Nominations for the Executive Committee 2012/ProfilesAtAGlance

Abhijeet Safai
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words):

I am 27 year old doctor from Pune, Working as a research medical officer at Symbiosis International University. I believe in values like integrity, transparency, independence and freedom of expression. I am good at public speaking and have good command over English, Hindi and Marathi. I am person with poetic and scientific bent of mind. I have more than 1500 edits on en.wiki and more than 400 edits on mr.wiki. My edits are mainly in articles related to medicine and some inspiring personalities in the domain of medicine. I am actively involved in youth movements like Nirman which is inspired by Dr. Abhay and Rani Bang.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words):

I have started believing in the collective wisdom of community and do feel inspired by it. I have immense love for science. I am interested in articles of Indian Scientists and Indian freedom fighters. I believe that I will be able to contribute to it. I have created and contributed more than 20 medical articles on Marathi Wikipedia.

I believe that I do understand the spirit of voluntarism as I have experience of voluntary works like surgeries for poor people of village and tribal people at SEARCH, Gadchiroli since last 5 years and gain lot of satisfaction from it. I think that giving proper information to people at proper time is like giving medicine to cure the disease of ignorance.

I believe that Wikipedia is platform to percolate values like science and freedom of expression in society and I would be grateful to work for it. It will be a feeling of thrill, fun and responsibility to work in the executive committee of a community which helps to share knowledge. I would like to work for inspiring and bringing more people to be benefited and to contribute to cause of Wikipedia.

Community can surely rely on me for my impartial and truthful behavior.

Karthik Nadar
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words): 19 years old Banking and Insurance student from Mumbai, I share a better accounting and financing knowledge. Beginning from Fundraising previous year featuring an appeal from me on the top of the Wikimedia project pages to donate fund, I have involved myself in various outreach activities in Mumbai including photowalk, editing session, meetups etc. With 17K+ edits in Wikipedia, I have contributed to 10GAs, while have also uploaded hundreds of images to Commons. Minor-ly, I have also contributed to Hindi and Tamil Wikipedia.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words): If I get elected to EC, allowing me to widen my opportunities to develop the Chapter and Wikimedia movement in India, I would like to involve myself in following areas:
 * 1) Having better editing experience and time, would make myself available for Wiki-academy and help increase the number of editing volunteers.
 * 2) Understanding the importance of Indic languages, I'll involve myself in expanding editors community for possible languages languages.
 * 3) Coming from Commerce background specializing in finance and accounting, fund managing will be walk way for along with my career, and hence will enhance better utilization of funds, knowing a fact that Wikimedia Foundation is a NPO.
 * 4) Having raised funds for the Foundation previous year, it gave me clear picture how the foundation raises fund, and hence would take in-charge to raise funds for the India Chapter for efficient funding. I always wish to see our Chapter giving various scholarships especially for Wikimania to deserved.
 * 5) I would also involve myself in accounting and membership related tasks too. Primarily, I'll try to ease the process of membership so as to gather more and more members and build a strong Chapter membership wise.

Nikita Belavate
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words): Currently pursuing an Integrated M-tech degree in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. I attended WCI-2011 and since then have been actively involved in various wiki projects. First self-initiative in the Wikiverse was conducting the Photowalk across Mumbai, since then have taken initiative in organising, co-ordinating meetups(in Mumbai), an editing session, outreach, planning(underway) of holding Wikiwomen conference in India besides participation in edit-a-thon, article editing, translations(for QR-pedia) and contribution to Commons.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words):

The main intent and focus will be towards increasing Women participation(editors) in India. This needs to be addressed (looking at the current number of active female editors and the huge gap) and would work in the direction by initiating and facilitating activities along with the community, chapter members and committee members that would make females aware of various Wikimedia projects and encourage them to edit. Being a female EC member would help ensure this over a period a time. I would also like to share ideas and work closely with community members and execute projects like GLAM and outreach in various cities in both, the respective indic languages and en-wikipedia.

Pranav Curumsey
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words):

History With Wikipedia:
 * Age: 25
 * Education: B.Com (HR College, University of Mumbai), MBA (Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow)
 * Wikipedian since: 2006
 * Wiki's active on: English (Home wiki), Commons and Meta
 * Held post of Chairman, Organising Committee - WikiConference India 2011
 * Organised several meetups, academy/workshops etc in Mumbai
 * Wikimedia Foundation Fellow in 2011
 * Over 10,000 edits on English Wikipedia including good and featured content and over 300 images contributed on Commons
 * Pioneer of QRpedia in India
 * Helped organise first ever GLAM event in Asia - GLAM-CC Workshop in June 2011
 * One of first two people to sign up for Wikimedia Chapter membership when it was announced
 * Suggested institution of a Tag and Assess 2012 drive on English Wikipedia which led to assessment of over 100,000 Wikipedia pages related to India, one of the largest country specific drives in Wikipedia history, larger than any Indian indic language Wikipedia on the whole. Also suggested the successful implementation of GA Collaboration of the Month (GA-INCOTM) on English Wikipedia.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words):

Having been extensively involved with the movement in India over the past year I feel with my experience I can help give new direction to the Chapter at a time when there is rapid change and uncertainty. One issue plaguing much of the community including myself is time, time that one can contribute to further movement goals. Given limited volunteer time available, the EC needs to prioritise its goals. In the coming year if elected, I would like to see increase in active membership base which can only happen if people have trust and faith in the chapter which can be achieved by the chapter supporting community led activities, making it more of a facilitator without putting pressure on people involved.

In my mind, there is no difference between chapter and community, the chapter is just a formal organisation of community members. This has been a point of contention questioned time and again and if elected I would like to make sure that the chapter works with the community (and CIS) for this community movement in a cohesive, inclusive, collaborative and transparent manner in addition to encouraging those community members who are not members of the chapter to sign up for chapter membership.

Srikanth Ramakrishnan
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words): 20 year old Student, Contributor since 2005, I advocate Commons to photographers, been involved in outreach in Tamil Nadu, I believe in Open Knowledge, Worked on several Translations too.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words): If I were elected to the EC, I would try to Help Channel the Chapters efforts into more indic level programs to involve people from Tier II and Tier III cities and towns in India. I would support existing groups as well as try creating new ones and work with them together to bring about more awareness.

Shantanoo
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words):

Part of the organizing team for following events.


 * Hackathon 2012 (During Gnunify)
 * Inauguration of Marathi Wikisource

Active participation in:


 * Translation on translate wiki for Marathi
 * Enhancement of Narayam Extension
 * Added support devanagari in WikiEditor Extension
 * Helping users/editor on Marathi wikis regarding deployment and use of different mediawiki extensions.
 * Collecting and updating the scanned content on mr:wikisource
 * Running word correction bot for Marathi on mr:wiki

Position Statement/Letter of intent / What can I do?:

Support outreach activities, hackathons. Collaborate with Indic wiki community for deploying different mediawiki extension. Bridge gap between the non-technical Indic editors and other mediawiki developers. Help with developing tools, bots for specific Indic wiki. Continue work on wikisource regarding content collection and digitization.

Sivahari Nandakumar
Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words): I am a 24 year old Wikipedian from Kerala. I am currently a student doing my MTech in Image Processing. I am part of the wikimedia community for last 4 years. I am a active editor of Malayalam wikipedia for last 2 years. I am also a contributer to Malayalam wikisource and English Wikipedia. I was a main organiser of about 6 wikipedia workshops all over Kerala. I was also a part of the wikiaccademy organized in Cochin University of Science and Technology. I also participated in WikiConference India 2011 and presented a paper there. I was also an organizer of Wikisangamolsavam 2012, the two day annual meetup of Malayalam Wikimedia Community.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words): I was a member of Wikimedia Foundation India Chapter last year. At the same time i was active in the wiki community. I found some synchronization problems between the community and the chapter. On being an Executive Committee member at the chapter i will work hard and will act as a bridge between the chapter and community so that the work of both can be synchronized. I am a Engineering Student. I used to see my friends read Wikipedia but they wont edit. I would like to work among student community in India to make them aware about the philosophy and make them active Wikipedia editors too. I also would like to implement wikimedia projects to take Wikipedia and its philosophy to people's science movements and other people's mass organizations so that we can address more people and social workers and make them active wikipedians.

Sohan Maheswar
'''Short Profile (including past involvment in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100

Apart from reading Wikipedia everyday, I also contribute to editing articles especially related to the local music scene. I have also conducted two successful WikiAcademies. One in PSRR Sivakasi and the other at Pragyaan - the tech fest of NIT-Trichy. Both were tremendous learning experiences for the participants (I hope!) and me. I develop mobile apps for a living and also write for a local music publication.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words):

If elected i would like to further the aspirations of the Chapter especially by increasing the number active members. I think the key in this day and age is to use social media effectively. Publicity through the right social channels can tremendously improve the participation in the community which would lead to a higher number of Wikipedia users and editors. Additionally, having conducted two WikiAcadamies, i would like to see more outreach sessions taking place. I will also help the chapter in its regular tasks as it sets to accomplish its short-term and long-term goals.

Viswa Prabha
Short Profile (including past involvement in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words):
 * Age: 47 years; Education: Degree in Electrical Engineering; Professional experience: Engineer/Project Manager/Consultant (Healthcare, IT, Logistics, Automation and Energy). Belongs to Thrissur(Kerala);
 * Languages: Malayalam(ml-n), English(en-n), Hindi/Urdu(hi-n),Tamil(ta-2), Arabic(ar-2), Sanskrit(sa-2);
 * Wikipedia user since 2004; Current Member, Grants Advisory Committee for Wikimedia Global Foundation.
 * Very active in Malayalam Wikipedia and sister projects of the ml community both as an editor and off-line/on-line outreach agent; Active in .en /.sa / commons etc.; Outreach evangelist, new user mentor and community integrator, GLAM initiator; Represented ml community at WikiConference India 2011, Wikimania 2012 (DC); Heavily engaged in the successful culmination of Wikisangamotsavam 2012 at Kollam, Kerala.

Position Statement/Letter of intent (in not more than 200 words):
 * On being an ExeCom member at the chapter, I am hopeful of pro-actively assisting the chapter in activities such as program planning, organization and necessary re-orientation towards the fulfillment of its mission and vision. I also hope that the chapter can take advantage of my experience both as a professional as well as a member of one of the most vibrant Indic communities. If elected, my primary contributory objectives shall be set upon the


 * increased bilateral exposure and penetration between the common mass and Wikimedia ventures;
 * act as an interlink between chapter, various communities and outreach channels;
 * participation in forming long term aspirations of the chapter.