WikiConference India 2011/Call for Participation

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Please submit your proposals for Speaking or Presenting about a topic related to Wikimedia or Wikipedia at WikiConference India 2011. This page lists general guidelines that you need to follow before submitting your proposal.

WikiConference India 2011 is the first get together of Indian Wikimedians. The conference will give the wiki editors, users, and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to meet Wikimedians and to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects.

The first annual Wikiconference India will be held on 18, 19, and 20th November, 2011, at Mumbai University Campus. For more details visit WikiConference India 2011.

WikiConference India 2011 will have a mix of submitted presentations, panels, tutorials, workshops, open space meetings and lightning talks. Submissions will be reviewed and selected in advance by the program committee. Selection of talks are the prerogative of the program committee and all decisions are final and binding

Submissions link is placed at the bottom of this page. Before submitting the program proposals, please read the below guidelines. Off-topic submissions (topics not related to Wikimedia) will be rejected.

Important dates

  • Deadline for submitting your proposals: 22 October, 2011, 23:59:59 hours IST (UTC +5.30)
  • Notification of acceptance: 25 October, 2011

Expectation and Approach

The following are the expectation from the conference:

  1. Indian Wikimedia community is unique. It is heterogeneous, with people from multiple languages, multiple cultures. Still there are many common things between them. The conference aims to provide a meeting place for them, to interact, to share, to learn and to familiarize each other.
  2. The conference does not want to have talks or presentations all the time. We need interactive, creative and interesting discussions on various tracks identified. Talks are still there but only limited number of them.
  3. To provide an opportunity to every Wikimedian in the conference to talk if they wish to share anything interesting with the rest of community, we are providing 10 minutes lightning talks. These talks do not require prior registration.
  4. To utilize the expertise and experience of Wikimedians in the conference, we plan to have open discussion on each track with panel and interested Wikimedians. Anything related to Wikimedia can be discussed, and asked. There will be a moderator for each of these discussions.

Tracks

This year WikiConference India will offer four tracks for submissions

  • Community
  • Technology
  • Knowledge
  • Outreach

Each Track will have the following sessions:

  1. 30 minute talk, workshop, or tutorial - Proposals are invited for this from all communities. The presentations should be in any of the tracks mentioned below. Abstract of these talks should be submitted prior to the conference and they should be selected by organizers. The 30 minute is guideline and can be extended on need basis. The expectation is about this session is, to present innovative solutions, present the existing issues, and case studies or best practices from the communities.
  2. Lightning talks related to each track. These are 10 minute talks by community members and do not require registration. Speaker can just inform the track lead during the session.
  3. Organizers will present an expert panel on each track. Wikimedians interested/working on that track can discuss any issues, experiences, suggestions etc openly with the panel and within the audience. The discussion will be moderated by the track lead.

This year WikiConference India will offer four tracks for submissions:

1. Community:

  • Strengthening the existing community - Ways to improve the existing communities and encouraging participation.
  • Community Interactions - Interactions within Wikimedia communities and between various communities
  • Expanding to more languages - Expanding Wikipedia and sister projects to more languages in India.
  • Gender Gap - Best practices, Strategies, Statistics for filling the gender gap of editors. Reasons and solutions for the less women representation in Indian context.
  • Best practices, Case studies.

2. Technology

  • Issues and Solutions - Input tools, fonts, browser, rendering, etc.
  • Training, Outreach of existing solutions
  • Building developer community around mediawiki and Wikimedia, Student programs- GSOC.
  • Best practices, Case studies.


3. Knowledge

  • Digital archiving of Written , copylefted books and importance of wikisource
  • Alternate strategies for Knowledge collection like Oral Citation, Collaborative Editing
  • Wikimedia Commons, GLAM project, Maps
  • Wikipedia sister projects - Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, wikiquotes, etc.
  • Copyright laws and practice in Wikimedia projects.
  • Issues affecting knowledge availability for editing e.g. Open science etc.
  • Best practices, Case studies.


4. Outreach

  • Social media, print, visual media strategies
  • Workshops, Trainings, WikiAcademies, Collaborations
  • Focused community outreach -eg: Campus programs, Wikipedia Takes/loves India
  • Offline solutions
  • Accessibility
  • Best practices, Case studies.