="http://indiabiodiversity.org/">http://indiabiodiversity.org/</a>)<br /><strong>Mr D.K Ved</strong>, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (<a class="external-link" href="http://envis.frlht.org">http://envis.frlht.org</a>)</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Focus</strong>:<br />
<div>The objective of the session is to learn from each other’s experience and develop a combined vision for the future of biodiversity informatics in India. The panelists will present a focused summary of the</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<ul><li>key features available on their portals</li><li>the experience of building the portal</li><li>the key lessons learnt</li><li>future plans</li></ul>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>We believe these four aspects will be of common interest to all participants and the presentations are expected to stimulate discussion around these four aspects.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Summary of the Day</strong>: R Prabhakar - Call for synergy/collaboration/Thank you!!</div>
<div> </div>
<h2>Concept Note</h2>
<div>
<div>Rapid advancements in the domains of computer Science and information technologies have allowed integration of biodiversity information and analytical capabilities to collaborate on social networks, leading to the emergence of a new discipline, Biodiversity Informatics. The dynamics in this discipline are defined by integrating multiplicity with the semantic web and enabling of democratic social networks focused on biodiversity. We are bound to see tremendous diversification in the scope of biodiversity informatics globally and in India.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>Harnessing technology for aggregating, storing, querying and analyzing biodiversity data has seen major developments over the last decade. There has been a plethora of biodiversity information resources that include mailing lists and discussions groups, occurrence records, geographical databases, biodiversity image libraries, institutional databases, species description pages, specimen records of herbaria and museum databases, and biodiversity focused Internet sites. The challenges on the biodiversity informatics landscape are on two fronts: (1) A semantic web framework to link these biodiversity information islands; and (2) Effective and flexible data exchange standards for seamless information sharing among these sites.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>The evolution of social networks and communities around biodiversity information systems has been a unique factor in influencing the ways in which these information systems have developed. The assimilation and aggregation of user-generated biodiversity data and dissemination under the 'commons' principle has gained momentum globally. It has changed the way scientific collaborations are being made, and created possibilities for effective citizen-science initiatives. It is now possible to ask fresh questions, with more data, newer methods, better tools and for citizens to participate and report data from different geographies. With this, local-level data can be integrated with large-scale data leading to a better understanding of biodiversity.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>With the increased penetration of the Internet into developing economies, and the widespread adoption of web technologies, biodiversity informatics has spawned an impressive variety of initiatives. These initiatives range from global knowledge bases and networks, national initiatives, eco-region based initiatives, as well as sharply focused initiatives which address a single species or event. There have been tangible advantages for stakeholders from these initiatives which has inspired many other endeavours. Success stories exist at both global and local level, and learning from these experiences can help one understand the multi-faceted nature of this discipline.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>The Western Ghats Portal team is organising a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: i) technology behind biodiversity informatics, ii) scientific commons and policy and iii) biodiversity portals in India. With these objectives in mind, we welcome your active participation during the workshop. It could provide an opportunity for us to interact and learn from similar endeavors in this discipline.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Download the agenda <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/wgp-agenda.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Western Ghats Portal Workshop in Bangalore">here</a> [PDF, 124 kb]</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/bio-diversity-informatics-workshop'>https://cis-india.org/news/bio-diversity-informatics-workshop</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen DataOpenness2011-11-08T05:01:14ZNews ItemAda Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/ada-lovelace-edit-a-thon-2014
<b>A Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being held at Urban Solace on October 14, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. The event is being organized by IndiaBioScience in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. CIS-A2K will conduct the first three edit-a-thons.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, Science as a discipline is subject to many of the same gender issues as it is worldwide - women scientists are fewer in number than men, they occupy fewer positions of power, and face distinct issues by virtue of their gender and the accompanying societal pressures. Women Scientists in India also tend to be less visible than their male counterparts, and public awareness of Indian Women Scientists is low.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">IndiaBioScience will be organising a series of public events to raise the profile of women scientists on one of the most-popular online encyclopaedias - Wikipedia. At these events, participants will be encouraged to create and complete profiles of Indian Women in Science.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The last of these events, on October 14 coincides with <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace_Day" title="Ada Lovelace Day">Ada Lovelace Day</a>, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in Science, Technology and Math.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To participate sign up below or click here (<a class="free external" href="http://www.indiabioscience.org/content/women-science-wiki-edit-thon" rel="nofollow">http://www.indiabioscience.org/content/women-science-wiki-edit-thon</a>)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Lunch and snacks will be provided.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the venue, the events will begin with a short, hands-on introduction to Wiki editing. Participants can then go on to pick the scientist they would like to work on. There will be an interaction session with a guest Woman Scientist around lunch, with a discussion of issues commonly faced by women in science. In the afternoon session, participants can continue working on the Wiki pages, with a break for tea. Participants are requested to bring their laptops. We have a few desktops available at Saturday's venue for those who cannot do so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Online participants can find us via <a class="text external" href="https://plus.google.com/+IndiabioscienceOrg" rel="nofollow">Google Hangout</a>. Chat with us or dial in for interactions, questions, help or simply to socialize.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Speaker: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohini_Godbole" title="Rohini Godbole">Rohini Godbole</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">See the event page on <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Ada_Lovelace_Edit-a-thon_2014">Wikipedia</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/ada-lovelace-edit-a-thon-2014'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/ada-lovelace-edit-a-thon-2014</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaEdit-a-thonOpenness2014-10-13T06:30:08ZEventPushing women scientists
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science
<b>Wikipedia edit-a-thon attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of Indian women to science.</b>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Renuka Phadnis was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science/article6517035.ece">published in the Hindu</a> on October 19, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Ask anyone to name an Indian scientist and the answer is likely to be a man, and not a woman scientist. To let more people know about the unsung heroines of science in India, a workshop called the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 was held here recently. At least 15 participants added content about women scientists over two days to Wikipedia as the first step in bringing public awareness about them.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The edit-a-thon (a large number of people adding or modifying content on Wikipedia at once) concluded on October 14, which was Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology and maths. The event was organised by BioScienceIndia Programme, a non-profit science outreach initiative, and Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Participants added information about at least 40 women scientists. Information on 80 more would be added in a year’s time, said Nandini Rajamani, Co-director, BioScienceIndia Programme.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The aim, however, is to go beyond edit-a-thons, to examine issues that have not received the attention they deserve. Women scientists in India are not on par with men for several reasons (<i>see info box</i>) and the “leaky pipeline” theory is used to describe their decreasing visibility. Vishnu Vardhan, Director, Access to Knowledge team, CIS, said the aim is to motivate a new and younger generation of women scientists.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">Karthik Ramaswamy, visiting scientist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and a participant in the edit-a-thon, said science in India has a ‘diversity problem’ with Indian women and minorities represented inadequately. “There are very few women scientists among faculty of science institutions because they have no role models. Hopefully, this (presence on Wikipedia) will provide them with role models,” he added.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2014-10-21T15:44:09ZNews ItemGuerrilla GLAMː An alternate way of doing GLAM in indie-way
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way
<b> I have been working on a concept called the Guerrilla GLAM. Here is a very quick summary about the concept that was published in the GLAM-wiki newsletter for November.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM" title="GLAM">GLAM</a> stands for cultural institutions like Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. It is a globally acclaimed free knowledge movement for opening up cultural data using various free software platforms as a tool. GLAM activities include collaboration with cultural institutions, data mining, meta data and other documentation of institutional collections, digitization of published works, records and artifacts, and publishing the collected information in both human and machine readable forms with open standards. Building partnership with GLAM institutions is a great way of funneling the cultural content acquisition and bringing open access to such valuable data. But it is not that easy given the complications each country have in terms of formal agreement, organizational framework, and dissemination of information. "Guerrilla GLAM" techniques are based on the learning curve of institutional partnership building for large scale GLAM projects and leveraging personal contacts in small scale GLAM projects. It bring in several frugal strategies for cutting cost implication and operating in flexible modes. Guerrilla GLAM's range of work aims to accommodate people of different core expertise and it targets small to large orgaizations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Guerrilla GLAM appeared first as a <a class="text external" href="https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_to_do_GuerillaGLAM">public presentation during Wikimania</a> which I presented this year. It later interested many GLAM practitioners of New Zealand who organized a <a class="text external" href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/openotago/2015/10/06/how-to-do-guerilla-glam/" rel="nofollow">webinar</a> which provided a great platform to add many interesting ideas to my existing set of ideas. Guerrilla GLAM is still a budding concept that aims for being implemented by many cultural enthusiasts especially those who would like to document much about the artifacts, digitize old text from archives and manuscripts, and create meta data for institutional collections. Guerrilla GLAM operates with zero or with some informal institutional partnership with the institution and carried on the shoulders of the Wikimedians. The Wikimedians seek out for support from local communities, leverage the permissible access to institutional property and to some extent the personal relations with the institutions keeping the legal restrictions in mind, and do their best to acquire as much data as possible. Often times, near to zero cost Guerrilla GLAM projects with detailed planning with right kind of people on-board could yield more or less the same like any conventional GLAM project.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Click to read the original published on <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/November_2015/Contents/Special_story">Wikimedia Blog</a> on November 25, 2015.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span id="comments"> </span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2015-12-16T03:09:47ZBlog EntryOpen access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books
<b>As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/03/open-access-marathi-language/">Wikimedia Blog</a> on December 3, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the <i><a href="http://granthottejak.org/about.html">Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha</a></i> (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA 4.0</a> license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the <a href="https://mr.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%96%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%B7%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A0">Marathi Wikisource</a> for millions of Marathi readers.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1"><a href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/03/open-access-marathi-language/#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">MGS is a non-profit organization working for the preservation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra" title="en:Maharashtra">Maharashtra’s</a> linguistic and cultural heritage. It was founded in Pune, India in 1894. Being an important archive for the preservation of many hundreds of years old manuscripts and historical artifacts from the Peshwa era, the institution is open to public for study and research.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">During the four-day anniversary celebration, the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K" title="CIS-A2K">Centre for Internet Society’s Access to Knowledge program</a> (CIS-A2K)—an organization that supports the Wikimedia movement in India—opened a Wikipedia stall there where Marathi Wikimedians were present. Around 600 people visited the stall and learned about the news of MGS’s book donation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many active and new Marathi Wikimedians were present at the exhibition stall along with Abhinav Garule from the CIS-A2K program to share the incredible work Marathi Wikipedia and Wikimedia community at large are doing. Autographs of eighteen notable writers who received awards from Sanstha for different genres of writings were collected for uploading to the Wikipedia pages about them. While meeting the authors, Wikimedians also approached them to relicense some of their works under Creative Commons licenses so that they could be digitized on Wikisource and/or enrich Wikipedia—and some of the authors expressed a good deal of interest in opening up their books for Wikisource.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the major books donated are <i>Peshwa Rojnishi</i> (diary of <i>Peshwa</i>), <i>Benjamin Franklin Charitra</i> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin"><i>The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin</i></a>), <i>Kekavali</i>, <i>S M Paranjape Charitra</i> (autobiography), <i>Letters Exchanged between the Sanstha and the British Government</i>, <i>Shinde Gharanyacha Padmamay Itihas</i> (manuscript), and <i>Marathwadyatil Arvachin Marathi Vangmay</i> (modern Marathi literature from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathwada" title="w:Marathwada">Marathwada</a>, a region in Maharashtra) are some of the popular books read by Marathi speakers that are going to be part of the books donated by the organization.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We reached out to Avinash Chaphekar, the joint secretary of the organization, to know more about the state of book publication and readership.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Could you share your ideas of opening these invaluable books for Wikisource? How they are going to be useful for the online readers to learn about the Peshwas?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Avinash Chaphekar (AC): These books are of historical importance and contain information that needs to reach more people; they cover topics that are rarely covered well anywhere else. Right after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended the autobiography of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin" title="en:Benjamin Franklin">Benjamin Franklin</a>, as it contains a lot of messages for a common person, a lady walked up to and asked if she could read it in Marathi. Be it such autobiographies or a poetry book like “Kekavali”, such books that were published by the MGS should not be kept closed—many readers are searching for them. We donated 800 of these old books to the Marathi Wikisource because we don’t have large presence in the media or the Internet, so how would any reader who does not know us buy a book? If these books are available online, they can at least find and read them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP: Where do you think there is gap between publishers and readers today? Many Marathi books get published every year and if you search on the Internet, which many people today do, you would hardly find much.</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>AC</b>: Online readership is increasing every day, but when you look at Marathi readers, the majority of them are still buying books. During the exhibitions here (even this year!), there is always quite a rush to buy books. Only the youth and tech-savvy people read online. But most people we meet say that they feel more comfortable holding and reading physical books. Moreover, there is no concrete research validating that most of the youngsters here are accessing information only online. I still feel reading books in a conventional way by holding books in your hands will continue to exist as there is some kind of satisfaction that lies in it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP: Did you know that we are going to get these books retyped, meaning that readers will not just be able to read them in their smartphones or computers but they could use the text for republishing the same books in the future? How do you think such a model will be useful for publishers?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>AC</b>: At the MGS, we don’t have funds to republish these books, and publishers are not ready to do it no matter how historically valuable the books are—even an incredibly valuable reference book called <i>Marathi Grantha Nirmiti Watchal</i> (the history of creation of Marathi books in Marathi), authored by SG Tulpule and published by us in 1973. This book has detailed information about Marathi publications, even those that existed before printing technology existed. As many such books are not being reprinted, we cannot leave the remaining few copies to perish. Let them go online and reach millions of people.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books</a>
</p>
No publisherSubhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav GaruleOpennessMarathi WikipediaCIS-A2KAccess to Knowledge2016-01-03T11:26:49ZBlog EntryApproaching Open Research via Open Data - Presentation at TERI, December 22, 2015
https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015
<b>The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, organised a seminar on 'Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach' on December 22, 2015. We supported the seminar as a knowledge partner. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to deliver a special address. Here are the notes and slides from the presentation.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The brief presentation foregrounded <em>open data</em> as a crucial part of open research, and also as an instrument of opening up research for public consumption, discussion, and scrutiny.</p>
<p>The presentation started with reference to the <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report">Open Access Dialogues</a> organised by The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society during November 2012 to March 2013 that explored the global open access agenda from a developing world perspective.</p>
<p>I noted that one of the key findings from the Indian participants of the online consultations organised as part of the Open Access Dialogues was the need for a <em>broader vision of open access</em>. Open research data is a key component of this broader vision of open access and open research.</p>
<p>There was a brief discussion of how to start doing and thinking about open data as an approach to open research. I highlighted the need to get started on 1) getting government to open up data relevant to research, 2) opening up academic research data, and 3) sectoral conversations on data standards (technical and semantic); as well as the need to think about 1) open data as bridge across disciplinary communities, 2) quantification of life and the widening sphere of research data, and 3) academic research and public life.</p>
<p>In next slides, I quickly mentioned the international processes going on in the open data landscape - the conversation on open data and Sustainable Development Data, the possibility of using big (social and telecom) data for purposes of development monitoring, and the International Open Data Charter as a set of global principles for open data.</p>
<p>More about the seminar: <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research">http://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/la5ulZYBT15DiL" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" height="485" width="595"> </iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen DataOpen ResearchOpen Government DataOpenness2016-01-12T14:37:38ZBlog EntryKannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University
https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university
<b>Tumkur University, Karnataka hosted a Kannada Wiki Workshop on September 15, 2012. This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Ashwin Kumar from the Department of English, Tumkur University and Kannada wikipedians, Omshivaprakash, Hareesh, Tejus and Pavithra played vital roles in organising this workshop.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">About 30 participants including students and teachers participated in this workshop. Students were mostly from the Department of English and Library Science.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop began at 10.30 a.m. Prof. Ashwin Kumar gave the welcome address and spoke about the importance of Kannada Wikipedia. Thereafter, Om Shiva Prakash made a presentation on "Introduction to Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia". This was followed by the "Editing Session". The university had provided 10 computers for the session. Harish and Tejas lead the editing session with the rest of the team supporting the students to do the "wiki editing". The session went upto 2.00 p.m. since the participants showed keen interest. As there were some restrictions associated with the "username creation" only "six" students were able to create their wiki username.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UsuqFv"><img alt="ಚಿತ್ರ:Tumkur University Kannada Wiki Workshop.jpg" height="533" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Tumkur_University_Kannada_Wiki_Workshop.jpg" width="800" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Seen above: Participants from the Kannada Wiki Workshop held in Tumkur University</i>. For more pictures, visit <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/UsuqFv">http://bit.ly/UsuqFv</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Kannada Wikipedia community is holding talks with the university officials to begin a Kannada Wikipedia education program. These types of initiatives will attract more Kannada speaking people to Kannada Wiki related activities.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university'>https://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-tumkur-university</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessWikimedia2012-10-16T12:35:10ZBlog EntryIndic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report: January – June 2012
https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012
<b>The following is a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. The author provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The period of analysis is editor contributions between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012. (Read <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">last year’s report here</a>). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at <a class="external-link" href="http://stats.wikimedia.org">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.</p>
<p>Some of the important points from this report are:</p>
<ul>
<li>As always Indic wikipedia communities that are focused on community building had done well. Progress is slow but the results are steady and sustainable.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The communities that have made substantial progress in community building are Urdu, Oriya, Assamese, and Malayalam. (among this, for Urdu Wikipedia most of the activity is from Pakistan). The most recent entry to this club is Punjabi which will show up in the statistics of next few months.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Providing adequate support for newbies is very much required after each outreach. But many communities are failing here. This is affecting the conversion rate even though many outreach activities are happening across the country,</li>
<li>As seen in the past the readership of Indic language wikipedias is still growing up.</li>
</ul>
<p>This report is presented in the following sequence.</p>
<ol>
<li>Community</li>
<li>Content</li>
<li>Readership</li>
</ol>
<h2>Community</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As community is the backbone of every Indic language Wikipedia, it is important that the respective language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building. Many language communities are still not understanding the importance of building the community. To achieve the goal of building free knowledge database in the respective language we need participation from maximum number of speakers of the respective language. The following table gives information on two important parameters about the community in the respective language Wikipedia:</p>
<ul>
<li>Number of users who had 100 or more edits in a month (high active Wikipedians)</li>
<li>Number of users who had at least 5 or more edits a month (active Wikipedians)</li>
</ul>
<p><img class="wp-image-337 size-full" height="518" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/users.png?w=640&h=518" title="2012 Jan-June user growth" width="640" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><span class="visualHighlight">User growth in Indic language Wikipedias during 2012 January-June</span></p>
<p>Some of the important information that we can make out from this table are:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of high active editors (editors with more than 100 edits per month) are the backbone of each language wikipedia. Apart from doing normal article editing they are the users maintaining the wiki. Tamil and Malayalam continue to be on the top spot with almost 24 active users . Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, and Urdu also showed growth in the number of high active users.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Assamese Wikipedia is showing a reduction in the number of high active users even though its number of active users increased. This means that Assamese Wikipedia requires some more current active users to take up the role of wiki adminship and similar leadership roles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of active users (editors with more than 5 edits per month) give an overview of the overall activity in wikipedia. Here also Malayalam and Tamil continue to be on the top. Some of the languages that showed notable growth in the number of active users are Urdu, Oriya, and Assamese. As we know there are lot of community building activities happening in both Oriya and Assamese. Along with community building activities both the communities are making sure they are providing sufficient support to newbies using various options. And there efforts are showing up in the form of community strength.</li>
<li>The number of active members in Odia has increased to 25 which means community has grown 3 times over the past 6 months.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The number of wiki editors per million for most Indic languages is still below 1. This shows that awareness about Indic language wiki projects is still an issue for most Indic Wikipedias. From this statistics (<a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm</a>), we can see that for Sanskrit the number of editors per million speakers has become <b>280</b> which is one of the highest in the world. No other Indic language Wikipedia is near Sanskrit in this parameter. Malayalam comes second with 3 editors per million and Assamese and Bishnupriya Manipuri comes third with 2 editors per million. Tamil is in the fourth place with 1 editor. For all other Indic languages the number of editors per million population is below 1. This shows that still the penetration of respective language Wikipedia among the speakers of a language is very low. We need more outreach programs to reach the speakers of the respective language.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The number of articles is an important parameter which has misguided some wiki communities. However, it is a very important parameter if communities are increasing the number of articles in a way helpful to the readers of the wiki.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img class="wp-image-341 size-full" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/articles.png?w=640" title="Article growth during 2012 January - June" /></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi continues to be on the top spot with 1,02,902. During the past 6 months almost 2000 articles got added to Hindi Wikipedia.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Telugu Wikipedia crossed the 50,000 article milestone is one of the major accomplishments during this period. I remember reading the news about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the <a href="http://crossroads.veeven.com/2007/06/26/telugu-wikipedia-reaches-30000-articles/" target="_blank">30,000 article milestone in June 2007 </a>which shows that it took almost 5 years to reach 50,000 article milestone. As pointed out by <a href="http://crossroads.veeven.com/2012/03/15/telugu-wikipedia-50000-articles/" target="_blank">User:Veeven in his blog post</a> (about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the 50,000 articles), Telugu Wikipedia needs more support from Telugu speaking population to build the free knowledge project in Telugu. The current number of active users in Telugu Wikipedia is not showing justice to the huge speaker base (more than 8 crores) of Telugu.</li>
<li>Another major milestone was Assamese Wikipedia crossing the 1,000 article milestone.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Malayalam are the two language wikipedias that added most number of articles during this time period. Both the language wikipedias added close to 3000 articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Sindhi, Newari (Nepal Bhasha) and Bishnupriya language wikipedias showed reduction in the number of articles. There are 2 reasons for this:</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li>There is no active community to add new articles (see the first table for the number of active users) </li>
<li>Spam/vandalism pages were deleted by stewards/global sysops.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Readers (Pageview)</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of people visiting the website continue to increase for all Indic language wikipedias and the total visits for all Indic language wikipedias combined is close to 4 crore now.<br /><br />Please note that the information available in the below table is the total visits (page views) for a language wikipedia for a month from all the platforms combined. It includes visits by readers and editors. This is NOT the list of <b>Number of Unique Visitors</b> to the website.</p>
<p>(The number of readers shown in the below table is in lakhs)</p>
<p><img alt="Growth of Readers during January 2012 - June 2012" class="wp-image-344 size-full aligncenter" src="http://shijualex.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/readers.png?w=640" title="Growth of Readers during January 2012 - June 2012" /></p>
<p>(The <b>Number of Readers</b> shown in the above table is in lakhs)</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For most of the Indic languages readership has gone up. For Assamese and Odia it almost doubled.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Among big languages unlike the number of active users when it comes to readers most Indic languages are doing justice to its speaking population volume. So even though many of our speakers are not editing the respective language wikipedia they are reading it. Bengali and Telugu are two languages that behaves different here which shows that awareness is very low for both the languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">As the Indic language support in smart phones and different OSs is in better position now, I am sure the readership is going to increase further in future.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Still a major percentage of our speakers (I mean speakers who has access to internet) doesn’t know that there is a Wikipedia exists in their own mother language and they not using it is a big issue. If our reader base is not increasing it will affect the community growth also. Hope things will improve as at least few language communities are involved in various awareness and outreach programs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: left; "><i>Originally posted at</i> <a class="external-link" href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012-january-2012-june/">http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012-january-2012-june/</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012'>https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012</a>
</p>
No publisherShiju AlexOpennessAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2012-09-28T15:41:31ZBlog EntryRight to Education and the Future of Our Languages
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/right-to-education-and-future-of-our-languages
<b>The Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai and Dr. Rakhmabai Educational Resource and Research Centre in association with ICSSR (WRC) organized a National Symposium on Right to Education and the Future of Our Languages at Pherozeshah Mehta Bhavan from March 9 to 11, 2015. Tanveer Hasan was a speaker. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Ganesh Devy gave the inaugural address and Prof. Anita Rampal gave the keynote address. Tanveer Hasan spoke about the importance of Free and Open Resources of Knowledge and how these resources could be harnessed in providing access to knowledge and subsequently claim the right to education. The event was organized as an effort to understand the effect of RTE act on the primary and high school education standards across India with special reference to Maharashtra. The workshop also provided an opportunity to meet several like minded institutions and individuals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://www.mu.ac.in/arts/ling_lang/linguistics/RTE%20website%20ad.pdf">More information on the event here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/right-to-education-and-future-of-our-languages'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/right-to-education-and-future-of-our-languages</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessWikipedia2015-05-27T14:00:44ZNews ItemKnowledge Sharing Workshop with MIDO and Joosk
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/knowledge-sharing-workshop-with-mido-and-joosk
<b>Sumandro Chattapadhyay led a knowledge sharing workshop with members of Myanmar ICT Development Organisation (MIDO) and Joosk, a design firm that works closely with MIDO.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The session focused on various types of charts and visualisations, and the appropriate contexts for using them, and also on a range of Free and Open Source Softwares that can be used to work with data — from collection and cleaning, to archiving and analysis, to static and web-based visualisation. The discussions focused mostly on data related to the Lighthouse CIC project that MIDO is doing, and also on the upcoming project of election monitoring in partnership with the Centre for Civic Technologies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/knowledge-sharing-workshop-with-mido-and-joosk'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/knowledge-sharing-workshop-with-mido-and-joosk</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2015-06-18T01:48:56ZNews ItemInternational Open Data Charter, Consultation Meeting, Bengaluru, July 28, 5:30 pm
https://cis-india.org/openness/international-open-data-charter-consultation-bengaluru-28072015
<b></b>
<p> </p>
<p>This is to invite you to a consultation meeting on the first public draft of the International Open Data Charter organised by CIS with <a href="http://www.datakind.org/howitworks/datachapters/datakind-blr/" target="_blank">DataKind</a> and <a href="http://datameet.org/" target="_blank">DataMeet</a> at the CIS office in Bengaluru, on Tuesday, July 28, 2015, at 5:30 pm.</p>
<p>The Charter is being developed by the Open Data Working Group of the Open Government Partnership in consultation with a number of international organisations. Meant for approval and implementation by national governments, the Charter has five key principles:</p>
<ul>
<li>Open by Default;</li>
<li>Quality and Quantity;</li>
<li>Useable by All;</li>
<li>Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens; and</li>
<li>Collaboration for Development and Innovation.</li></ul>
<p>The first public draft of the International Open Data Charter was published in end of May 2015 at the International Open Data Conference in
Ottawa, and can be accessed here: <a href="http://opendatacharter.net/charter/" target="_blank">http://opendatacharter.net/charter/</a>.</p>
<p>Organisations and individuals are invited to submit comments directly on the Charter page, before July 31.</p>
<p>We are organising this meeting to discuss the context, the drafting process, and the objectives of this document, and to encourage the participants to comment on the existing text of the Charter.</p>
<p>We keenly look forward to your participation in the consultation meeting on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The CIS office address is Number 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560071 (opposite Domlur Club and near the TERI building).</p>
<p>Please share this invitation with all relevant individuals, organisations, and networks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/international-open-data-charter-consultation-bengaluru-28072015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/international-open-data-charter-consultation-bengaluru-28072015</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen DataInternational Open Data CharterOpenness2015-08-21T05:45:53ZEvent