They are a group of 60-70 mostly young IT professionals called the knowledge foundation. Their common thread is the need to meet and discuss issues of significance outside their professional needs. Only this time, they are attempting to network with similar communities pan India and bring some of their activities—knowledge sharing, student outreach programmes, unconferences—under the Wikimedia banner. It is an attempt at establishing the India chapter of the Wikimedia foundation.
The knowledge foundation at Chennai has mooted attempts to start the India chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, whose chapters are present in 13 countries around the world. Each of these chapters runs on a fund of $6 million per year, obtained through corporate endowments and individual donations.
Kiruba Shankar, one of the founders of the Knowledge foundation, is confident of financial as well as human support to the initiative, as Indian corporates and universities are eager for knowledge sharing programmes that will add value to the country’s young work force.
Even before the chapter is formally registered, the group intends to start networking with students, universities, colleges, schools, government organizations and corporates to start outreach programmes in their campuses. “Students have the time and potential to get seriously involved in contributing to as well as extending the usage of Wikipedia to form a meaningful knowledge sharing platform,” Mr.Kiruba says.
With our educational system continually getting blamed for churning out qualified but unemployable youth, a knowledge sharing platform is seen as a way of developing soft skills and social awareness. In other words, sharing knowledge either in written form over the web, or person-to-person in unconferences, widens the participants’ horizons. Corporates and universities are expected to encourage such an activity amongst their employees and students.
“At a more fundamental level, we are also thinking of tying up with schools to use the literature available in Wikipedia for classroom education,” Mr.Kiruba says.
“As many schools do not have full fledged computer or internet access, we may offer them CD versions of regional language Wikipedia. That will also potentially create more regional language wikipedians (contributors of articles to the online encyclopedia) in the future.”
This is not the first time that this initiative has been taken up. There have been two unsuccesful attempts before in different cities to start the Wikimedia foundation India chapter.
“We are not sure of what kind of challenges we might face on the way. But, I think it is important not to get trapped by a city-centric approach. It’s essential to remember that there are similar communities and individuals interested in Wikipedia’s works all over India, and effectively rope them into this initiative,” Mr.Kiruba says.
For instance, outreach programmes in government schools involve state governments and will mostly be done independently by each of the communities involved in their respective states.
“In fact, most of its would be left to the independence and creativity of each community or individual involved, but done on a common platform. We, as a group here, are just organizers who believe that this should be done. Each new member added to our initiative will bring his own set of ideas which are bound to add value to our activities. In other words, we do not want to set a top down approach,” Mr.Kiruba says.
The group is working on a deadline of 2010, when they hope to bring Wikimania, an annual unconference of global wikipedians, to India. “That adds fuel and focus to our initiatives, as we have seen that individuals work better towards an event deadline,” Mr.Kiruba says.
When the knowledge foundation organized an unconference at the Tidel park in Chennai, to which Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales paid visit, he had commented that it was far larger than any previous Wikimania event.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/ITeS/Young_IT_professionals_at_Chennai_working_on_Wiki_India/articleshow/3928699.cms
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