Similar to one of the Wikimedia values, A2K also believes that our community is our biggest asset. We also believe that with a little support, we can groom leadership quality among Indian Wikimedians so that, not only the communities are directly benefited, but plans can better made at the community level.
Indic Wikisource Community Consultation 2018 (IWCC or IWCC2018) was held on 24-25 November 2018 in Kolkata, India.
How?
14 Wikimedians from 12 Indian communities participated in the Wiki-event, in which four of them were female.
During the consultation some of the topics discussed were: Workflow of Wikisource, OCR process, layout with typography, Wikisource tools such as IA-Upload, Vicuna Uploader, URL2Commons, Fill index Gadget etc.
User:Hrishikesh, an administrator of English Wikisource shared his skills about advance complex Wikisource layout format.
User:Jayprakash12345 participated as a member of Indic-TechCom volunteer group and assessed the technical-requirements of Indian Wikisource projects. He got several requests from the participants and those were documented here.
Impact made
After this event, several requests came from different Indic language communities to host basic Wikisource workshops.
As a follow-up of IWCC2018, we had organised a series of regional Wikisource workshops were conducted in different parts of India like Punjabi in Patiala, Sanaskrit in Bengaluru, Gujarati in Ahmedabad, Assamese in Guwahati and Tamil in Salem.
Learning
During this training, it was discovered that India Wikisource community needs technical assistance and a request was made to Indic-TechCom in developing/Creating the tools.
Wikimedia Education SAARC Conference 2019 was organized by Christ (Deemed to be University) Bangalore, in association with the CIS-A2K. The objective of the conference was to bring together different community efforts in the Wikimedia education movement, identify and discuss learnings and challenges, and forge new collaborations to realise the broader goal of democratizing education for all.
When and Where?
Wikimedia Education SAARC Conference 2019 organized at Christ (Deemed to be University) from 20 June to 22 June 2019.
How?
This was a three-day conference which comprised of 49 Wikimedians. This includes one member from Sri Lanka, four members from Nepal, seven members from Bangladesh and 37 members from India, all 14 language communities were represented.
This conference provided a platform to discuss learnings, knowledge gaps and best practices of the initiatives. The event also looked at broader strategies for developing institutional partnerships, addressing issues of student retention, developing new pedagogic models and increasing diversity in education. The programme also comprised of an introduction to Wikimedia tools and initiatives, such as Dashboard, Petscan, Wikidata, and GLAM. Questions of open access to education and the digital divide, the development of open educational resources and integration of these efforts with Wikimedia were discussed.
Followup plan
Local-level follow up done with the participants to enhance the quality of the Education programs going on.
CIS-A2K is maintaining a Request page to support the Activites conducted by the Indic Wikimedia Communities. Request can be made under three categories under which community members can request for such as:
Financial
Non-Financial
Technical
When and Where?
CIS-A2K provides support to the Indic communities throughout the year. We are maintaining the request page on meta which can be seen at - CIS-A2K/Requests
How?
The request page is open for all the Indic Wikimedia communities to request for support. Between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2019 we received 42 financial requests from nine Indian Wikimedia communities. The following chart shows the distribution of requests we got from each community.
Some of the examples can be seen below:
Indian SVG Translation Campaign Request for Support:SVG Translation Campaign 2019 in India was a 38-day long campaign to translate the English-labelled SVG files into Indian languages for use on regional language Wikipedias. The campaign started on 21 February 2019, marking the "International Mother Language Day", and continued till 31 March 2019. During Wikigraphists Bootcamp in September 2018, several Wikimedians from India were trained on using Inkscape and other tools, to create vector illustrations. This campaign was a follow-up of that project and also with a goal to promote the idea of vector graphics among the larger Indian community.
CIS-A2K conducts and supports the regional and city Wiki-meetups to strengthen the existing community. In the last year, CIS-A2K conducted/supported meetups for Odia, Kannada and Punjabi communities.
Why?
Wiki-meetup is a great place for Wikimedians discuss ideas, activities, collaborations and plan future work. These meetups also help to improve community bonding and resolve disputes in face to face interactions.
How?
We conducted the following meetups:
Kannada meetup in Bangalore: a Kannada community meet-up on 19 August 2018 at Bengaluru. 12 community members participated. Three of the participants were female and nine were male. This was the first meetup conducted by CIS-A2K for the Kannada Wikimedia community in this work-plan year. This meetup was conducted as a follow-up activity of Wiki Advanced Training (WAT), that took place in Ranchi in July 2018. Kannada Wikimedians User:Vikashegde and User:Mallikarjunasj, who participated in WAT, debriefed the community about the topics they learnt. They discussed Good article and Did you know process, application of Wikipedia policies such as Neutral point of view, and Verifiability. User:Ashoka KG, who is a professor at Alva's College, informed about the activities being conducted by the Wikipedia association. He also discussed the future Wiki-plans of the association. There was a brief session on Wikidata discussing Wikidata labels and descriptions. There was also a hands-on session where the participants improved Kannada Wikidata labels as a part of Indian Independence Day 2018.
WikiTungi or Odia community meetups:WikiTungi is a city-based meetup for Wikimedians in Odisha to discuss ideas, activities, collaborations and future plans. CIS-A2K is supporting WikiTungi both financially and in idea-level. In the last six months, five WikiTungi meetups were conducted in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, and Bangalore, Karnataka.
Meetups at Patiala, Punjab: CIS-A2K supported Punjabi community meetups in Punjab, India, and financially supported a meetup. The first meetup took place on 28 October 2018 at Patiala Bites. Meetup event page may be seen here. Nine Punjabi Wikimedians participated in this workshop. This meet-up being conducted during Women Wellbeing Editathon and Hockey World Cup Editathon. Some of the topics discussed during this meetup were: Wikipedia Asian Month, choosing lead persons for Punjabi Wikisource Training Workshop, Patiala and Project Tiger Training 2018, and Wikidata birthday celebration. The second community meetup took place on 28 November 2018 at Punjabi University, Patiala. Meetup event page may be seen here. Eight Punjabi Wikimedians participated in this workshop. Some of the topics discussed during this meetup were: Project Tiger Training community event division of role and responsibilities, to choose new contact persons of the Punjabi Wikimedians User Group, Bathinda Literary Festival, bringing featured books on Punjabi Wikisource. Two participants shared their learning from the events in which they participated.
Future plans
Continue supporting and conducting city/regional meetups. Other than the communities we are already working with (Odia, Kananda & Punjabi) we'll work with other Indian communities.
Participants of the meetup conducted on 28 October 2018
What?
When and Where?
How?
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Why?
Participants of the meetup conducted on 28 October 2018
Capacity building in MKCL for Van Bodh Project
