Elections 2016/Nominations/Shubham Soni

Nomination form for Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee Elections-2016 

(To be initiated by Proposer and updated by Seconder and the Candidate wishing to contest for Election and submitted as per the due date)

Proposal details
Name of the candidate:Subham Soni

Membership ID (can be updated by Candidate later): INDI-671

Member Since (can be updated by Candidate later): 2016

(As per Wikimedia Chapter by-laws, a Member for election to Executive Committee should have been member for at least 3 months before the date of the meeting of the AGM/Election).

Proposer:

Name:Satdeep Gill

Signature(Use Wiki Signature):Satdeep gill (talk) 23:04, 22 March 2017 (IST)

Membership ID: INDI-608

Seconder:

Name:JAyanta

Signature(Use Wiki Signature):Jayanta Nath (talk) 00:58, 24 March 2017 (IST) ~ Membership ID: indi 62

Acceptance by the Candidate
Short Profile* (including past involvement in Wikimedia activities in not more than 100 words):

Hi, I'm Subham Soni, currently a student in my fourth year in Bachelors in Computer Science (Honours) in BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. I have been involved with the Wikimedia movement for about 5 years now, with different levels of interest in each field. I mostly edit the English Wikipedia and have been involved in a number of places there. Of them, my most important interest is in getting more people to edit our Wikimedia projects, and on making things easier for newcomers. Later, I was involved in a PEG Grant where we worked on a space for mentoring inexperienced editors. On my own, I have conducted two workshops on Wikipedia editing and a hackathon on MediaWiki and Pywikibot in my college. More recently, I was involved as a core organiser and member of the Programs, Finance and Scholarship Teams in WikiConference India, 2016 at Chandigarh, apart from helping with the logistics.

Please note - My name is SUBHAM SONI and the records of WMIN India needs to be corrected appropriately.

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

My priorities, should I become an EC member, will be in multiple fields -
 * First and foremost, outreach. Currently, there are very few people inside the editing community who are even aware of WMIN. A number of extremely experienced editors from India that I know of are not part of the WMIN. We have to reach out to respective communities as well as other experienced editors currently unaware of WMIN.
 * Second, documentation. As of the current instant, the MoA forms a skeleton of all the functionalities of the EC members, but not a comprehensive picture. To ensure continuity of the EC after each election and to promote more members to be involved in the day-to-day activities of WMIN, we must start a more concrete document about all that is done. This should go hand in hand with assistance to any interested people (who are not in the WMIN-EC) to learn more about and contribute to the functioning and activities of WMIN.
 * Third, editor recruitment. I am highly interested in taking on more outreach opportunities to those who are not yet editors, and convert them into members of the Wikimedia community. Specifically, I am highly interested in going ahead with collaborations with educational institutions. Events like hackathons, editathons and workshops and photowalks are a perfect match for getting more members in the community, and WMIN itself can take a lot of measures to take the initiative.
 * Lastly, organisational measures. According to my understanding of the current state of affairs of WMIN-EC, we have a number of things to work on, from an FCRA license to a secondary source for funds. In addition, I personally would like to have transparency in form of regular reports of chapter activities. This will also help encourage communities to reach out and try similar measures on a local scale (whether it be collaborations, meetups or any other measure), as well as take WMIN assistance for whatever they plan.

All in all, I believe that the Wikimedia movement works best when the communities lead the organisation, so my bigger focus if I am elected as WMIN-EC will lie within the respective communities for India, and what their priorities are.

Conflict of Interest disclosure (if any)

None that I am aware of.

I, Subham Soni, solemnly affirm to hold the aims and objectives of Wikimedia Chapter in highest esteem and strive to the best of my ability in serving the cause of Wikimedia Chapter.

Place: Bangalore

Date: 24 March 2017

Signature(Use Wiki Signature): Soni (talk) 18:52, 24 March 2017 (IST)

Name: Subham Soni