Dear All
Thank you very much for welcoming me to the new role.
First of all I am extremely sorry for responding to this mail very late. For
the past few days I was traveling and my access to internet was
intermittent.
I'm really excited with this new assignment. As you all know over the past
few years Indic wiki communities had done (either individually or through
collaboration with multiple wiki communities) many great things. I was lucky
enough to be part of some of these assignments.
Due to the efforts of various Indic wiki community members, most of the big
language wikis are active now. With more than 40 Indic language wikis I know
the task is not going to be easy. But I am sure with the support from the
respective language speakers we can together do many great things.
I look forward to work closely with all of you and requesting your support
for the same.
Warm Regards,
Shiju Alex
On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 10:54 AM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbe...@yahoo.comwrote:
Congrats Shiju and Nitika! I look forward to a good acceleration of wiki
growth in India with your participation.
Regards,
Sundar
That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium
for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
--
*From:* Arun Ramarathnam arunra...@gmail.com
*To:* Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Sent:* Saturday, July 30, 2011 11:23 AM
*Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Welcome to the India Team! : Shiju
Nitika
This is great news.
A warm welcome and best wishes to Shiju and Nitika in their new roles.
Regards
Arun
On Jul 29, 2011 1:42 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com
wrote:
Congratulations to Shiju and Nitika.
It has been great working along with Shiju, closely for years now and I
don't have to tell that how much he deserves this. I wondered how he gets
time to really work with ABB with all his wiki activities ;) and I am
sure
that this position would help him concentrate on one thing he is really
passionate about.
Welcome on-board, Nitika ! Looking forward to work with you too.
Best wishes again to both Shiju and Nitika !
Regards
Tinu Cherian
On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Hisham Mundol hmun...@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hi Folks,
I'm really pleased to send out this email welcoming the first 2 new
members
of the India Programs team. Just before I introduce them, I thought I'd
share with you the background of their selection.
*Context*
As you might be aware, the Foundation had decided to undertake a
catalyst
operation in India to promote the growth of the community and projects
here.
The team is expected to be a small, nimble 5 person group. We had put
out
2 job postings - for Indic Initiatives and for Participation. (Please
refer:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-May/003007.html
)
We posted them on linkedin and on the Indian FOSS community list as well
as announcing them on various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The response was wonderful. 110 applications for Indic Initiatives and
nearly 175 applications for Participation. These were short-listed to 10
(3
for Indic Language and 7 for Participation.) These were a mix of
existing
previous Wikipedians, Wikipedia newbies and open source advocates.
In June, the shortlisted 10 were interviewed and further down-selected
to
4. These 4 were then further interviewed by a group of other staff
members
from the Foundation. I am pleased to inform the community of the final
selected 2.
*Shiju Alex - Indic Initiatives*
Most of you already know Shiju. For those who don't, Shiju is a
long-time
Wikipedian [User: shijualex] and is active on Malayalam Wikipedia,
English
wikiprojects and Wikimedia Commons, as well as Wikisource and offline.
He
has been passionately involved with the establishing and building of
Indic
language Wikipedias. He's participated in a series of outreach
activities
and is also (jointly) undertaking a grant from the Foundation for
outreach
across India. He's a regular member of the Bangalore community.
Shiju is from Palakkad, Kerala and is married with a 2 year old baby. He
currently works as a Senior Technical Writer with ABB in Bangalore.
Even those of you who know him might not know the following 2 things
that I
was lucky to discover during the selection process. Shiju is an MSc in
Physics with a specialisation in Astronomy and Astrophysics - and he
retains
a deep interest in anything astronomical. Feel free to quiz him
vigorously
on this! He also enjoys trekking and misses his time in Pune where he
could
be up close the gorgeous Sahyadri Hills.
Shiju is going to lead our work on promoting Indic language projects
across
India. The challenges are enormous - from technical constraints to low
