Centre for Internet and Society

Adikavi Nannaya University Telugu Wikipedia Workshop

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-04-16T08:57:21Z

A Telugu Wikipedia introductory workshop was conducted for the students of Adikavi Nannaya University, Rajahmundry between 6- 7 January, 2017.

A two-day Telugu Wikipedia workshop was conducted for the students of Adikavi Nannaya University in Rajahmundry between 6- 7 January, 2017. The participants were post-graduate students of the Telugu Department of the University with a notable gender ratio of 13 male and 21 female participants.

The aim of the workshop was to introduce students to Wikipedia and contributing to Wikipedia projects. They were taught basic Wikipedia editing and the usage of Google's advanced tools. This would also help them create tertiary sources using primary and secondary sources. The students improved articles about their villages using references available on the Internet. The workshop, conducted jointly by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia community members, was key to increasing the base of Telugu Wikipedia across the Telugu-speaking region, to cities like Rajahmundry. Says User:విశ్వనాధ్.బి.కె., "from initial days, Wikipedia offline activities development is Hyderabad-centric and Wikipedia activities should be done in all areas (of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh). As this event in Adikavi Nannaya University helps in that aspect, I would like to offer all of my effort to these kind of events."

Overall, the event saw the creation 32 new pages on Telugu Wikipedia by 33 newly registered users with 99118 bytes being deleted/ added.

The link to event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/adikavi-nannaya-university-telugu-wikipedia-workshop-1

Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation to Host Design Public

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T08:08:10Z

The conclave in its 5th edition will feature Aam Aadmi Party members Rajmohan Gandhi and Somnath Bharti along with Sunil Abraham in conversation with Dr. Aditya Sood about different approaches through citizen centric governance.

The information was posted on BusinessWire India on March 11, 2014. Source : Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation

Adianta School of Leadership and Innovation is setting up the stage for yet another conclave to establish a dialogue around innovation with ‘Design Public’. The key aspect of the conclave would be a dialogue between Raj Mohan Gandhi, Member- Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) & Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; Somnath Bharti, Former Law Minister Delhi, Member- Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society and Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, Founder & CEO, CKS about different approaches through citizen centric governance.

The fifth edition of the Design Public Conclave which will be held on Friday, March 14^th, 2014 at Vihara Campus, is being produced by the Center for Knowledge Societies, the Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, the Startup Tunnel, the Bihar Innovation Lab, and the Financial Innovation Alliance, in partnership and with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grameen Foundation, CGAP, UNDP's GCEPA and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX).

Over the past three years, Design Public has emerged as the premier location for high-level conversations about the public role and social impact of design and innovation in India. It has attracted some erudite and high profile speakers and discussants across regions, society and sectors of industry. The fifth edition of Design Public will focus on “Social Innovation through Partnership with Private Sector” and “The Elements of Governance Innovation” as both are relevant in present day context. The discussions will set the stage for recommendations and suggestions around promotion of social innovation through new partnerships between the social and private sectors, promoting social enterprises and beneficial social consequences of private sector activity with specific focus on the new companies bill and how it brings centre stage new opportunities for promoting social innovation. Focus on “The Elements of Governance Innovation” will focus on the importance of distinguishing governance innovation from policy work, the key constituencies involved in governance innovation and how better collaboration can create more meaningful impact.

The conclave will see two Keynotes touching both the aspects by Esko Kilpi, Writer and Theorist of the Networked Society and Arndt Hussar, UNDP-GCPSE, Singapore, respectively. Apart from the Keynotes, there would be other speakers which include Ada Wong, Chair, SIX, Hong Kong; Nehal Sanghavi, Advisor, USAID, India; Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, Global Superangels Fund, India; Louis Pulford, Director of SIX (Social Innovation Exchange) and Prof. M.P. Ranjan, Design Chair, CEPT University.

Apart from the keynotes, the conclave will also feature two working groups and three breakout sessions followed by presentations from each breakout and a dialogue for framing conclusions and charting next steps.

The working groups will focus on designing a Social Innovation Exchange for India and building an action plan for Governance Innovation respectively. The breakouts will be explaining Open Data in the Indian context, opening out closed systems of Governance and developing start-up opportunities in Governance Innovation.

Other key participants for the fifth edition of Design Public conclave include Abhimanyu Nowhar, Founder, The Kiba Design; Ambrish Arora, Head, Lotus Design; Balasubramanian Munuswamy, Private Sector Development Advisor, Department for International Development (DIFD), British High Commission; Chakshu Roy, Heads, Outreach Initiatives, PRS Legislative Research; Chandni Ohri, CEO, Grameen Foundation, India; Daniel Radcliffe, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Gautam Gandhi, New Business Development for Emerging Markets, Google; Harsh Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer, Centre of Civil Society; Ishan Khosla, Founder, Ishan Khosla Design; Jatin Modi, Founder, FrogIdeas, India; Karan Malik, Associate, Advisory Research, Dasra; Lysander Menezes, Team Leader, Maternal Child Health & Nutrition, PATH; Namit Arora, Writer & Activist; Nehal Sanghavi, Advisor, USAID, India; Rajesh Khati, Founder & Principal Consultant, Clearway Advisors; Ramanjit Chima, Senior Policy Analyst, Google; Sanjay Rishi, President, MCS, Usha International Ltd.; Shweta Banerjee, CGAP, India; Soaib Grewal, Founder, Bold Capital, India; Somnath Bharti, Member-AAP and Former Law Minister, Government of Delhi; Suhas Mhaskar, Senior General Manager & Head, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd.; Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Researcher, The Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Usha Alexander, Writer and Instructional Designer.

About Design Public

Over the past three years, Design Public has emerged as the premier location for high-level conversations about the public role and social impact of design and innovation in India. It has attracted speakers and discussants from all regions of the world, from all estates of society and from diverse sectors of industry. Out of the conversations held here, many new initiatives have emerged, including the Bihar Innovation Lab, the Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, among others. There has been wide coverage of the themes and ideas emerging from Design Public in the media and blogosphere, including in the New York Times, Economic Times, Times of India, and Mint Newspaper. High value participants in the past have included Arun Maira (Planning Commission), Sam Pitroda (National Innovation Council), Geoff Mulgan (NESTA, UK), Ashok Alexander (BMGF), Rohini Nilekani (Arghyam), Yamini Aiyer (Accountability Initiative), Ashwin Mahesh (Lok Satta Party), Samanth Subramanaian (Writer), Vish Palekar (Mahindra Group), Jeby Cherian (IBM), Riku Makela (Tekes, FI), among many others.

About Adianta

The Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation promotes a radical and empowering educational approach that promotes Learning by Doing. It is a collaborative effort between some of the world’s leading innovation organizations, including the School of Design at the Technische Universiteit Delft (Netherlands), NESTA (UK), The Social Innovation Exchange (Global), and the Center for Knowledge Societies (India). With a distinguished team of advisors, international faculty and a global network of over 100 mentors, the Adianta School provides an unprecedented quality of international education right here in India.

For News Release background on Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation click here

Media Contact Details

Abhishek Shivam, Greyhound Neo, +919582199990 , ashivam@greyhoundgroup.com Priyanka Ahuja, Brand Manager, Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, outreach@adianta.org

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AdaCamp Bangalore: "Nothing could be more open and encouraging than this"

praskrishna — 2015-02-12T01:53:43Z

I can say this conference was the most truly touched feminist endeavor I have ever witnessed or thought of. An inspiration to last through. — Rupali Talwatkar.

Rohini Lakshané delivered a session on digital security. For more info see the details on Ada Initiative website

Session on Imposter Syndrome:

Impostor syndrome is a common reaction to doing publicly visible and publicly criticised work like that done in open technology and culture. Impostor Syndrome is the feeling that you aren't actually qualified for the work you are doing and will be discovered as a fraud. It is prevalent among women in open tech/culture, many of whom have been socialised to value other's opinion of their work above their own, and to do things "by the book."
http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/impostor-syndrome-training/

Session on Open Street Maps:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/yAxa2Kwkfm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/ada-camp-bangalore

Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014

praskrishna — 2014-10-13T06:30:08Z

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.

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.

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.

The last of these events, on October 14 coincides with Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in Science, Technology and Math.

To participate sign up below or click here (http://www.indiabioscience.org/content/women-science-wiki-edit-thon)

Lunch and snacks will be provided.

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.

Online participants can find us via Google Hangout. Chat with us or dial in for interactions, questions, help or simply to socialize.

Speaker: Rohini Godbole

See the event page on Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/ada-lovelace-edit-a-thon-2014

Accessible Broadcasting in India

srividya — 2013-01-28T03:37:40Z

A report based on ITU's "Making Television Accessible Report" prepared by the Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-broadcasting-in-india.pdf

Access to Rare Books Made Easy

praskrishna — 2014-12-27T01:56:57Z

Rare Odia books that are out of print and not easily accessible on the internet, will now be available at the click of the mouse. In a bid to make them available online, the Odia Wikipedia community last week launched WikiSource, an Odia e-library and a sister project of Odia Wikipedia that has been trying to popularise use of Odia language on the Internet since 2002.

The article by Diana Sahu was published in the New Indian Express on December 5, 2014

The online library has 69 books by authors Jagannath Mohanty, Upendra Bhanja, Fakir Mohan Senapati, Gopabandhu Das, Baladeva Rath and Ram Das. Besides, the complete volume of Bhagwad Gita in Odia language is available on WikiSource.

The project has been implemented by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to knowledge programme. Odia Wikipedian Subhashish Panigrahi, also a programme officer of the Centre for Internet and Society, said work on digitisation of the books was started in April this year by a team of 12 Wikipedians, comprising mostly students and working professionals.

Apart from them, 50 tribal students and nine faculty members of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) helped them with the digitisation job. As most of the books were typed in Akruti font - a proprietary Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) compliant font - the font was converted to Unicode text type to make the books searchable and accessible universally in all mobile and web platforms.

In the first phase, 11 books focusing on children’s literature, travelogue and biographies of noted people from Odisha by eminent Odia author Jagannath Mohanty were digitised. Subsequently, works of other authors were added to the e-library and made available on the internet with open access through free licence.

Subhashish said the WikiSource project was started in 2013 as an incubator project. It went through a tough process of being accessed by the Wikimedia Language Committee and Wikimedia Foundation’s board before being released last week. “There are several precious books that are out of print and not easily accessible on the internet. So we thought of digitising them and taking them to the masses. Apart from the 69 books, 81 of seven Odia authors that were already scanned and digitised by Bhubaneswar-based voluntary organisation, Srujanika, have been re-licensed and added to the library,” he said. Srujanika has digitised 740 old Odia magazines and books so far.

Generally a technique called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used for digitising scanned books, which currently is in testing phase in Odia. “Faculty member of ITER in Bhubaneswar Ajit Nayak along with his students have rectified the bugs and made character recognition more accurate.

But because of problems with OCR, the books had to be re-typed by the students of KISS on Odia Wikisource, Subashish added. Old books apart, books by contemporary authors like Debiprasanna Pattanayak, Ramakrushna Nanda, Subrat Prusty, Bharat Majhi and Nirmala Kumari Mohapata, and many other authors have been taken up for digitisation by Odia WikiSource team. Odia WikiSource is now live at or.wikisource.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/new-indian-express-december-5-2014-diana-sahu-access-to-rare-books-made-easy

Access to Medicines: Petition to the US Government to Stop Pressure on India

nehaa — 2014-12-10T13:02:59Z

There is growing pressure on India from the US Government to change its intellectual property system. Bending to US pressure will put medicines out of reach for millions of patients in India and other developing countries.

Medicines are affordable for millions of poor patients across the world, thanks to India’s progressive intellectual property system. Now, transnational pharmaceutical companies and the US Government are putting pressure on the Indian Government to change India’s laws which will make medicines unaffordable. Peoples' groups, patients’ networks and civil society organizations have come together in one voice to ask the US government to stop pressuring India against use of its legitimate rights to protect public health. The Indian Government must hold its ground and not give in to the pressure.

For more details log on to Oxfam India website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/oxfam-india-november-29-2014-access-to-medicines

Access To Knowledge/Programme Plan

praskrishna — 2012-09-30T13:25:14Z

Pursuant to the announcement made on July 30, 2012 and as reflected in the FAQ accompanying the announcement, the India Program will become a project of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) an established non-profit organisation working in India whose own goals and objectives are in close alignment with that of the Wikimedia movement.

Context to the CIS A2K programme plan

Between 80 to 120 million Indians have Internet access, and by 2015 that number is expected to increase to 237 million. Correspondingly, between 400 and 700 million Indians have mobile phones, and the number that have mobile-data access to the Internet is increasing exponentially. India is a country with tremendous knowledge resources to contribute to humankind. While the majority off Indians face income-related technological barriers against accessing and contributing to the global storehouse of knowledge, there are a significant number of people in the country who have both the capacity and ability to do both.

For the Wikimedia movement, India represents a largely untapped opportunity to dramatically expand our impact and move toward our vision of a world where everyone can freely share in – and contribute to - the sum of human knowledge. Although the Indian population makes up about 20% of humanity, Indians account for only 4.7% of global Internet users, and India represents only 2.0% of global pageviews and 1.6% of global page edits on Wikimedia's sites. Despite such a disproportionately small presence on Wikimedia, English Wikipedia, our flagship project, ranks in the top ten of the most visited websites in India. We also have Wikipedia projects in 20 Indic languages, which will become increasingly important as the next 100 million Indians to come onto the Internet, given that they are likely to be increasingly using the Internet in languages other than English. Demographically, Indic languages represent a good growth opportunity since estimates suggest only about 150 million of the total Indian population of 1.2 billion have working fluency in English.

In 2010, the Wikimedia movement developed its first strategic plan and set India as a priority geography for growth and investment. At the conclusion of the strategy process, the Wikimedia Foundation created a Global Development team that immediately started laying the groundwork for the India Program. In 2012, the strategic plan was updated and revised to reflect experiences from the initial phase of the India Program and changed realities on the ground.

Objectives

Support the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects (e.g. donations of encyclopaedias and other useful texts, education partnerships and other institutional partnerships) Support India-focused efforts to improve quality of India-relevant content on Indic language and English Wikimedia projects (e.g. university outreach, institutional partnerships and India-relevant thematic contribution campaigns) Drive and complement access to free knowledge across India through alternative technological means (e.g. mobile-based Wikipedia and offline Wikipedia) Help the Indian community and chapter share experiences and tell their stories to the wider Indian and global communities within the Wikimedia movement Generate and document lessons from activities in India that can inform the work of Indian communities and similar programs in other countries Support the Wikimedia community on an on-going basis as and when needed and possible, and by cross-pollinating ideas, encouraging volunteer initiatives and transferring best practices. Partner with formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India, for example, the Wikimedia India chapter, language communities, WikiProject India, etc.

Impact

In measuring impact, it is important to differentiate between outputs and outcomes. Desired outputs of the CIS-A2K programme are described in more detail in the sections that follow, and are likely to be re-callibrated, given the customised, changing and experimental nature of the work. Outcomes, on the other hand, relate to expected/desirable impacts that the work seeks to achieve. Both outputs and outcomes can only be achieved through a cooperative effort involving the CIS-A2K programme team, the Wikimedia India chapter, the Wikimedia community, and the other important community groupings that exist online and offline. In other words, the goals can be met if

Desired outputs:
To expand the Indian editing community to 5,000 active editors by June 2015, with at least 1,000 active editors in the Indic language projects. To enable the building of Wikipedia projects (and sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource) while keeping in mind reasonable quality, and have 5 Indic language Wikipedias reaching 50,000 articles, and 5 more reaching 25,000 articles, while also enabling 5 Indic language communities to have 100 active editors, and 5 more to have 50 active editors. To expand Wikipedia readership to 100 million unique visitors per month by June 2015. To ensure Wikipedia is accessible to all literate Indians through mobile and/or offline platforms. To expand the base of India-related articles on English Wikipedia from 115,000 to 165,000 by June 2015, and to halve India-related stubs in the same period.

Desired outcomes:
Foster a strong relationship with and within the Indian Wikimedia community through transparency and communication, and by providing support for community-led activities and facilitating community participation and ownership Expand the Indic language editing community and build interest in Indic language Wikimedia projects Grow high-quality Wikipedia projects (and sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikisource) Expand Wikipedia readership in India including on mobile and offline platforms Grow India-focused articles across Wikimedia projects.

Program goals

Catalyst Project Approach

The India Program started out as a partnership with the Indian Wikimedia community, which includes the Wikimedia India chapter. The initiative was intended as a means through which the Wikimedia Foundation can help the community grow, improve and expand the projects. This was an experimental effort, as the Wikimedia movement does not have a set of proven programs that can guarantee the growth of a community or project and the India Program was the first catalyst project being undertaken by the movement (further efforts have since got underway in the Middle-East and Brazil). Subsequent to the India Program becoming a project of CIS' A2K program, the aim is to identify pilots that work in achieving impact goals. This will be useful for sustaining the long-term success of the projects and will provide guidance for the development of other languages.

Catalyst Project Approach

Specifically, the A2K Team will focus on testing pilots that tackle the following challenges:

Building editor communities of sufficient critical size to accelerate and sustain growth in Indic languages
Connecting the Wikimedia community to new networks, building awareness of the Wikimedia projects and how they work
Building partnerships with educational and other groups to encourage new users to join the community as editors and content contributors
Encouraging editors of English Wikipedia in India, and strengthening coverage of India-relevant topics therein
Reaching communities with limited Internet connectivity to create access to Wikipedia's educational content

The A2K team will answer the following general questions in its pilot work that will help inform program design in India and in other geographies where the Wikimedia movement is active:

Editing growth: Are there certain types of proactive programming that work well in garnishing editorship in India? Indic languages and English: Is there a difference in strategies/opportunities for growth between Indic language communities and the EN:WP community in India? Program evaluation: Why are the programs in India successes or failures? Pilot testing and learning: Why do some program pilots succeed and others struggle? Community partnership: What is the best way to partner with the community in the individual pilots and the overall program? Ability to replicate in India: What are the features/programs that have succeeded and can succeed elsewhere in India? Ability to replicate internationally: What is replicable from the India experience? What are the cultural factors that should be accounted for before expanding? Capacity: Is it possible to maintain the program's activities within the volunteer community or is staff capacity needed? Return on Investment: Is the financial investment justified by the results of the program? Scale: Are pilots that are being tested scalable within a particular community, and adoptable by other language communities?

Current year plan - July 2012-June 2013

General community support and communications

The A2K team will provide support to the Indian Wikimedia community, which includes the Wikimedia India chapter, on various community-led activities, including outreach events across the country, meetups, contests, conferences, and connections to GLAMs and other institutions. This support will extend to all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement. Henceforth, requests of support from the community and the chapter will be managed transparently and publicly so that the A2K team can meet expectations, keeping in mind that not all community events will seek A2K program support, and that the A2K program will not always be able to support all requests made. In general, community support is intended to solve a problem or help or add to an existing community or chapter initiative; the A2K team will provide any level of reasonable help as needed.

The A2K team will also provide services to the community with regard to intra- and inter-community communications--most visibly through the quarterly Indian community newsletter, Wikipatrika, and also through direct efforts to cross-pollinate ideas and make connects between projects. The team will support the community to tell its story on the global Wikimedia blog, Wikimedia.in, Wikipedia Village pumps and use all available channels to reach out to the community. The team also will build a formal public relations plan that will advocate the values of the movement and encourage new editors. In all cases, the communication efforts will be such that they stay in facilitation/support mode, allowing full ownership and participation by the community.

Indic language community building

The India Program began work on Indic language community building in October 2011. This area is a top priority of the A2K team, as Wikimedia's reach in India will always be limited by language barriers. The Indic language projects remain small, with the most successful having fewer than 50,000 articles and fewer than 100 active editors on a monthly basis. The primary challenge is to strengthen communities to build and sustain each Indic language project. To date, community building has focused on working closely with some really small but promising project communities (some with fewer than five editors) to help them take the initial steps to expand their communities. This will entail supporting the organization and design of outreach events, projects and pilots to aid the community in catalyzing activity. See Indic Language projects for more info on recent and current activities.

Over the next year, Indic community building will continue to focus on deep engagement with 7-10 Indic project communities, with the addition of systematic digital outreach pilots focused on encouraging new editor engagement. Digital outreach represents a powerful channel to invite and encourage new editors, especially given the increasing readership of various projects in India. The current reader base is the most logical place to foster new editors. A combination of geo-targeted banners, linking to online tutorials and other training material, supported by online help points such as the Teahouse, will be piloted in an Indic language and then rolled out to other languages as well as the English Wikipedia community in India. Digital outreach will be conducted in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation's newly established Editor Growth and Contribution Program.

Community building will be done by:

Encouraging communication between editors through establishing connections between editors, facilitating meet-ups and encouraging on-wiki discussions on talk pages or forums such as village pumps
Organising collaboration amongst editors through Wikiprojects that are either subject-specific or task-specific (an example of this process can be seen in the Wikiproject to create and improve articles of the 80 most-read medical topics on English Wikipedia that is now active in 5 different Indic languages--Assamese, Bangla, Odia, Telugu and Marathi)
Cross-pollinating ideas across communities by sharing experiences and success (or otherwise) stories in relevant forums such as the various village pumps, as illustrated in this example for Hindi
Supporting Indic language community events such as the Malayalam conference, Sangamothsavam, held at Kollam in May 2012. The A2K team will also offer support to larger events such as Wikiconference, the national conference of Wikimedians in India, but this will be a secondary focus as priority will be placed on Indic-specific activities.

Content addition/donation in Indic languages

Though the A2K team will work with Indian content in all languages, particular emphasis will be placed on generating and improving content in Indic languages. The team will work to find content that is relevant and useful to the Wikimedia movement that is (a) already in the public domain and (b) contributed to the movement under an acceptable copyright license. Such content will include, but not be limited to, dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias and any other encyclopedia-like compilations. The rationale for making content addition/donation a key part of the A2K program work (with the full consent and engagement of the relevant Wikimedia communities involved) is that many smaller Wikipedias need a 'shot in the arm' of content to create sufficient momentum in the projects. In English and other European-language Wikipedias, bot-created content (an integral part of the growth of these Wikipedias in their early years) was possible because sufficient electronic/digital resources existed at the time outside of Wikipedia. For many Indic languages (and indeed, India-related topics in any language), the same is not necessarily true, and content addition/donation may be seen as a necessary intervention--it can be likened to performing the work of a bot in the physical world, with physical texts.

A precedent for content addition/donation exists in the gift of an encyclopedia that the government of the state of Kerala contributed to the Wikimedia movement in December 2008. The gift was received by Jimmy Wales on behalf of the movement and is in the process of being integrated to Malayalam Wikipedia.

New editor cultivation with campaigns on Indian topic areas on English Wikipedia

English Wikipedia is a global resource of nearly 4 million articles. However, only around 115,000 articles (or less than 2.9%) of all articles directly cover topics of relevance in India, and 60,000 of those articles are stubs or articles of poor quality. There is a tremendous opportunity to deepen contributions on India-related topics including areas such as Indian history, geography, law, public policy, politics, art, culture, contributions to the sciences, popular culture, etc.

Over the coming year, in partnership with the Indian Wikipedia community, the Wikimedia India chapter, other groupings (such as WikiProject India) and appropriate national or regional institutions, the CIS A2K team develop campaigns to promote contribution to Wikipedia on specific topic areas. The initial campaigns will involve focused pilots to develop approaches to supporting and cultivating new editors with strong content knowledge. Partnerships will be explored with interest groups outside the existing Wikimedia community to document and celebrate these interests, which could be anything Indian, from efforts that fall under the work of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs), like handicrafts and art, to movies, cricket, history, etc.

Pilot programs

In general, the bulk of the work of the A2K program team will be to run controlled and well-designed pilot programs with the full engagement of the communities involved. These will be developed and carried out in addition to projects focusing on goals A to D. The A2K team will actively design and implement new pilots on the basis of desired impacts and stated goals as outlined through this document. To borrow a phrase from the software development world, the idea behind these pilots will be to continually ensure better design, better engagement and therefore greater chances of success, and to maintain a healthy degree of innovation and experimentation that will allow us, in some cases, to 'fail fast, fail early'.

Built in to the program structure is a speedy evaluation of these pilots that will enable us to document learnings from less successful projects and expand and scale-up more successful attempts. For instance, the India Program, in partnership with the Global Education Program, conducted a pilot project between June-November 2011 with three universities in Pune. The pilot aimed to generate useful content for English Wikipedia and provide lessons for the future growth of education programs within India. The project failed to generate useful content and created significant costs for a variety of reasons, but a thorough evaluation of the pilot was conducted and reported on publicly, and many lessons were learned that will inform future strategies of projects in the same genre. For example, in the coming years, subsequent phases will identify scalable approaches to working with professors and students while taking into account the limitations that were evident in the first attempt; focus will be placed on shifting the design away from English Wikipedia toward Indic languages; work will only be added to Indic language Wikipedias or English Wikipedia if it is of an acceptable quality; students’ training will be made more rigorous; greater and more consistent support from Campus Ambassadors will be provided; and any subsequent project phases will be discussed with the community/ies involved in order to ensure greater community participation in the project right from the outset.

In another instance, the India Program team began two small projects on Facebook in April focused on supporting new editors in English and cultivating community connections and new editors in Odia, as part of a social media pilot. Through these projects, we have learned that social media requires considerable efforts on the part of not just a program team, but instead a whole community. Consequently, in order to succeed, the A2K team will continue to actively engage in the space, and work towards making a cohesive, productive social media space across platforms that is driven and populated by community members, including the chapter, who are already using social media as an extension of their Wikimedia work. One potential pilot project that can work with broad community involvement is an India-focused virtual apprenticeship, building on the Teahouse project.

Approach to measuring results and evaluation

As the work that is being done by the A2K team is of an experimental nature, it is critical that there are clear objectives, robust program design, strong measurement techniques, rigorous documentation, ongoing performance improvement, constant community capacity building and periodic rigorous outside evaluation. Every substantive initiative of the A2K team will have associated pilot designs which will be publicly and regularly developed with and reported to the community. These measures will serve to achieve five objectives:

Increased transparency with the community and chapter so that there is both visibility as well as ownership (and more active involvement of as wide a cross-section of community members as possible)
Discipline of detailed program design to improve the odds of success--especially in the context of the uncharted waters of virtually everything the India Program will be undertaking--with a clear understanding that for any set of experiments, there will be failure and success, though effort will be put towards decreasing failure and increasing success
Facilitation of transfer of capability and best practices within a community, across Indic languages and with communities beyond the India-centric ones
Accountability to community and donors so that a prudent balance is maintained between impact and resources
Fostering of a spirit of learning and continuous improvement, which can only happen if there is detailed and public documentation, communication and training, and an understanding and acceptance that failures will happen with any given set of experiments and that the important thing is to minimise them as well as learn from them.

The A2K team will be supported by a team of five people who will be employees of CIS out of offices in Delhi and Bangalore. The team will be managed by a Programme Director, and consist of individuals working on participation, Indic languages, communication and community and programme support.

Budget

The first year of operations will be supported by a grant from WMF to be administered by CIS for a total of INR 11,000,000. The budget will be spent on team salaries, travel, community events, merchandise for volunteers, and other services as needed.

Read the original published by the Wikimedia Foundation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan

Access to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka

praskrishna — 2012-12-19T07:20:31Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Metawing Technologies (P) Ltd. is organizing a Wikipedia workshop at NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka on December 21, 2012, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

Over 100 students are expected to participate in this workshop. The primary aim of the workshop is to educate them about Wikipedia in Indian languages and tell them how they can contribute to Wikipedia.

CIS is willing to bear the travelling expense for upto two wikipedians to and from Bangalore (or any other place in Karnataka that is close to Karkala).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit

Access To Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014)

T Vishnu Vardhan — 2013-06-10T14:20:06Z

This page is created to share CIS-A2K's Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) for Indian language Wikimedia projects. The main objective of this document is to present a detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.

Language Area Work Plans

Telegu

Odia

Kannada

GOM (Konkani)

Bengali

Overall Support Across Indian Language Communities

Pilot Project - Performing Arts in India

Learning and Evaluation

Introductory note

Context

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge (A2K) program in India; of this, ₹11,000,000 has been released. The purpose of the grant is to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand on Wikimedia’s Indic-language free-knowledge projects. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Objective

The main objective of this document is to present a detailed Annual Work Plan for 2013–14, setting out the expected outcomes and impact of the A2K program activities. The overall objectives of the A2K Team are here.

Methodology

In putting together this Work Plan the A2K team has, over the last two months extensively engaged with various stakeholders. These include a) some Wikimedia India Community members across various Indian-language Wikimedia projects; b) some English-language Wikimedia community members from India; c) Wikimedia India chapter executive committee; d) some potential institutional partners; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

A draft of each of the language plan will be shared with the particular language community through respective language Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists; feedback will be collected in finalizing the plan.

A2K’s method of work

A2K principally sees itself as working hand-in-hand with the Indian Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India chapter, and with all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India. A2K will mostly engage in catalytic kind of work; however, depending on the requirements of each language-area, the A2K team may also undertake the hands-on implementation of some activities that would otherwise be done by the community. The planned A2K program activities are mostly in the south and south-east of India, and it makes better programmatic sense to have the A2K team located in Bangalore. This will not only save the A2K program from relatively larger overhead spending for the project (which could be productively used for programmatic work) but will enable the A2K team to be more in touch with the Wikimedia India community and in proactively undertaking collaborative activities with the community on the ground. Thus the entire A2K team will relocate to Bangalore and work out of the existing CIS office. Please kindly note that the A2K team will hire a new space in Bangalore, once the work plan is finalized, and the intention is that this space will be open to free use by the WM India community and chapter alike.

How to read this Annual Work Plan

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised. The intention of this Work Plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. The broader aspects of the plan have been outlined here. Thus this document is more towards evolving a sense of granularity of the A2K team’s work along with micro level outcome and impact metrics.

We have worked towards developing an Annual Work Plan that is language-specific. The A2K team has not adopted ONE single model, because we believe that each language area has a) specific strengths that we need to build on; b) particular needs for support that we could offer; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions. Thus there are chances that you might see repetitions in the strategies mentioned across language areas.

Please note that the A2K team has some language area plans worked out in greater detail than others. This is mainly because we intend to prioritize working on five language areas during the coming year. This does not mean that we will not support other language areas/communities, but our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on requests made to the A2K team by the community. The A2K team will continue its efforts in actively exploring to include a few more language areas, and will share such plans after they reach a certain stage.

Risk and mitigation

The message that comes across, after a cursory glance at Indian-language Wikipedias, is that there is a huge potential to increase the number of editors, especially active editors, along with the expansion of article entries. On one hand, unfortunately there is no fool-proof formula or plan that either the Wikimedia India community, Wikimedia India chapter or A2K can immediately bank on. This does not mean, on the other hand, that there are no ideas, experiences, learnings and failures, that can inform a strategy. An important point is that what we (the community, WMI chapter, WMF and A2K) all are attempting to do is to achieve something that sounds very simple (increase the number of editors, increase the articles, and build article quality) but yet complex to achieve. In addition to this, improving the Indian-language Wikipedias becomes even more complex for some the following reasons:

Lack of reference material available online in Indian languages.
Typing in Indian languages is a major challenge.
Relative dearth of quality content available in digital format.
Relative lack of research/academic standards, which is transferred on to Indian language Wikipedias.
Various technical issues like input, browser compatibility, font display, which deter new users.

Thus it should be noted that we should extend our work beyond Wikipedia, if we are to grow Indian-language Wikipedias. We need to think of a holistic intervention that would also involve enabling, facilitating and forming localized language-based virtual communities. That this has never been done before, and Indian language Wikipedias have a huge potential to do so.[1] This is also the significance of Indian-language Wikipedias, which are a potential (often the only) medium/platform for migrating Indian languages into the digital era. Also Wikipedia can be leveraged to further the much-needed active research culture in India and Indian culture. As a collective, we are doing something cutting edge and have too much of a risk of failure, time and again. This kind of work has failure fore-written. The only mitigation by which we can aim to be successful is by being open to learning, working as a collective, being supportive of each other, picking ourselves up whenever we fall down, and celebrating the little successes.

Language area work plans

As indicated above, the A2K team has prioritized the five languages and developed a detailed plan. We had initially set out to work with a different set of languages. The language set has slightly changed during the past two months.

Telugu
Odia
Kannada
(GOM) Konkani
Bengali

Some of the key factors that determined the selection of languages areas have included:

Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and increase in that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later point. We have respected the community's decision and are open to work with a couple of language areas later in time.
Work on one incubation project. During our interaction with Wikimedia India Chapter EC about the A2K plans, they have actively encouraged the A2K team to take up at least one project under incubation. Based on their suggestion we have taken up Konkani as we have some institutional contacts that could be leveraged to build the Konkani Wikipedia. The A2K team has also conducted some outreach work in Goa over the past 3–4 months that could be built on.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

As mentioned earlier, A2K team's prioritization of working actively with these five language projects does not mean that A2K team will not support other language areas/communities. The A2K team will continue to provide overall support to all Wikipedia Communities in India. Our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on the requests made to the A2K team by community members.

Overall A2K support to all Wikipedia communities in India

Besides the specific programs mentioned under individual language area plans, A2K team will provide overall support to all Indian-language Wikipedia communities. Please see this page for more details.

Pilot Project – Performing Arts in India

India has a wide range of performing arts. A lot of work is done on performing arts by various individuals and institutions, which offers rich knowledge about the aesthetics, artists, institutions, performance spaces/infrastructure, and policies, across various geographies and languages. This pilot is premised on a theme and seeks to create a multilingual repository of knowledge on Indian performing arts that is interdisciplinary, dynamic and ever evolving. Please go here to read more about the plan.

Learning and evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Community, the A2K team has arrived at some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work. Please see this page for more details.

Giving feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.
- For Telugu plan here.
- For Odia plan here.
- For Kannada plan here.
- For Konkani plan here.
- For Bengali plan here.
For feedback on Pilot Project plan go here.
For feedback on Overall Support Across Indian language Communities you can write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnucis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please call +919845207308 from 08:00 to 21:00 hours IST (Indian Standard Time).

List of contributors

[1] Many of the challenges that we see vis-à-vis Indian-language Wikipedias are somewhat akin to the challenges print technology faced during the 19th century in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/resources/access-to-knowledge-work-plan

Access to Knowledge Report — September to December 2012

noopur — 2013-01-31T10:14:26Z

This post provides an overview of the activities done by the Access to Knowledge team under the grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation from September 2012 to December 2012.

The information provided in this post can also be viewed in form of a presentation here.

The activities done by the Access to Knowledge team have been listed under events, meetups and programs. Here, events indicate workshops conducted and outreach activities supported for people outside the existing community while meetups indicate the meetings with existing community members and programs refer to education programs and competitions across different language Wikipedias. A detailed list of these events and meetups can be found in the presentation.

During this period of four months, a total of 22 events were conducted in 7 languages across 14 cities reaching out to a total of 2,250 participants between the ages of 15 and 52. There were 27 meetups where approximately 150 community members participated. To list briefly, these were in the cities of Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Anugul, Dhenkanal, Hyderabad, Panjim, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Karkala and Delhi.

The focus of the Access to Knowledge team has significantly shifted in terms of concentrating on Indian language projects as well as limiting the scale of initiatives to ensure more engagement. We conducted and supported 5 programs including the Malayalam education program, Gujarati Wikipedia article competition, Assamese education program, Odia education program, supporting Konkani Wikipedia incubator project and Wikipedia takes Pune. In line with the Wikimedia Foundation’s narrowed focus which includes promoting technical volunteer initiatives, the Access to Knowledge team has been helping with filing bugs for Punjabi, Assamese, Odiya, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi communities. We conducted two hackathons at BITS-Pilani Hyderabad and in Delhi and have been helping connect interested volunteers across the country including initiatives like MediaWiki groups.

Including all the activities listed above, we reached out to a total of approximately 2,050 people and have connected with about 49 per cent of them who continue to receive updates on Wikipedia activities in India through our newsletters, mails, etc. Of these, approximately 387 participants (37.9 per cent) created usernames and made edits. The total number of female participants were 288 approximately which is about 28.2 per cent of the total people engaged. However, we are yet to generate a list of articles edited and the list of current active users. One useful way of tracking active editors on different Wikipedia projects is being developed by WMF Labs. Here is an example of the increase/decrease in editor count on Gujarati Wikipedia. We feel that more work needs to be done around studying editor retention.

From the team’s experience with outreach in these months, I want to share a few qualitative insights. For instance, we do think that there is great enthusiasm and potential among engineering students to contribute to MediaWiki and more initiatives need to be planned in order to welcome them and utilize their potential to the benefit of Indian language Wikipedias. Similarly, in terms of gender gap, while the initial barrier of participation can be overcome with outreach, a systematic strategy needs to be developed in order to make female editors feel a part of the existing community and ensure they continue contributing to topics that interest them. Also, right now the team conducts outreach sessions and workshops in all institutions that invite us with no specific approach based on subjects, gender or other parameters. Currently, the Access to Knowledge team has been sharing reports and blog posts with the community via mail, newsletters, tweets and social media fora. We hope to start monthly IRC meets with the community to improve communication and brainstorm together on what challenges each community faces.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/access-2-knowledge-report-2012

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — September 2013

praskrishna — 2013-12-09T06:37:43Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of September 2013:

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0
Goa University re-released Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Goa University Conference Hall. Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. By releasing Vishwakosh under Creative Commons license, Goa University is making it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. For more on Konkani Vishwakosh re-release see

Announcements

CIS Signs MoU with Goa University: The A2K team at CIS has signed an MoU with the Goa University to digitize the “Konkani Vishwakosh” under the Creative Commons license and build a digital knowledge partnership to enhance digital literacy in Konkani language.

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project: The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa is doing a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh.

Video

Wikipedians Speak: Piotr Konieczny: This episode brings you a conversation with Piotr Konieczny, a veteran Wikipedian from Poland. He has contributed to over 514 DYK articles on Wikipedia.

Columns and Blog Entries

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).

Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K (by Nitika Tandon, September 10, 2013).

Wikipedia reaches Classrooms in Hyderabad (by Syed Muzammiluddin, September 20, 2013).

Events Organised

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore (University of Mysore, August 6, 2013): This is a report of the workshop conducted last month. Dr. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Indian Language Wikipedia Training Workshop (TISS, Mumbai, August 16, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was the trainer at this workshop. This workshop was organized as part of the CIS-A2K MoU with TISS. This is also part of the Indian Language Mela being organized by Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, TISS.
Indian Language Wikipedia Training Workshop (TISS, Tuljapur, August 24, 2013). Abhishek Suryavanshi was the trainer for this workshop.
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Goa, September 28, 2013). Nitika Tandon conducted this workshop. The details will be posted soon.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 3 – 6, 2013).

Events Co-organised

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and CILHE, TISS on September 13, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan curated and conducted this day-long event for M.Phil and Ph.D students of the EFL University.
Re-releasing Konkani Vishwakosh & Building Konkani Wikipedia (organised by CIS-A2K and the University of Goa, Conference Hall, Goa University, Taleigao, September 26, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and wikipedians John Noronha and Supriya Kankumbikar, September 27, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop.
Odisha: Wikipedia workshop at IIMC, Dhenkanal (co-organised by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia community, September 30, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi coordinated the entire event along with members of Odia Wikipedia, Dr Subas Chandra Rout, Mrutyunjaya Kar and Sasanka Sekhar Das. This was covered by Odisha Diary (http://bit.ly/1bna9zd), and eOdisha Samachar (http://bit.ly/1aNJvv4).

Events Participated In

Workshop on e-Content Development (organised by Centre for Staff Training and Development, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 4 – 6, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan gave guest lectures on Open Source to Open Knowledge; Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet; e-Content in Indian languages – History, Challenges and Opportunities; Wikipedia Users to Wikipedia Authors – Exploring Wikipedia as an OER Tool; and e-Content, e-Student, e-Faculty – Reimagining classroom in the digital Age.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, SDM College, Ujire, September 15, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was the trainer at this workshop.
T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet (organised by Jadavpur University, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, and Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University on September 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/163oEpz.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (organised by St. Aloysius College, AIMIT, St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Beeri, Mangalore, September 13, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was the trainer at this workshop.
Indian Languages Mela (organised by Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, TISS, Mumbai, September 20-21, 2013). Tejaswini Niranjana, T. Vishnu Vardhan and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this event.
'Digital Humanities and Higher Education' (organised by School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, September 2013). Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana gave a talk.

Media Coverage

'Help Konkani Wikipedia come out of incubation' (Deccan Herald, September 13, 2013): The article talks about the relative lack of content in Konkani Wikipedia. “To get it out of incubation, many should write Konkani articles for Wikipedia,” Dr. Pavanaja was quoted as having said.
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 26, 2013). A coverage of the re-release of the Konkani encyclopaedia under Creative Commons license.
Goa University re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013): Goa University and CIS-A2K re-released the four volume 3632 page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia) in Goa.
Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia (Navhind Times, September 27, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013): Goa University becomes the first varsity in India to allow data produced and copyrighted by an Indian university to be used by internet users. Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided, says Vishnu Vardhan.
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013): Goa University re-launched a four-volume Konkani encyclopaedia and will upload it on Wikipedia. The process will be completed in six months times, says Vishnu Vardhan.
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013): Konkani has 24 lakh speakers as per the Census Department of India 2001 but online documentation is limited. CIS-A2K wants to strengthen the Konkani Wikipedia, says Nitika Tandon.
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (by Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India to Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K

CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india

Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-september-2013

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — October 2013

praskrishna — 2014-01-04T12:04:56Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of October 2013:

Train the Trainer Program
Wikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013. CIS-A2K organised the residency training program to build capacities amongst different language Wikimedia communities. A good diversity of Wikipedians from various language communities such as Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Odia, came over for the event. Two prominent reasons identified for organizing the event were the limitations of a virtual sphere and the limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities. Seventeen people participated in the event: http://bit.ly/18hjw0n

► Events Organised
Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop: http://bit.ly/HIiC30.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/బెంగుళూరు/అక్టోబర్ (UTC, Bangalore, October 12, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1hpmXrt.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event: http://bit.ly/1a9m8N2. Nitika Tandon shares a detailed blog post on the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC License: http://bit.ly/1cm9wBH.
► Event Participated In
Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”: http://bit.ly/18Obr2P.
► Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ek8AzW.
Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/Hfh7sI.
कोंकणी विश्‍वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh: http://bit.ly/18J3YlB.

About CIS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-october-2013

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T08:19:52Z

This is the second bulletin from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. This issue features education program updates of the Assamese, Malayalam and Gujarati Wiki communities, a hackathon held at BITS, Hyderabad, press coverage of the Odia Wikipedia workshop in Pune, and reports of workshops organised in Bangalore, Ghaziabad and Pune during the month of October.

Education Program Updates

Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012).
Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012).
Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).
Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).

Workshop Reports

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012).
Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012).
Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012).

First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012).

Event Organised

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012).

Press Coverage

Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012).

Team Updates

The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.
We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for New Delhi office.
Shiju Alex, Programme Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom.

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — November 2013

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T13:41:04Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of November 2013:

CIS-A2K Narrative ReportThis narrative report captures the work done by the A2K program during the period of September 2012 to June 2013. It examines projects and activities and its impact and outcomes over a period of the initial Ten months of the Grant. This report will also inform CIS-A2K program’s strategy for the next one year to achieve the goals set out by its donor, Wikimedia Foundation, and goals listed in our Work Plans (which were developed in consultation with the Wikimedia community in India). Importantly, this Narrative Report is critical for the Wikimedia community in India, Global Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation to get a comprehensive overview of A2K’s work and to critically assess the A2K program’s eligibility for further support. The report compiled by by T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi can be accessed at http://bit.ly/1dFyjpO.
► Announcements

CIS Signs MoU with Christ University, Bangalore (November 20, 2013): The Access to Knowledge team signed a MoU as part of which CIS-A2K and Christ University will impart Wikipedia education in Indian classrooms: http://bit.ly/1ehr8kz.
We are happy to share with you that Rahmanuddin Shaik has been selected for the role of "Community Communications Consultant" at CIS-A2K! Rahmanuddin is an active contributor on Wikimedia Commons, Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wikisource: http://bit.ly/1bwrEu3.

►Articles

ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಟ್ಟ ಸಸಿಗೆ ಈಗ ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷ (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Kannada Prabha, November 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/17LOw4O. The article highlights 10 years of Kannada Wikipedia, the current status of the Kannada Wikipedia vis-a-vis number of articles, number of editors, active editors, and page views per month.
Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, November 14, 2013):http://bit.ly/ILwLMr. The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane of DNA.

►Blog Entries

Train the Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18hjw0n.
Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA (by Nitika Tandon, November 26, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z.

► Events Organised

Wikipedia Orientation Programme for MA Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/ItxAtu. Syed Muzammiluddin was the trainer. Twenty students participated.

Wikipedia Orientation Programme for the Second Language Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 13, 16 and 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1bxsOYF. T. Vishnu Vardhan, Syed Muzammiluddin and Dr. U.B.Pavanaja were the trainers. About 1200 second language students participated in the programme.
Documentation and Wikipedia Contribution — A One Day Workshop (Kalinga Institute of Social Studies, Bhubaneswar, November 14, 2013). The workshop was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi: http://bit.ly/1fSvl1v.
Documentation and Wikipedia Workshop (Kalinga School of Management, Bhubaneswar, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/Imf0DV. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konknni Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Dalgado Konknni Akademi and CIS-A2K, Goa Central State Library, November 16 and 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSwiH5.
Tenth Anniversary of Wikipedia (H N Multimedia Hall, National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1eJ6da9. Dr. U R Ananthamurthy, Prof. G. Venkatasubbiah and Ravi Hegde were the guests of honour. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
First Phase of Odia Wikipedia Workshop (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Bhubaneswar, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18doDer. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSAUwT. Nitika Tandon conducted the event.
Konkani Vishwakosh: Doubt Solving Session I (Goa Central State Library, November 26, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the session.
Konkani Vishwakosh: Doubt Solving Session II (Goa Central State Library, November 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the session.
Editing Sprint for Vishwakosh (Goa Central, State Library, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gnVV2z. Nitika Tandon conducted the event.

► Event Co-organised

The Relaunch of Creative Commons India (co-organised by Wikimedia India, Acharya Narendra Dev College and CIS, India Islamic Cultural Centre, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/HPxrAO. Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development was the chief guest at the event.

► Event Participated In

Wikimedia Diversity Conference (organized by German Wikipedia Community, GLS Campus, Berlin): http://bit.ly/Ixr9W8. T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at this event and made a presentation on the challenges and opportunities for the Wikimedia movement in India.

► Media Coverage CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Kannada Wikipedia and its Tenth Anniversary (RadioCity, November 2, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dHEwBI.
Indian Govt to Build Machine Translation System for 22 Indic Languages (by Brindaalakshmi, Medianama, November 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/J4qg7V. CIS MoU with Goa University is mentioned.
10th anniversary of Kannada wikipedia (by ND Shiva Kumar, The Times of India, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/IxqDr7.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Udayavani, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aFwqF1.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಈಗ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ. ಅದರ ಪ್ರಯುಕ್ತ ಒಂದು ಆಚರಣೆ (Avadhi Website, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/ImiBSy.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಗೆ 10, ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆ ಸಾಲದು: ಪ್ರೊ .ಜಿವಿ (OneindiaKannada, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/19blS17.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Vijayavani, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b7exSa.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ ಸಂಭ್ರಮ (Prajavani, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtt9v.
ಕನ್ನಡದ ಆನ್‌ಲೈನ್ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ದುರ್ಬಲ (Vijaya Karnataka, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtsCy.
Panaji: DKA organizes two day Konkani Wikipedia workshop (Daijiworld, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1inoi03.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Muzammiluddin Syed, one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi and one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

About CIS
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
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Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-november-2013