Announcements/Executive Committee for 2012-13 takes charge


 * 25 Oct 2012

Dear Members and Community,

At the outset, on behalf of Wikimedia India Executive Committee for 2011-12, I would like to thank you all for the support for the Chapter during the past year, as we strived hard to complete the boot strapping phase of the Chapter. I am glad to report that the boot strapping phase is now complete, as the Chapter is financially healthy, staffed and has conducted AGM and Elections for EC vacancies successfully, apart from spearheading Wiki Academy events and partnerships with various stakeholders. I would like to place on record my thanks to all co-founders and EC team members,volunteers from members and community, Achal, Bishakha, WMF staff,WMF board members, Manuel Schneider and partners and consultants for all the contributions and support towards reaching this important milestone.

Recently we had inducted the newly elected EC members with an EC induction program at Bangalore. As part of it, we have completed the office bearer elections for the 2012-13. I would like to introduce the new team that has taken charge.

Sudhanwa Jogalekar
Sudhanwa Jogalekar is an IT professional with expertise in Information  security, system  administration, IT infrastructure management  etc with over 27 years  experience in the industry. He is an Electrical Engineer from College Of Engineering, Pune with 2 additional management degrees and a professional certification of ISO 27001 Lead Auditor. He has done many projects for corporates, SMEs and Academic Institutions for IT infrastructure, Information Security, E-learning etc.

He is a well known FOSS evangelist in India and has been promoting FOSS for the last 13 years. He has been co-ordinating PLUG (Pune GNU/Linux Users Group) for many years and conducting workshops, seminars, trainings in/around Pune and other places across India. He has contributed to Indic computing activities (Marathi/Devanagari). He has released a Marathi font family for free.

He is active on various technical and non-technical groups and helped promote Wikimedia projects. He has organised a complete track on Wikipedia activites in GNUNIFY 2011. Apart from organising various events and activities related to Wikimedia(like launch of Marathi Wikisource, participating in CMDA expo etc.), he also co-ordinates regular meetups of Wikipedians in Pune (WikiPuneri).

Being a photographer he is involved with various photographers groups and is active in Photographic society of Pune.

He is elected to the Executive Committee in September 2011 and served as Chair of City/Language SIGs till Oct 2012. He is elected as President in Oct 2012.


 * More details available on his website http://www.sudhanwa.com
 * Email: sudhanwa [at] wikimedia.in
 * Wikimedia username: sudhanwa
 * Twitter: @sudhanwa
 * Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sudhanwa.jogalekar

Karthik Nadar
Karthik Nadar is a final year B.Com student from Mumbai, specializing in Banking, financing, accounting and insurance. He started his contributions to English Wikipedia in mid 2010 and became very active from the following year. In English Wikipedia, Karthik has more than 18K edits and so far has contributed for 10 Good articles. Started working on Indian film related articles, he later on ventured on into political, India and Mumbai related articles. Karthik is autoreviewer, rollbacker and filemover on the English Wikipedia. He also serves as coordinator for WikiProject Mumbai. Karthik is also active on Wikimedia Commons, where he has uploaded hundreds of images and has an edit count of 1,250. He has fixed some small templates and layout issues on Tamil Wikipedia and contributed few articles in Hindi Wikipedia.

In 2011, he was featured on Wikimedia Fundraising banners. Subsequently he became active in Wikipedia Mumbai community and contributed  towards organizing second Photo-thon in Mumbai and few other events. He volunteered to be part of core team for organising "Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in India" and played a key role along with Naveen Francis in making it a success.

He is elected to the Executive Committee during September 2012 and current serves as the Secretary.

Apart from his contributions to Wikimedia Movement, he is an aspiring photo journalist and a passionate drummer.


 * Wikimedia username: Karthikndr
 * Email: Karthikndr12px@undefinedwikimedia.in
 * Twitter: @Karthikndr
 * Facebook: fb.com/karthikndr

Anirudh Singh Bhati
Anirudh Singh Bhati is a technology lawyer based in Ahmedabad.

He is a contributor to Wikimedia projects since January 2006 and is mostly active on the English Wikipedia project where he is also an administrator. He is one of the founding members of Wikimedia Chapter (India).

He currently serves as the Treasurer.


 * Wikimedia: Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
 * Facebook: http://en-gb.facebook.com/bhati
 * LinkedIN: http://in.linkedin.com/in/anirudhbhati
 * Email: anirudh12px@undefinedwikimedia.in

Nikita Belavate
Nikita Belavate is a pre-final year student of 5 year M-tech Integrated degree in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. She is based in Mumbai.

She attended 'Wiki-Conference India' held in Nov-2011, which gave her the exposure  to Wikipedia Community at large. She was inspired by the event and became active English Wikipedian in December 2011. She helped conduct meetups, photo-walks and outreach sessions in Mumbai. Her interests include encouraging and improving women participation in Wikipedia and other projects.

She is elected to the Executive committee in Sep 2012 and is  the first female Executive Committee Member to serve on board of 'Wikimedia India'. She currently serves as Member


 * Wikimedia User Handle: Nikita
 * Email:    nikita.sb[at]wikimedia[dot]in
 * Facebook: nikitabelavate

Pranav
Pranav is a Consultant in the field of Marketing Management based in Mumbai and currently works with a Social Media firm.. He has been associated with the Wikimedia Movement since 2006 as an editor and image contributor. He holds a B.Com degree from the University of Mumbai and an MBA from Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow. Pranav served as the Chairman of the Organising Committee for WikiConference India 2011 (WCI) organised jointly by Wikimedia Mumbai Community and Wikimedia India, with active involvment of 11 teams consisting of over 50 volunteers. He was granted a Fellowship from the Wikimedia Foundation for this task. Apart from WCI, Pranav has been one of the few Wikipedians instrumental in hosting of several community Meetups, Photowalks, Workshops and Academies in Mumbai.

He is the first person to sign up as a member of Wikimedia Chapter using electronic funds transfer of membership fees. In September 2012, Pranav was elected to the Executive Committee of Wikimedia chapter and currently serves as Member. In addition to this he devotes time to other charitable/philanthropic activities as well,serving as a Member of the Board of Trustees of four Mumbai based Public Charitable Trusts which operate in Health, Education and other functional areas.

Twitter: @Curumsey

Email: pranav [at] wikimedia [dot] in

Srikanth Ramakrishnan
Srikanth Ramakrishnan is a 20-year old student based out of Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore. He has been a contributor to the English Wikipedia since 2005 and has been a regular at Bangalore meetups since 2009. He has also held various outreach sessions across Tamil Nadu. On Wikipedia, his primary interests include editing transport, Indian economy, JAVA programming area articles.

He is elected to Wikimedia India Executive Committee in Sep 2012 and currently serves as a Member.
 * Wikimedia: User:Rsrikanth05, en-wiki User page
 * Email: srik.ramk12px@undefinedwikimedia.in

Viswa Prabha
Viswanathan Prabhakaran is an engineer, project manager and technology consultant by profession. After acquiring his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Government Engineering college, Thrissur in 1986, he initiated his career in computer industry. Keeping pace with the rapid evolution of technology, he has aligned his career path with industrial automation, communications, laboratory science etc. finally culminating into advanced biomedical engineering.

He has travelled extensively both within and outside India and has lived and worked with a vast mixture of cultures and communities. He is elected to Wikimedia India EC in Sep 2012 and currently serves as a Member

At present, he is living in his home town in Kerala, occasionally travelling, spending most of his time voluntarily for social causes and the Wikipedia movement.


 * E-Mail: viswaprabha [at] wikimedia.in
 * Wikipedia+: User: ViswaPrabha

We are confident that under the new EC's leadership Wikimedia Movement and Chapter in India will grow to greater heights in the year to come. We request you all to extend the support and actively engage with Wikimedia India to achieve the vision of sharing free knowledge with every one for building a Knowledge Society.

Please join me in wishing the new team all success.

Cheers

Arjuna Rao Chavala

President,Wikimedia India

Jan 2011 - Oct 2012