The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 631 to 645.
A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad
https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the soft skill development training program, RKGIT, an engineering college is working on a series of activities to empower the students with practical approach and competence for their professional life. We were invited to conduct a workshop for the students of mechanical engineering and help them understand the real reasons for contributions to Wikipedia as a volunteer.</p>
<p>Some of the focus areas we set for the workshop were:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Number of students not to exceed 60 to make sure that we get enough time and space to interact actively and pay individual attention.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Number of coordinators to support with logistics to conduct the workshop smoothly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Active participation of teachers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Arrangement of internet labs with multiple IP addresses for smooth user account creation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Around 65 mechanical engineering students from second and third year participated in this workshop. We began the workshop with an interactive discussion about their practical relation with Wikipedia as students and the usability and difficulties that they face. I presented about some important facts about Wikipedia and voluntary contribution in different ways. During and after the presentation students asked a lot of questions about the notability and authenticity of articles, collaboration vs. fights among editors, references and its significance, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a short break to make way for students to settle in the internet lab for a hands on training session. We faced problems with the LAN and 3G network for mobile broadband which made this session longer than expected. There were problems for creating accounts because of the Internet explorer and X based systems and the students couldn't create their user accounts. So, we had to manage with them contributing anonymously from IP addresses. Despite these unexpected technical problems all of them edited various articles. Some of them tried to vandalize and observe the quick reversal of the vandals.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img class="image-inline" src="blog/resolveuid/c95b296397b746abae98c8b557344504/@@images/image/preview" /><br />Subhashish presenting about Wikipedia to the participants</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I had a discussion with the director about conducting more such workshops, especially technical workshops where students can code and contribute to MediaWiki.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Presentation used for this workshop: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia">www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia</a></li>
<li>English Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org">http://en.wikipedia.org</a> (Click <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main+Page&type=signup">here</a> to create an account on Wikipedia)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Presentation</h3>
<p> </p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/16067135" width="427"> </iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad'>https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-22T03:09:25ZBlog EntryCelebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013
<b>Wikipedia Club Pune, a local community based outreach user group in Pune has recently organized Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about “Spoken Wikipedia”, a project to add recorded audio for Indic language Wikipedia articles which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and “Bridging Editor Gender Gap.”</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On January 12 and 13, 2013, I was in Pune to participate in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013</a>, a two day event organized by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a> to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Indic_Languages">Spoken Wikipedia</a>, and to bridge the <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men/">gender gap</a> of Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Day 1</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the first day, January 12, more than 100 people including students from almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and open source activists participated. The opening ceremony began with talks from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal, PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Ms. Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken Wikipedia project which is one main agenda of the two days event. He explained about the need of spoken wikipedia, especially for people with disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic languages. In the past wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles in various Indian and international languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke about the chapters' in few of the national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter with district collector of Kanyakumari, the India Chapter being partner to Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify 2013, Pune.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for this.' says Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying "Ya vidya sa vimuktaye" to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free of its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and Wikipedia's part in it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were explained about the three parallel sessions: An Open Discussion about Gender Gap, Workshop for Indic Languages, and Spoken Wikipedia. The session on gender gap was attended by many school students. Vibha and some activists coordinated this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia, wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were three medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the closing talks.</p>
<h3>Day 2</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second day, January 13, of the Wikipedia Summit in Pune was a sequel of the activities which happened on the first day. More than 40 students took part in this session. Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on Wikipedia were discussed.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/IMG_4124.jpg/@@images/31ee6a90-3009-45fa-8166-6a30bbf5d590.jpeg" style="float: left; " title="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" class="image-inline" alt="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the participating Wikipedians recording his voice for a Marathi article</p>
</th>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Spoken Wikipedia is a project to bring out editors who are willing to contribute to Wikipedia by reading the Wikipedia articles, recording them and the uploading them to <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org">WikiCommons</a>. These recorded audio could be used for articles on various Indic Wikipedias and would be really useful for users with disabilities. The first workshop was aimed for contribution for articles related to common diseases.</p>
<br />"Those who are blind and unable to read can listen to the articles and get information. This will be beneficial to a lot of people", says Atharva, a school student who has contributed to an article about Rabies on <a class="external-link" href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%9C">Marathi Wikipedia.</a>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants of the Spoken Wikipedia session worked on the articles on Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the available Marathi (or Hindi), some others would translate and the other member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. There were about 120 participants. At the end of the day participants from both the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing, taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in more Wikipedia activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This event was co-hosted by Centre for Internet and Society with a financial support of ₹ 21,600 granted by Kusuma Foundation.</p>
<h3>Also see:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Wikipedia Summit Pune: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Wikipedia Club Pune: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune</a></li>
<li>Pictures: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Spoken Wikipedia Project: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India</a></li>
<li>Pune Club facebook page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune">https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Video</h3>
<ul>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center; ">
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="371" width="450">
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature"><embed height="371" width="450" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>
</object>
</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaDigital ActivismAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaYouthVideoOpen AccessOpennessEvent2013-04-16T12:48:40ZBlog EntryIndic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012
<b>I have compiled the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012. As usual, in this report, my aim is to provide my perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(The period of analysis is editor contributions between December 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012. December to December data is taken to account for the seasonal variations). Read the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">2011 report here</a> and the <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-statistical-report/" target="_blank">2010 report here</a>. The data for this report and analysis is based on the statistical data published at <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org</a>. A special thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here is my executive summary after analyzing the data for 2012 and my experince with building some wiki communities:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Steady and sustainable growth is available for communities which focus on community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Small languages with guidance and support are making huge progress than many big languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Lack of support from proper channels at the much needed time had affected the community growth of some communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Even though many outreach programs had happened across country, that is not showing up in terms of number of active editors.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Still many language communities (especially big languages) are not open to the idea of reaching out to the speakers of the respective language.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Pageviews of Indic projects continues to increase.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This report is presented in the following sequence. This is done so because I believe that community is central to the Wikimedia movement. Community will give us content which will drive readership.</p>
<ul>
<li>Community</li>
<li>Content</li>
<li>Readership</li>
</ul>
<h2>Community</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned above, according to me, community is the backbone of Wikimedia movement. But still many communities are not understanding the importance of this. It is important that all language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building to build the free knowledge repository in their language. The following table gives information based on two important parameters about the community. The first parameter shows the highly active editors (more than 100 edits per month) in wiki. The second parameter shows the active editors (more than 5 edits per month).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Report.png" alt="Indic Language Statistical Report" class="image-inline" title="Indic Language Statistical Report" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Like last year, Malayalam continues to show an upward growth in terms of the number of active users. It has close to 120 active editors now. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryML.htm">graphical summary shows that mean number</a> of editors is around 100. Malayalam is the biggest wiki community among Indic languages even though Malayalam is only the 11th biggest spoken language in India. The sincere efforts put by Malayalam wikipedians to build its community is the only reason for this. The programs like Malayalam Wiki conference, Education program, CD project, wiki workshops, photo events, Wikimeetups, and many other outreach events started showing its result. If the community continues with these type of efforts then I am sure that the community strength in Malayalam Wikipedia will cross 150 in 2013. Apart from Wikipedia, the importance given to Malayalam Wikisource, Wiktionary, and more recently to Wikivoyage (in incubator) will attract more Malayalam speakers to the Malayalam wiki projects.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil comes second with close to 80 active editors. However, the number of active editors has gone down from last year. The <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryTA.htm">graphical summary</a> shows that number of active users was around 70-75 especially during the last two quarters.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Bengali comes third with around 60 active editors. This is a slight increase from the last year’s number of active editors. The involvement of editors from India in Bengali Wikipedia is less. That needs to be changed. Bangladeshi wikipedians are having many outreach programs to build Bengali wiki community. It will be nice if they extend their support to Indian Bengali speakers also as Indian Bengali wikipedians are not growing.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Telugu, Urdu, Gujarati, and Punjabi are the wikipedia languages that show notable increase in the number of active editors. But it will be be a mistake from my part if I am not mentioning that these numbers are not encouraging and the current number of active users is not showing justice to the number of speakers these languages have. This statement is more significant when we consider the fact that some smaller languages are showing a better progress.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">We have seen that <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/" target="_blank">last year (2011)</a> the success stories were Odia and Assamese wikipedias. In 2012, the shining star is <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank"><b>Punjabi</b></a>. The community has grown from one active editor from last year to almost 15 active editors now. As mentioned in my blog posts (<a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/the-first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop/">post 1</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala/">post 2</a>, <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar/">post 3</a>, and <a href="http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/building-community-for-punjabi-wikipedia-my-experience/">post 4</a>) about building Punjabi wikipedia community, the task of building community for Punjabi was very challenging. Initiated in 2002 along with Assamese, Punjabi is one of the first Indic language wikipedia. But nothing much had happened in that wiki until deliberate efforts to build community initiated. The news is now we have an active community in <a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org" target="_blank">Punjabi Wikipedia</a>. From the just one person last year (<a href="http://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guglani" target="_blank">Guglani</a> – who took lots of pain to travel to multiple locations to introduce Punjabi wikipedia), now Punjabi wikipedia has close to 15 active editors. Unlike Odia and Assamese, I have faced so many issues during Punjabi wikipedia community building (mostly conflicts between editors). But I am happy to see that community is slowly coming out of all that. The technical team has <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43730">fixed some of the bugs</a> related to typing tool which was very important for Punjabi wikipedia. Punjabi wikipedians require lot support from other wikipedians to sustain the current momentum and grow the community further. My best wishes to Punjabi wikipedians.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Gujarati and Urdu are the two other communities that made considerable progress in community growth. The efforts put by Gujarati wikipedians to reach out to Gujarati speakers started showing the results. I am sure with the significant attention also given to Gujarati Wikisource (<a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-gu/2012-March/000095.html">which was created last year</a>), more Gujarati speakers will be attracted to Gujarati wiki projects. The involvement of Indians in Urdu Wikipedia is very less. But it is good to notice that Urdu wiki community slowly started growing. May be Wikipedia is one place where Indians and Pakistanis can work together.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The wikipedia languages that haven't shown significant change in number of active editors are Marathi, Odia, Assamese, and Nepali. The respective communities need to start putting efforts to build community by taking lessons from other Indic language wiki communities.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have considerable reduction in number of editors are Hindi, Kannada, and Sanskrit. Among this, except Sanskrit, all are spoken by at least five crore people. It is not good to see that speakers of these languages are not giving any attention to the wiki projects in their respective language. The case of Hindi is very strange considering the fact that it has support of the central government and many state governments of India.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The dormant language communities are Sindhi, Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, and some other small languages. Considering the fact that Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi were also dormant two years before, I am sure if someone is putting effort to build communities for these now dormant communities, these language wiki communities will also grow like it happened for Odia, Assamese, and Punjabi. Now there are multiple entities to support wikimedia movement in India and I hope that someone will take care of this apart from concentrating on the bigger languages.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In short, the point I want to emphasis is, conscious efforts are required from different stakeholders to grow communities and to sustain that growth for all Indic language wikipedias.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Number of articles is an important parameter, but it has misguided some wiki communities in the past. Fortunately that trend is coming down.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersArticles.png" alt="Language, Speakers & Articles" class="image-inline" title="Language, Speakers & Articles" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">With more than 1,04,000 articles, Hindi continues to be the biggest Indic language wikipedia in terms of the number of articles. Almost 3500 articles were added to Hindi wikipedia in the year 2013.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tamil and Malayalam had added around 7000 articles which is the "biggest growth" in terms of number of articles. Urdu and Nepali added close to 5000 articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">If we consider percentage of increase then Assamese language has shown more than 100 per cent increase in the number of articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the important milestones are, Tamil and Telugu crossing 50,000 articles, Malayalam crossing 25,000 articles, and Assamese crossing 1,000 article milestones.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The languages that have shown very slow growth in terms of number of articles are Gujarati, Telugu and Kannada. I assume at least for few of these languages the focus went into enhancing the existing articles and building the community rather than creating thousands of stub articles.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">As mentioned in the past reports, communities don’t need to worry about the number of articles. Also the examples of Bishnupriya Manipuri and Newari Wikipedias shows the after effect of increasing the article count without focusing on building the community.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Readership (page views)</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike the number of editors, the number of page views in wiki is showing an upward trend irrespective of the language.(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 Number of Unique Visitors to the website).</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/SpeakersReaders.png" alt="Speakers & Readers" class="image-inline" title="Speakers & Readers" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> This is the one parameter where the figures are showing relative justice to the number of speakers.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi with 78 lakh page views is in the top position.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The page views for Tamil had increased by more than 50 per cent.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Assamese has more than 100 per cent growth in page views.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Since the support for Indic languages is increasing for smart phone operating systems, I am sure the page views are going to increase further.</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Conclusion</h2>
<p>I am concluding this report with the following thoughts:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Being the biggest language (or number of speakers) does not automatically build community for an Indic language wikipedia. Efforts from respective language speakers are necessary to build community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Most Indians who have access to internet and computer still don’t know their respective language typing. This is the biggest road block to build Indic language wiki community.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Do not get obsessed by article counts or readership. These are natural outcomes of community building.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community interaction (through meetups, talk pages, village pumps, and mailing lists).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on community building through community collaboration (WikiProjects or planning outreach efforts or advocacy).</li>
<li>Focus on community building through doing more outreach, better outreach, and being supportive of newbies.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Stay away from bots and translation tools for article creation as they do more harm than good. Use bots in such a way that it is not affecting the growth of the community.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wishing all of you a wonderful wiki year 2013.</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012</a>
</p>
No publishershijuOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2013-02-03T02:40:48ZBlog EntryWikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa
<b>A three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.</b>
<p>The workshop started with a short introductory presentation followed by a learning session on how to edit the Wikipedia. Since there were lesser number of computers, participants were divided in groups of 2 or 3 at the maximum. Each group made at least 3 edits with the help of volunteers present in the room.</p>
<p>A follow up session will be organised in January or February of 2013 to organise an edit-a-thon for all the interested and enthusiastic participants.</p>
<p>A special thanks to everyone who helped organising this event, especially to Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick, Debanjan - all from the Wikipedia family and Nitin Volvoikar, the Head of Journalism Department from <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Xavier%27s_College,_Mapusa,_Goa">St. Xavier's</a>.</p>
<hr />
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GroupSt.Xavier.png" alt="St.Xavier GLAM" class="image-inline" title="St.Xavier GLAM" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Above is a picture of the whole group of participants at the St.Xavier's College at Mapusa, Goa</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-07-26T11:33:29ZBlog EntryThe Violence of Knowledge Cartels
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/hybridpublishing-nishant-shah-january-17-2013-the-violence-of-knowledge-cartels
<b>We are all struck with a sense of loss, grief and shock since we heard of the death of Aaron Swartz, by suicide. People who have been his friends have written heart-felt obituaries, saluting his dreams and visions and unwavering commitment to a larger social good. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog post was <a class="external-link" href="http://hybridpublishing.org/2013/01/the-violence-of-knowledge-cartels/">published in the Hybrid Publishing Lab</a> on January 17, 2013.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://hybridpublishing.org/">Colleagues</a> who have worked with him and have been inspired by his achievements have documented the quirky intelligence and the whimsical genius that Swartz was. <a href="http://hybridpublishing.org/2013/01/the-violence-of-knowledge-cartels/#disqus_thread">His fellow crusaders</a>, who have stood by him in his impassioned battle against the piracy centred witch-hunt have helped spell out the legal and political conditions, which might not have directly led to this sorry end, but definitely have to be factored in his own negotiations with depression. All these voices have enshrined Aaron Swartz, the 26 year old boy-wonder who was just trying to make the world a better place where information is free and everybody has unobstructed access to knowledge. They have shown us that there is an ‘Aaron sized hole’ in the world, which is going to be difficult to fill. These are voices that need to be heard, remembered, and revisited beyond the urgency of the current tragedy and it is good to know that this archive of grief and outpouring of emotional support will stay as a living memory to the legend that Swartz had already become in his life-time.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, I want to take this opportunity to not talk about Aaron Swartz. I am afraid that if I do, I will end up either factualising him – converting him into a string of data sets, adding to the already burgeoning details about his life, his achievements, and of course the gory court case that has already been the centre of so much rage and debate. I am also afraid that if I do talk about Aaron Swartz, I will end up making him into a creature of fictions – talking about his dreams and his visions and his outlook and making him a martyr for a cause, forgetting to make the distinction that Aaron died, not for a cause, but believing in it. I, like many people who were affected, in many degrees of separation and distance, am taking the moment to mourn the death of somebody who should have lived longer. But I want to take the moment of Aaron’s death to talk about heroisms and sacrifices and everyday politics of what he believed in.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Let me talk about Shyam Singh, who is as far removed from Swartz as possible. Shyam Singh is a 74 year-old-man in India, who runs a corner photocopying shop on the Delhi School of Economics campus in New Delhi. Singh is not your young, charismatic, educated, tech-savvy oracle. He spent a large part of his life – 3 decades – working at the University’s Central Research Library and the Ratan Tata Library, operating unwieldy machines that were panting to keep up with new innovations in technologies of digital reproduction. It took him thirty years of work to muster enough savings so that he could buy a couple of photocopying machines and start a small photocopying shop at Ramjas College in New Delhi. After his retirement, the Delhi School of Economics actually invited him to come and set up the Rameshwari Photocopying shop on the campus, for the students at the school. He had an official license from the University, for which he paid a sum of 10,000 Indian Rupees, to work on a profit model that depended on high volume and low costs. The shop was more or less a landmark for students and professors alike, who would come to get their course material photocopied out of books that they could almost never afford to buy and were not easily available in public lending libraries. The shop keeper also compiled course-packs, which allowed students to buy all the texts prescribed for their curricula (but not necessarily available in multiple or digital copies in the library), at affordable rates.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It came as quite a shock to Singh, when one day, he was told that a consortium of publishers – Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Taylor and Francis Group – had filed a case in the high court of New Delhi against him, claiming damages of 6 million Indian Rupees for wilful copyright infringement for commercial gains. Singh did not have the ideological apparatus that was available to Swartz, nor the competence to talk about the unfairness of the legal claim. He did, in several interviews, talk about India’s avowed policy on universal education and how he had always thought of himself as helping in that process of equal access to students who would otherwise have been unable to afford the education. The case against Singh is already in the courts, and the High Court has issued an injunction restraining him from providing copies of chapters from textbooks published by the three international publishers who have moved the court. And while he has found support from the academic, legal and student community from around the country, there is no denying that he is going to be fighting an expensive battle against a large Intellectual Property protection conglomeration of publishers who are all ready to make a ‘scapegoat’ and an ‘example’ of this small photocopy shop, in their efforts at enforcing paid access to scholarly and academic material in the country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I desperately hope that Singh shall not find himself as persecuted as Swartz did, by the publishers, by the public prosecutors, and by an indifferent citizenry who is quite happy to benefit from the fruits that might fall out of this case about loosened Intellectual Property and symbolically support the idea that knowledge should be free, but do not think that this is a problem that affects them in particular. True, in both these instances, we have seen people oscillating between rue and rage, expressing their dissatisfaction with these market driven information cartels which refuse to unleash the information and knowledge that we all believe should be made free. But in those expressions of anger and shock, is also a denial of the fact that we have all been complicit in building, supporting and sustaining these worlds because doing otherwise would inconvenience our schedules, lives and careers. Swartz and Singh, in their own way, had to become the poster-children, the martyrs, for us to take notice about a battle that affects us uniformly but doesn’t feature in our everyday practices and conviction.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/">Intellectual Property and Openness</a> are seen as legal battles for somebody else to fight. Even with academia and research, which is the most complicit in building these exploitative knowledge industries, there is very little discussion or even recognition of the untenable behemoths that we have been feeding in our quest for tenures, publications and popularity. For an everyday person, as you can imagine, this is even more removed from their quotidian life practices. The distancing and alienation gets even more acerbated by the fact that these battles are often fought silently. We have legal stalwarts fighting it out in court rooms. Academic scholars and researchers are drawing their pens and swords in academic journals. Political activists are championing their causes in conferences and summits. And in all of this, we have produced a gated activism, where the threshold of engagement and investment is so high that unless there are these dying and the wounded to hold out for public scrutiny, the world moves on, grumbling slightly at the restriction on torrent downloads or the unavailability of its favourite book in the local markets, but thinking that it has nothing to do with them. They are not even an audience to these battles. And if indeed, they are audiences, they are the kinds that go to a play, eat loudly out of crinkly wrappers, talk on their cellphones in the middle of the denouement and leave before the play ends, because they don’t want to miss their favourite TV show about dancing animals back at home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I do not want to hyperbolise and so I will not endorse the often suggested idea that knowledge should be as free as air and water – for a lot of us who have been looking at the private-public nexus in developing globalised countries already know that free air and water are a myth and that there are heavy prices to be paid for them. But I do want to suggest that it is time to think of the knowledge wars as human wars, as deeply implicated in our understanding of who we are, what kind of societies we want to live in, and what worlds we want to build for the future generations to inherit. These are fights that are not only about getting things for free – they are about understanding what is sacred and central to our civilization impulse and disallowing a small clutch of private bodies to make their profits by selling it to us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is time to maybe look around and see how manipulations of power and the algebra of survival has made us support corrupt and corrupting systems that restrict free information and knowledge. It is time to learn about the issues at stake – from providing cheap drugs to those in underprivileged areas to offering conditions of affordable education for the masses – when we talk about intellectual property regimes. It is time to organize, question, re-evaluate our own everyday practices, and realise that the fights against intellectual property are not battles that are fought once-every-heroic-death. That these are things that we need to strive for on a daily basis, without the need of an external catalyst or a dramatic death of somebody who died believing in a cause that was supposed to make the world a better place for those in the audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The next time, let us not wait for shame, guilt, horror, or surprise to catalyse us in taking note of the growing restrictions on information and knowledge in our world. Let us not wait for the emergence of another Swartz or Singh, persecuted by exploitative knowledge cartels that do untold harm to our sense of being human and being free in information societies. And let us keep our fingers crossed, that wherever he is, Swartz has found peace, solace, and the freedom that he was fighting for, and that Singh does not suffer a fate that might denude him of his livelihood and life’s savings.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Nishant Shah (<a href="https://twitter.com/latelyontime" title="latelyontime">@latelyontime</a> / <a href="mailto:nishant.shah@inkubator.leuphana.de">nishant.shah@inkubator.leuphana.de</a> )is an International Tandem Partner at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, and Director-Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/hybridpublishing-nishant-shah-january-17-2013-the-violence-of-knowledge-cartels'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/hybridpublishing-nishant-shah-january-17-2013-the-violence-of-knowledge-cartels</a>
</p>
No publishernishantOpennessOpen Access2013-01-18T07:33:53ZBlog EntryAaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight
<b>On Saturday, January 19, 2013, HasGeek and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are organizing a hacknight to understand Aaron’s work and contribute to his projects. The event starts from 2.00 p.m. onwards and ends at 8.00 a.m., the next day morning. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Among the hackers present will be some of Aaron's collaborators, such as </span><a href="https://twitter.com/anandology"><span>Anand Chitipothu</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://twitter.com/asldevi"><span>A S L Devi.</span></a><span>The Aaron Swartz memorial hacknight is a free event. You </span><span>do not</span><span> have to be a hacker to contribute and do not have to be present for the entire night. Join us even if just to show solidarity or inspire others on what they can do. HasGeek encourages participants to bring their own energy drinks and snacks for the evening so that there is enough to go around. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b id="internal-source-marker_0.2664988487958908"><span>To register, visit: </span><a href="http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial"><span>http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial</span></a><span>. Once your registration is approved, you can add or join a project to work on during the hacknight.</span></b></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; "><b><span>Aaron Swartz</span></b><span></span></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Aaron Swartz was a hacktivist. He helped create RSS 1.0; contributed to Creative Commons; was an early builder of Reddit, where he's often acknowledged as a co-founder; created the </span><a href="http://webpy.org/"><span>web.py</span></a><span> framework; and more recently, became a data liberator, first with PACER, the US public case law archive, and then with scholarly articles from JSTOR, both of which got him into trouble with the law. Aaron's </span><a href="http://demandprogress.org/"><span>Demand Progress</span></a><span> project helped stop SOPA and PIPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act in the US, both of which threatened to have far reaching unintended consequences.</span><a href="http://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com/"><span></span></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com/"><span>Aaron Swartz took his life on Jan 11, 2013.</span></a><span> However, his work on making the world a better place should not die with him. On Saturday, January 19, </span><a href="http://hasgeek.com/"><span>HasGeek</span></a><span> and the </span><a href="https://cis-india.org/"><span>Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)</span></a><span> are organizing a </span><a href="http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial"><span>hacknight</span></a><span> to understand Aaron’s work and contribute to his projects. Among the hackers present will be some of Aaron's collaborators, such as </span><a href="https://twitter.com/anandology"><span>Anand Chitipothu</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://twitter.com/asldevi"><span>A S L Devi</span></a><span>, who can help you get started.</span></p>
<h3><span>About HasGeek</span><span></span></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>HasGeek creates discussion spaces around emerging technologies to foster the growth of communities. Since 2010, HasGeek has organized a number of conferences, hacknights and geekups around open source, web design and development, big data, cloud computing and mobile opportunities. The </span><a href="http://jobs.hasgeek.com/"><span>HasGeek Job Board</span></a><span> connects thousands of individuals every month with jobs around upcoming technologies. HasGeek also builds tools to assist communities with organizing events and meetups. For more information, write to </span><a href="mailto:info@hasgeek.com"><span>info@hasgeek.com</span></a><span></span><span></span></p>
<h3><span>About CIS</span><span></span></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>CIS is a research and advocacy organization based in Bangalore. Founded in 2008, the Centre critically engages with issues concerning internet governance, freedom of speech, public accountability and digital pluralism. </span><span>Through multidisciplinary research, intervention, and collaboration, CIS seeks to explore, understand, and affect the shape and form of the internet, and its relationship with the political, cultural, and social milieu of our times.</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessEvent2013-01-17T05:18:22ZEventTwo-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university
<b>Last month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All efforts invested in discussions and planning the workshop over multiple mail trails, conference calls, one-on-one calls paid off extremely well. Over 35 participants attended the two-days workshop and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of the participants had already created their usernames before the first session, as it was instructed to them earlier, though there were some participants who created their user accounts during the session. Despite creating a <a href="https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42767">ticket</a> for releasing the IP from the "seven accounts creation limit" we ran into an IP block. This was the second time we encountered such a problem. We will look more closely into this matter for smoother operations in future.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was pre-decided by the organisers that the first session will be theoretical while the second session will be a complete hands-on-traning session. Hence, the first session started with a general introduction about Wikipedia, the five pillars, how Wikipedia works, a brief introduction about the Wikipedia community, and the state of Wikipedia in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The following day participants pre-selected articles that they wanted to edit during the course of the second session. They were taught how to do minor edits, add edit summary, add references, view history and page statistics, and also briefed about the importance of publishing articles, and user talk pages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The two day long workshop came to an end with a meeting organized by all the participants to decide what should be their next steps. The workshop created a lot of enthusiasm in the participants. They got to know how individual researchers and professors build pages on Wikipedia, and they too can start by contributing one page at a time. They also showed keen interest to understand how monthly meet-ups are organised in other cities so that they could also organise meet-ups in Goa starting 2013 (the proposed date was January 16, 2013 — when Wikipedia's anniversary can be celebrated).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The feedback received from the participants was extremely positive. In the meanwhile there have been some discussion about forthcoming workshops — we have already received inquires from five more institutes to organize similar events in Goa. It seems like the initial seeds have been sown for a flourishing Wikipedia community in Goa.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A special thanks to Prof. Alito Siqueira from Department of Sociology Goa University, Harriet Vidyasagar from OLPC, Prof. Gopakumar from Goa University, Debanjan and Frederick from Wikipedia community and the CIS team for making this workshop a huge success.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-01-25T06:30:54ZBlog EntryDecember 2012 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2012-bulletin
<b>We at the Centre for Internet & Society wish you all a great year ahead. In the December 2012 newsletter, we bring you the draft early chapters of our “National Resource Kit” project for persons with disabilities (covering four southern states); and accessibility-related comments on the Twelfth Five Year Plan; the draft research on pervasive technologies and access to knowledge that we presented at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in Brazil; our comments on the privacy implications of including RFID tags in the proposed Rule 138A of the Motor Vehicle Rules, a report on the open access lectures delivered by Prof. Leslie Chan during his tour of India, reports of Wikipedia-related workshops conducted across three cities, and news and media coverage.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Jobs</b></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is seeking applications for the posts of <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/programme-officer-indian-initiatives">Programme Officer</a> (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/vacancy-for-developer">Developer</a> (NVDA Project), <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/jobs/research-manager">Research Manager</a> (Digital Humanities project), and <a href="https://cis-india.org/jobs/programme-officer-access-to-knowledge-and-openness">Policy</a> Associate (Access to Knowledge and Openness) and Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to <a href="mailto:sunil@cis-india.org">sunil@cis-india.org</a> and <a href="mailto:pranesh@cis-india.org">pranesh@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities</b><br />CIS received a grant of INR 54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation for Creating a National Kit of Laws, Policies and Programs for Persons with Disabilities on August 16, 2012. Anandhi Vishwanathan from CIS and Shruti Ramakrishnan from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are the researchers presently working for this project. Early draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from the readers:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-tamil-nadu-chapter-call-for-comments">The Tamil Nadu Chapter</a> (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-karnataka-chapter">The Karnataka Chapter</a> (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kerala-chapter-call-for-comments">The Kerala Chapter</a> (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-andhra-pradesh-call-for-comments">The Andhra Chapter</a> (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Feedback</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/feedback-on-draft-twelfth-five-year-plan">Comments and Feedback on the Draft Twelfth Five Year Plan with respect to Persons with Disabilities</a> (by Rahul Cherian, December 28, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/ip-watch-catherine-saez-december-18-2012-wipo-to-negotiate-treaty-for-the-blind-in-june">WIPO To Negotiate Treaty For The Blind In June; ‘Still Some Distance To Travel’</a> (by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch, December 18, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-city-mumbai-madhavi-rajadhyaksha-december-20-2012-disability-groups-in-india-welcome-progress-on-treaty-for-blind-persons">Disability groups in India welcome progress on treaty for blind persons</a> (by Madhavi Rajadhyaksha, December 20, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/wipo-to-convene-conference-to-finalise-tvi-next-year">WIPO to Convene a Diplomatic Conference in Morocco to Finalise TVI</a> (by Rahul Cherian, December 24, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:</p>
<h3>Event Organised</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/global-congress-on-ip">2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest</a> (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15 – 17, 2012). The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was organized by Fundação Getulio Vargas, American University Washington College of Law, Columbia University, Open AIR, and ICSTD. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Pranesh was one of the moderators in the Roundtable Discussion on Priority Policy Forums, Research and Analysis Needs and Commitments.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Research for the Global Congress</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">For the 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest event, CIS conducted research. Jadine Lannon (based on research by Annapoornima and Rohan George and with help from Yogesh Kumar did research on documentation of phones and their patent, Amba Kak did research on copyright and mobile licensing, Vikrant Vasudev conducted research on patent pools and valuation methods, Hans Varghese Mathews did research on mathematical models of patent pools and Nehaa Chaudhuri did research on analysis of 3Gand 4G patent pools.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/openness">Openness</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:</p>
<h3>Event Report</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/random-hacks-of-kindness-december-2012-report">Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report</a> (by Yogesh Londhe, December 10, 2012). Event was hosted at CIS office in Bangalore. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event held in CIS office in Bangalore on December 1 and 2, 2012.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Events Participated</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>‘<a href="https://cis-india.org/news/i-and-n-partners-meeting-rio">Information & Networks’ Partners’ Meeting</a> (organised by International Development Research Centre, Canada in Rio de Janeiro, December 11 – 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke in session on Open Business and IP.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/leslie-chan-gives-five-talks-in-india">Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India</a> (Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala, Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library and SDM Institute for Management Development, December 17 – 20, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">Access to Knowledge</a> (Wikipedia Project)</b><br />Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">awarded</a> CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_To_Knowledge/Team" title="Access To Knowledge/Team">A2K team</a> consists of three members based in Delhi: <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/people/our-team">Nitika Tandon</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/people/our-team">Subhashish Panigrahi</a> and <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/people/our-team">Noopur Raval</a>.</p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<h3>Events Organised</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait">Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT</a> (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai">Wikipedia Workshop at SRM</a> (SRM University, Chennai, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss">Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS</a> (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, December 8, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode">Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/new-avenues">New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups</a> (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>News / Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur">A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur</a> (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Videos</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-state-of-tech-talk-by-erik-moeller">Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller</a> (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/events/art-in-the-open-source-age">Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan</a> (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012). Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist gave a talk.</li>
</ul>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><span>HasGeek</span></b><br />HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the <a href="http://fifthelephant.in/2012/">Fifth Elephant</a>, <a href="http://droidcon.in/2011">Droidcon India 2011</a>, <a href="http://androidcamp.hasgeek.com/">Android Camp</a>, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.</p>
<h3>Upcoming Event</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://metarefresh.in/2013/">Meta Refresh</a> (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, February 22 and 23, 2013).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:</p>
<h3>Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-motor-vehicle-rules">Comments on the Proposed Rule 138A of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989</a> Concerning Radio Frequency Identification Tags (by Bhairav Acharya, December 3, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h3>Columns/Op-eds</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/economic-times-december-2-2012-sunil-abraham-online-censorship">Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech</a> (by Sunil Abraham, Economic Times, December 5, 2012).</li>
<li>The Worldwide Web of Concerns (by Pranesh Prakash, <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deccan-chronicle-pranesh-prakash-december-10-2012-the-worldwide-web-of-concerns">Deccan Chronicle</a>, and <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-column-december-10-2012-pranesh-prakash-the-worldwide-web-of-concerns">Asian Age</a>, December 10, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-opinion-lead-december-15-2012-chinmayi-arun-the-trouble-with-hurried-solutions">The Trouble with Hurried Solutions</a> (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, December 15, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-december-29-2012-tomorrow-today">Tomorrow, Today</a> (Nishant Shah, The Indian Express, December 29, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Event Organised</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/meeting-of-network-of-internet-and-society-centers">Meeting of the Network of Internet & Society Centers</a> (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Center for Technology & Society, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Center for Civic Media, NEXA Center for Internet & Society and CIS, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6 – 8, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Events</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/dml-conference-2013">DML Conference 2013</a> (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Events Participated</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/second-international-e-governance-conference-at-baghdad">Second International e-Governance Conference</a> (organized by the National Committee for Corporate Governance Electronic Iraq and the United Nations Development Programme, Rashid Hotel, Baghdad, December 2, 2012). Sunil Abraham presented on "Review of the Legal Environment in Iraq for Effective e-Governance".</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/seminar-artist-talks-outresourcing-with-the-transmediale-collective">Seminar/Artist Talks : "Outresourcing" with the Transmediale Collective</a> (organised by the Berlin - Transmediale new media collective, December 3, 2012, Bangalore). Sharath Chandra Ram presented a White Paper. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">World Conference on International Telecommunications (organised by ITU, December 3 – 14). Chinmayi Arun participated as a civil society representative.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-driven-developments">Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points</a> (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, December 6 – 8, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.eihr.ee/en/annualconference/conference-2012/program/">Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012</a> (organised by Estonian Institute of Human Rights and Google). Malavika Jayaram participated as a panelist.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/state-surveillance-and-human-rights-camp">State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp</a> (Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, Rio, Brazil, December 13 and 14, 2012). Elonnai Hickok made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC9G_tbxI9Y">Economic Impact of Internet in India</a> (organised by Aspen Institute India, December 21, 2012). Chinmayi Arun attended this event.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/transcripts-of-wcit-2012">Transcripts from WCIT-12</a> (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/section-66-a-information-technology-act-2000-cases">Section 66-A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Cases</a> (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/internet-driven-developments">Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points</a> (by Elonnai Hickok, December 28, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/state-surveillance-human-rights-camp-summary">State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary</a> (by Elonnai Hickok, December 31, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mining-the-web-collective">Mining the Web Collective</a> (by Sharath Chandra Ram, December 31, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Video</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/technology-culture-and-events-in-south-east-asia">Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai</a> (CIS, Bangalore, December 18, 2012). Preetam Rai gave a lecture.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/telegraphindia-december-3-2012-gs-mudur-66a-cut-and-paste-job">66A ‘cut & paste job’</a> (by GS Mudur, Telegraph, December 3, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-6-2012-surabhi-agarwal-ayodhya-trending-on-twitter-sparks-censorship-concerns">Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, December 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-sci-tech-internet-december-10-2012-vasudha-venugopal-debate-on-section-66a">Debate on Section 66A rages on</a> (Vasudha Venugopal, The Hindu, December 10, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-india-times-december-13-2012-kim-arora-hacktivists-deface-bsnl-website">Hacktivists deface BSNL website</a> (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 13, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-16-2012-surabhi-agarwal-govt-likely-to-issue-guidelines-to-clarify-it-rules-soon">Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 16, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/india-today-rahul-jayaram-december-18-2012-the-freedom-of-expression-debate">The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web</a> (by Rahul Jayaram, India Today, December 18, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/dna-bangalore-december-19-2012-the-it-act-is-fine-but-its-interpretation-is-not">‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’</a> (DNA, December 19, 2012).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-22-2012-kim-arora-no-fear-of-losing-internet-freedom-till-jan-15">No fear of losing internet freedom till Jan 15: Experts</a> (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-27-2012-surabhi-agarwal-un-agrees-to-review-agencies-governing-internet">UN agrees to review agencies governing Internet</a> (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-29-2012-delhi-gang-rape">Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt</a> (The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-december-31-2012-op-ed-a-note-of-dissent-on-cash-transfers-and-uid">A note of dissent on cash transfers and UID</a> (The Hindu, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-31-2012-javed-anwer-and-rukmini-shrinivasan-the-year-social-media-came-of-age-in-india">The year social media came of age in India</a> (by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/telecom">Telecom</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:</p>
<h3>Newspaper Column</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/organizing-india-blogspot-shyam-ponappa-december-11-2012-inflation-control-through-structural-reforms">Inflation Control Through Structural Reforms</a> (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, December 11, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/knowledge-and-capacity-around-telecom-policy">Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India</a></b><br />Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.</p>
<p>The following are the new outputs:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/licensing-framework-for-telecom">Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview</a> (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/telecom-knowledge-repository/market-structure-in-telecom-industry">Market Structure in the Telecom Industry</a> (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="https://cis-india.org/about/digital-natives">Digital Natives</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:</p>
<h3>Book Review</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-december-8-2012-nishant-shah-not-just-fancy-television">Not Just Fancy Television</a> (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, December 8, 2012): Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/cnn-december-8-2012-oliver-joy-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-digital-native">What does it mean to be a digital native?</a> (by Oliver Joy, CNN, December 8, 2012).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a href="http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/">About CIS</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/advocacy/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-handbook">e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities</a> with ITU and G3ict, and <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/digital-natives/front-page/blog/dnbook">Digital Alternatives with a Cause?</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/digital-natives/front-page/blog/position-papers">Thinkathon Position Papers</a> and the <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/digital-natives/front-page/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-a-report">Digital Natives with a Cause? Report</a> with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/a2k/blog/cis-analysis-july2011-treaty-print-disabilities">WIPO Treaties</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/a2k/blog/analysis-copyright-amendment-bill-2012">Copyright Bill</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/internet-governance/front-page/blog/cis-feedback-to-nia-bill">NIA Bill</a>, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/accessibility/blog/national-award">National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities</a> from the Government of India and also received the <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/news/nirmita-nivh-award">NIVH Excellence Award</a>.</p>
<p><b>Follow us elsewhere</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="https://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/28535315687/">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="https://cis-india.org/">http://cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p><b>Support Us</b><br />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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Request for Collaboration</b><br />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 <a href="mailto:sunil@cis-india.org">sunil@cis-india.org</a> or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at <a href="mailto:nishant@cis-india.org">nishant@cis-india.org</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2012-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceOpenness2013-01-16T05:15:27ZPageOpen Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/leslie-chan-gives-five-talks-in-india
<b>Professor Leslie Chan, a champion of Open Access (OA) and Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough visited Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore in December 2012 for a series of lectures. Well known advocate for OA in India and the developing world, Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, accompanied him on these tours.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Leslie gave five talks in over three days at the Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, on the morning of December 17, at the National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR on the afternoon of December 17 at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala on Decemeber 18 followed by a discussion with Satish Babu, President of the Computer Society of India and Director of ICFOSS in the afternoon, a talk at Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library on December 19, and a talk at SDM Institute for Management Development on December 20, 2012, which was more of a discussion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Speaking on “Opportunities for Knowledge Management in the Open Access Environment” at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management–Kerala, Leslie Chan said, “the recognition of what constitutes scholarship is still very narrow and the quality of the content is secondary. It is the brand of the journal that is still the driving force behind every western journal.” He further said that there was a tension brewing among open access, quality control and the means of measuring impact. Market forces had infiltrated the realm of knowledge as well, for it was the companies that were increasingly taking over journals that were originally published by scholarly societies.<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a>His presentation touched upon what is OA and its key benefits, growth of OA in the last ten years, and opportunities for information and library professionals. See the presentation slides below.</p>
<table class="vertical listing" style="text-align: left; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="470px" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/lesliechan/slideshelf" width="615px"></iframe></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the Mysore University Library, Leslie gave a lecture on Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communications and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment. He dealt with the key issues of changing contexts of research discovery and dissemination in the digital environment, why greater openness is good for science, the tensions between openness, quality measures, impact and policies, collaboration and competition, interdisciplinary research, deluge of research data. Prof. Chan touched upon some key problems like the broken scholarly communication system, emerging tools not being used effectively to serve scholarship, and the need to re-design scholarly communications and impact measures. See the presentation slides below.</p>
<table class="vertical listing" style="text-align: left; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/15766851" width="427"> </iframe>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/lesliechan/emerging-trends-in-scholarly-communication-and-impact-measures-in-the-open-knowledge-environment-15766851" target="_blank" title="Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communication and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment">Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communication and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment </a></b>from <b><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/lesliechan" target="_blank">University of Toronto Scarborough</a></b></p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Therafter, Prof. Chan visited Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development and addressed scientists, librarians and academicians. There were discussions on how open access journals and repositories can help improve the visibility of an institution's research strengths, help attract research collaborators for authors and increase the return on investment. Prof. Chan was particularly critical of the current trends, in evaluating both researchers and their institutions using impact factor of journals in which they publish their research papers as the yardstick. <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-research-at-sdm-imd.pdf" class="internal-link">Read the press coverage by Star of Mysore</a> (PDF, 462 Kb).</p>
<table class="listing" style="text-align: left; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/ChanVisit2.png/@@images/1e62aaa1-5947-49ca-b8fe-436d9b1c4010.png" alt="Prof. Chan Tour" class="image-inline" title="Prof. Chan Tour" /><br /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam accompanied Prof. Leslie in his tours to Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Leslie's tour to Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore which saw him deliver a series of lectures along with open forum discussions has triggered a fresh awakening to seriously debate on open access initiatives. The event was well covered by the media with the Hindu doing an exclusive interview with him.<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: left; ">More pictures of Prof. Chan's visit can be seen <a class="external-link" href="https://picasaweb.google.com/sunilmysore/ProfChanVisit?authuser=0&feat=directlink">here</a>.</p>
<hr style="text-align: left; " />
<p style="text-align: left; ">[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>]. See “Call for efforts to promote open access platforms, The Hindu, December 19, 2012, available at <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/10LEiBU">http://bit.ly/10LEiBU</a>, last accessed on December 31, 2012.<br />[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>]. See "In defence of Open Access systems", The Hindu, December 31, 2012, available at<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/VZfmz6"> http://bit.ly/VZfmz6</a>, last accessed on January 2, 2013.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/leslie-chan-gives-five-talks-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/leslie-chan-gives-five-talks-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2013-01-02T05:35:22ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi collaborated with Metawings Institute to spread the words about Wikipedia for Indian languages. A one-day workshop was organized to educated the students on contributing to Wikipedia on December 21, 2012. About 170 engineering students took part in this event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The workshop began with interaction with the students about their understanding. I asked few questions like what is Wikipedia, who edits articles on Wikipedia, is it paid or free, did they ever try to edit Wikipedia, etc. I took them through a presentation to explain basics of Wikipedia, five pillars, notability and copyright issues related to vandalism. One of the students were called to create his user account. Students were showed the simpler sign up process. To explain how articles are edited we introduced errors in the article on Bengaluru and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bangalore&diff=529072240&oldid=529071146">made it the capital of India for few minutes</a>! Students were explained how Wikipedia editors correct mistakes like these in real time and correct facts are published in Wikipedia. A majority of the students asked about the authenticity of articles which is open to anyone. So I got a chance to refresh the page and show how the error introduced was reverted within a few minutes.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ParticipantsatKarkala.png" alt="Participants at Karkala" class="image-inline" title="Participants at Karkala" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">Above is a picture of the participants from the Wikipedia Workshop at Karkala</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The session went on with such interaction and students were explained more about the importance of citing references to add credibility to the facts they can add on Wikipedia articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We also had Dr. Ashok Kumar, prof, Computer science department, a wikipedian and columnist for Kannada newspaper <a href="http://www.udayavani.com/">Udaya Vani</a>. Dr. Kumar <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Outreach_Document_-_Kannada.pdf">introduced</a> Kannada Wikipedia to the students. At the end of the session I had a discussion with him about organizing more workshops for Kannada Wikipedia and supporting participant students. Special thanks to <a href="http://www.metawinggroups.com/">Metawings</a> for finding the venue and supporting for the event.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-nmait</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-04T16:30:28ZBlog EntryNew Avenues: Media Wiki Groups
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues
<b>This blog post is a brief recap and snippets of my conversation with Harsh Kothari, a volunteer on Gujarati Wikipedia on what we've been doing to help with MediaWiki groups.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Earlier in December, Harsh posted an e-mail to announce India's first MediaWiki group in Ahmedabad. The group is in its final stage of approval. The e-mail also generated curiosity among community members, some of whom had discussed starting similar technical initiatives earlier on the list.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I came across the idea of MediaWiki groups while Harsh, Yuvi Panda, Sheel and I were trying to conduct a mini hackathon in Delhi. The mini hackathon was a great success and very helpful to Harsh and Sheel. That is when we realized that the best way of repeating such training sessions would be to help foster the interaction of all technical volunteers within a city. Harsh told me Quim Gil from the Wikimedia Foundation had already proposed this and it would be best if I helped him frame a proposal for a MediaWiki group in India. I was told by Yuvi and Harsh that from their discussions on IRC with Quim they all agreed that local groups would serve better than a single national group given the expanse of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I thought this post would lend some perspective on how we could go about supporting technical outreach in India specifically for two reasons one, because Indian language Wikipedias could massively benefit from increased functionality — new gadgets, referencing and more. Apart from this, as we all might have encountered during our outreach sessions in technical colleges, there is great interest among students in contributing to MediaWiki but not enough resources or people who could spread the word.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A local MediaWiki group could serve multiple purposes supporting the relevant language Wikipedia as well as attracting and fostering a FOSS community in their city. It could also take up the responsibility of conducting events — small and large including hackathons, workshops and more. Especially in the context of smaller cities, towns and large university campuses, setting up a technical group similar to a LUG would be very beneficial. There will definitely be challenges, as questions come by and none of these groups can follow a standard model. But, I believe a major advantage of technical groups would mean faster resolution of bugs, more frequently updated infrastructure and consequently more activity on relevant Wikipedias. I have contributed to the proposal and am helping shape the first group. In case you want to set one up in your city or university, or wish to be put in touch with people who can help please do write to me at <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:noopur@cis-india.org">noopur@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2013-01-05T01:46:41ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The three-hour workshop was mostly interactive. Since most students had a fair idea of what Wikipedia is and who writes articles on Wikipedia, they had many queries on who the 'editors' were, who selects them, how one can become an editor, how to determine reliability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles and so on. This was a pattern that I observed in many workshops that we conduct where people who have a level of ease and familiarity with using Wikipedia to get information, have often wondered if the information they are using is reliable or not. This also gives us a chance to explain how their contributions can make the encyclopedia more inclusive, informative and reliable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One student was called upon to create a user account and instead of answering his query on patrolling edits, I encouraged him to vandalize a popular article just to see how quickly it is reverted and the correct version is restored. Some students were also interested in knowing about Indian language Wikipedias. So, I invited a student to create his account in Tamil Wikipedia and create his user page subsequently.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the workshop the students wanted to stay in touch and receive more information on Wikipedia projects they could contribute to and filled up contact forms.</p>
<p>Special thanks to Metawings for helping us out with the logistics and to the student coordinators at SRM University for their cooperation!</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-at-srm-chennai</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-27T05:57:34ZBlog EntryAccess to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit
<b>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.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">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).</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpennessEvent2012-12-19T07:20:31ZEventNon Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode
<b>Odia Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar has designed a new tool which can convert non Unicode ISCII text to Odia Unicode text. A majority of the digitized text and web content of newspapers and books are in non unicode text which now could be used for Wikipedia and other Odia Wiki projects. This opens a new arena for digitized free license books in Odia language.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Akruti Sarala is a known name in Odisha. Every single DTP operator who knows typing uses this font. Until now thousands of books have been created using this font. Even today many mainstream newspapers and magazines use this font for typing. Sadly, no one ever realized the content they are creating would be useless when it comes to sharing and reusing, especially on internet. Because, internet accepts a universal standard called "Unicode" for all the languages. When a book is limited only for printing purpose then use of non Unicode font is absolutely of no problem. But, when one copies text from an e-book created using non Unicode fonts (e.g. Sarala) and pastes it elsewhere strange characters gets displayed instead of Odia characters. This is the same situation for all other non-Latin languages.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Why this happens?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Non Unicode fonts use a funny technique. English/Roman characters are removed and Indian (or any other Non-Latin language) language characters are inserted instead of English characters. So, when you type any key from your keyboard the corresponding Indian language character displays instead of the English character. When you have a particular non Unicode font installed this technique works effectively. But, imagine when you don't have the font in your computer! By default it will show the English characters.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How Unicode fonts work?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unicode fonts contain Indian language characters along with English characters. There is no character/glyph displacement. It is a global standard and fixed by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/">The Unicode Consortium</a> for all the languages. When one text is typed in an Indian language it displays the same character on Ubuntu, Windows or Mac operating system. As most of the operating systems come with Unicode fonts included there is nothing to be worried for installing them again.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">How it got started?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Manoj Sahukar, a third year mechanical engineering student who is very enthusiast about the Odia science articles found <a class="external-link" href="https://or.wikipedia.org">Odia Wikipedia</a> and realized that the volunteers are working so hard to write content which could actually be simplified rather than merely writing the same content. There are many science articles which he wanted to read on Wikipedia were not there. Then he realized the gap of the the non availability of Unicode content. This is also one more reason Google doesn't have a button for Odia unlike some of the other Indian languages. "Nothing could be such open and great platform like Odia Wikiepdia if one is searching content in Odia language. My tool is dedicated to the Odia Wikipedians who have been working hard for my language", expressed Manoj in the release note. He shared his interest and ideas with Odia Wikipedian <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%B9%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BE%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%80:Jnanaranjan_sahu">Jnanaranjan Sahu</a> and started working on building a tool which could convert the available science articles of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in/%28S%28zndhkk55ka1ev545zqv5iy55%29%29/publication.aspx">Bigyana Diganta</a> (a sciene magazine published in Odia language by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissabigyanacademy.nic.in">Orissa Bigyana Academy</a>) into Unicode. There are many articles which could be used for reference and some of the free content for WikiSource or WikiBooks. Finally he released his tool on internet on 12.12.12, the last one of the repeating dates of this century. It is still in its beta stage and Manoj is working on making it more user friendly. He is also keen on organizing technical events which will bring more individuals to create such open source tools. "My next target is developing OCR (<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical character recognition</a>) software in Odia", says an excited Manoj.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What this tool does?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This tool could be used to convert text typed in non Unicode ISCII fonts to Odia Unicode text. The detailed procedure for using this tool and Unicode conversion is explained in a <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:%E0%AC%93%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86_%E0%AD%9F%E0%AD%81%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%95%E0%AD%8B%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC_%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%A8%E0%AC%AD%E0%AC%B0%E0%AD%8D%E0%AC%9F%E0%AC%B0#Procedure">tutorial on Odia Wikipedia</a>. The tool is released under GFDL license and is <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">available for download</a> on <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">SourceForge</a>.</p>
<table class="plain" style="text-align: center; " summary="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/NonUnicodetextbeingcopiedfromaPDF.png" title="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" height="520" width="609" alt="Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><span class="contenttype-image">Non Unicode text being copied from a PDF<br /><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/Unicodefontafterconversion.png/@@images/a9b54863-8ec4-4ed9-b68d-1b61a376c0e9.png" title="Unicode font after conversion" height="117" width="613" alt="Unicode font after conversion" class="image-inline" /></span><br />Unicode font after conversion</p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 style="text-align: left; ">Quick links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Download from <a class="external-link" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/odiaconverter/files/OR-TTsaralaUnicodeConverter.exe/download">here</a></li>
<li>Project page on SourceForge: <a class="external-link" href="https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter">https://sourceforge.net/p/odiaconverter</a></li>
<li>Tutorial and technical description on Odia Wikipedia: <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm">http://or.wikipedia.org/s/cvm</a></li>
<li>Odia Unicode standard: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0B00.pdf">Odia Unicode code chart</a></li>
</ul>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center; ">Manoj Sahukar talks about his ideas about the usability of Odia Unicode Converter tool<br /> <iframe frameborder="0" height="23" src="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversation_with_Manoj_Sahukar_regarding_Odia_Unicode_Converter_tool.ogg?embedplayer=yes" width="300"></iframe> </th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/non-unicode-iscii-text-can-be-converted-to-unicode</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessFeaturedWikipediaWikimedia2012-12-21T09:59:18ZBlog EntryLeslie Chan Lectures in Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore
https://cis-india.org/news/leslie-chan-lectures-in-tiruvananthapuram-and-mysore
<b>Prof. Leslie Chan from the University of Toronto, Canada is giving a series of lectures in Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore from December 17, 2012 to December 19, 2012.</b>
<h2>Programme of Prof. Leslie Chan in Thiruvananthapuram</h2>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<h3>Knowledge Management in the Open Access Environment</h3>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Date: December 17, 2012<br />Time: 11.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.<br />Venue: Dept. of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala<br />Organiser: University of Kerala<br />Contact person : Dr. KP Vijayakumar / 9496749901 (Mob) / 0471-2308034 (Off)<br />E-Mail : <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:kpvijayakumar2@gmail.com">kpvijayakumar2@gmail.com</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: justify; ">
<h3>Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communications and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment</h3>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Date: December 17, 2012<br />Time: 3.00 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.<br />Venue: National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology (NIIST)(CSIR), Pappanamcode, Trivandrum<br />Organiser: NIIST and CSIR<br />Contact person: Mrs. Nishy P/9645086468 (Mob)/0471-2515293(Off)<br />E-Mail: <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:nishy22@gmail.com">nishy22@gmail.com</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Evening : Discussion with Prof. VN Rajasekharan Pillai, Executive Vice President, KSCSTE, Sasthrabhavan, Trivandrum</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: justify; ">
<h3>Lecture-cum-Open Forum on Open Access Initiatives (OAI)</h3>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>Time: 10.30 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.<br />Venue:Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management-Kerala (IIITMK), Technopark, Trivandrum<br />Organiser: IITMK<br />Contact person : KP Sadasivan : 9447903282 (Mob) / 0471-2527567 Ext.103 (Off)<br />E-Mail: <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:kps31147@yahoo.com">kps31147@yahoo.com</a> or <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:sadasivan.kp@iiitmk.ac">sadasivan.kp@iiitmk.ac</a></p>
<p><b>Afternoon : Visit to ICFOSS, Technopark, Trivandrum </b><br />(Co-sponsored by IIITMK & ICFOSS)<br />Contact person : KP Sadasivan : 9447903282 (Mob) / 0471-2527567 Ext.103 (Off)<br />E-Mail : <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:kps31147@yahoo.com">kps31147@yahoo.com</a> or <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:sadasivan.kp@iiitmk.ac">sadasivan.kp@iiitmk.ac</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>A Special Lecture by Prof. Leslie Chan in Mysore</h2>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Emerging Trends in Scholarly Communications and Impact Measures in the Open Knowledge Environment</h3>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Organisers: Mysore University Library, Department of Studies in Library and Information Science (DLIS-UoM), Mysore Library and Information Scientist’s Association (MyLISA) and SDM Institute of Management Development, Mysore.</p>
<p>Date: Wednesday, December 19, 2012<br />Venue: Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library, Manasagangotri, Mysore</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/leslie-chan-lectures-in-tiruvananthapuram-and-mysore'>https://cis-india.org/news/leslie-chan-lectures-in-tiruvananthapuram-and-mysore</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2012-12-12T06:26:42ZNews Item