Centre for Internet and Society

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T11:01:35Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore welcomes you to a mobile training workshop in its office in Bangalore on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar will conduct the workshop from 12.00 p.m. to 2.00 p.m.

Social media tools provide us with a huge opportunity to make our voices heard farther and faster. Social media campaigning has been used successfully to bring about changes that traditional campaigning methods have been unable to. Keerthana Chandrashekar will talk about successful online and offline campaigning.

Agenda for Training

Case studies of successful mobile campaigns including studies relevant for CIS programmes.
Highlighting major components in a successful mobile campaign.
Outlining general communication flow of a mobile campaign.
Presentation of a sample campaign idea.
Presentation of detail campaign flow for that campaign idea.
Campaign data analysis.

About Jhatkaa

Jhatkaa is a new advocacy group committed to building citizen power across India in effective and innovative ways. We look to organize people to rapidly respond to issues in ways that maximise their collective power in a given situation. We look to achieve this goal of mobilizing citizens through the use of digital technology which will help bridge the gap of distance and time. Some of the tools that we are looking to utilize are email, mobiles, radio, social media, etc. Our belief is that through sustained collective action, huge change is possible.

The Speakers

Keerthana Chandrashekar

Keerthana is a telecommunication engineer. She graduated in 2012 from CMR Institute of Technology, Bangalore. She was trained as a data and business analyst in Mu Sigma Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and worked there for six months before joining Jhatkaa as a campaigner. Currently she works as a campaigner and is setting up the mobile platform for Jhatkaa.

Rachita

Rachita graduated from the University of Delhi with a Bachelors in Mass Media and Mass Communications last year. Thereafter, she worked with Greenpeace India in the Digital Media Team and now works as a campaigner with Jhatkaa.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/mobile-training-workshop

The Habit of Care: Technologies of Living and Laboring Cyborgs at World Social Science Forum 2013

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T09:19:43Z

The World Social Science Forum 2013 organized by International Social Science Council will take place in Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Canada from October 13 to 15, 2013. Dr. Nishant Shah is participating in the event as a panelist and will speak on "The Habit of Care: Technologies of Living and Laboring Cyborgs".

This was published on the World Science Forum website.

Within the larger discourse around digital cultures, much attention is given to care. Care infrastructure includes physical infrastructure of access to remote spaces, regulatory and policy environments to control the digital spaces, redesigned geographies to house the new populations created by the ICT industries, and is discussed in disciplines as varied as Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change. Care Technologies find obvious resonances with the Foucaultian idea of ‘Technologies of the Self’, reminding us of the normative nature of measurement, cognition, discipline and punishment that is an inherent part of care.

The responses to Care Technologies and the Labor of Caring are not uniform. Some clearly identify the emergence of Care Technologies as a new form of alienation of labour, leading to discrimination and inequity. Others celebrate the ways in which the penetrative nature of the digital – from deep space probes to the sub-molecular conception of the human – allow us to imagine social interactions and our relationships with our own bodies in new ways.

In all the discourse around Care, there is silence about its form, function and nature. While attention is given to infrastructure, labour, politics, production and the intelligibility of care practices, we haven’t yet tried to fathom the conditions and generation of care, relegating it to the realm of the private and the subjective. Combining practice and theory, in different parts of the Global South, and inspired by gender and sexuality studies, this panel looks at Care as a Habit. We focus on the ‘care of technologies’, showing how the forced separation of care and technology needs to be revisited to look at conditions of being human, being social and being political. Working through diverse geographical and political contexts, the panel illustrates the tensions in understanding and engaging with Care and why there is a need to find new vocabularies and relationships to deal with this area.

Coordinator:

Dr. Nishant Shah

Dr. Radhika Gajjala

Organization/Institution:

Centre for Internet and Society and Bowling Green State University

Schedule:

Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - 09:00 - 10:45

Room:

520AD

Nishant Shah

Dr. Nishant Shah is the co-founder and Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. He is an International Tandem Partner at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany and a Knowledge Partner with the Hivos Knowledge Programme, The Netherlands. He is committed to producing infrastructure, frameworks and collaborations in the global south to understand and analyse the ways in which the emergence of digital technologies have shaped the contemporary social, political and cultural milieu. He edits a series of monographs on ‘Histories of Internet(s) in India’ that examine the complicated relationship that technologies have with questions of gender, sexuality, body, city, governance, archiving and gaming. He was the principle researcher for a research programme that produced the four-volume anthology ‘Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?’, examining the ways in which young people’s relationship with digital technologies produces changes in their immediate environments. Nishant is on the steering committee of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Project (USA) as well as on the Media Art Histories collective (Latvia). He is involved with the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium (Taiwan/S. Korea/Hong Kong) and the global Network of Centres for Internet and Society housed at the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, USA. He is committed to encouraging multi-stakeholder dialogue and hence regularly does public consultations and trainings for civil society and NGOs, governments, academic partners and private corporate entities. He is a regular speaker at events like Re:publica and Video Vortex and a columnist with India’s leading English language newspaper The Indian Express. His academic and research publications reflect his political stance on open access and open knowledge infrastructure and are all available for free download and distribution under open license.

Schedule Overview

Saturday, October 12
15:00-18:00 Pre-Registration

Sunday, October 13 (Day 1)
09:00-19:30 Registration
11:00-12:45 Plenary I
11:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
13:00-14:45 Panel Session 1
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 2
17:30 Opening Ceremony and Reception

Monday, October 14 (Day 2)
08:30-17:30 Registration
09:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
09:00-10:45 Panel Session 3
11:00-12:45 Plenary II
13:00-14:45 Panel Session 4
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 5
17:00-18:45 Panel Session 6
20:00 Movie Night with the NFB

Tuesday, October 15 (Day 3)
08:30-17:30 Registration
09:30-17:00 Exhibition Opens
09:00-10:45 Panel Session 7
11:00-12:45 Panel Session 8
13:00-14:45 Awards Luncheon
15:00-16:45 Panel Session 9
17:00-18:45 Plenary III
18:45 Closing Ceremony and Reception

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wssf2013-october-15-2013-panel-habit-care-technologies-living-and-laboring-cyborgs

Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T08:42:56Z

In wake of the recent arrests of UP-based scholar Kanwal Bharti and Andhra-based PUCL activist Jaya Vindhyala over their Facebook posts, NDTV aired a discussion on the grey areas of the IT Act. Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui

The video was published by NDTV on August 16, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The NDTV anchor asked Pranesh that this notice — the indicator coming from the government is that nobody seems to really know what section 66A is all about...and at the end of the day we are going to make a case by case decision.

Pranesh said that:

"This not just about 66A. This is actually about rule of law. We see that the arrest of Kanwal Bharti is actually a legal arrest. It goes against a judgment of the Allahabad High Court saying that routine arrests shouldn't be made in cases where the imprisonment term is less than 7 years. He actually hasn't been charged under 66A, he was charged under the IPC. It is not just about Internet censorship. It also very much about the rule of law and that completely breaking down in India and ... people's persectives and government's perspectives many times are withering away when it comes offensive content or what they deem offensive or communal content being posted online...and if something like what Kanwal Bharti posted is actually deemed to be illegal under those provisions then lots of statements that the Prime Minister of India has said should also be deemed to be equally illegal."

Watch the full video below:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ndtv-the-social-network-mixed-signals-supreme-court-notices-to-states-on-facebook-arrests

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:20:24Z

Terms not defined in draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions leaves room for misinterpretation

The article by C.H.Unnikrishnan was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society's work on access to knowledge is mentioned.

Could the simple Latin phrase, per se, which translates as “in itself”, lead to confusion in verifying whether a computer-related invention deserves a patent or not? Some members of the $108 billion Indian information technology industry, intellectual property (IP) law firms and anti-patent lobby groups say it can.

The inclusion of some terms that are not defined by local laws in the government’s draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions (CRIs) leaves room for ambiguity and misinterpretation when examiners grant or reject such a patent, they say. The guidelines were released in early August.

The terms include ‘per se’, algorithm, hardware, firmware —and CRI itself.

CRI “has not been defined in any of the Indian statutes and is construed to mean, for the purpose of these guidelines, any invention which involves the use of computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus and includes such inventions, one or more features of which are realized wholly or partially by means of a computer programme/programmes”, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) acknowledged in the draft guidelines, and called for feedback from industry stakeholders by 8 August.

	Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent. IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se. The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent.

IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se.

The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Software, instead, is protected by the Copyright Law, similar to literary and aesthetic works.

In the feedback, a copy which was reviewed by Mint, India’s largest software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), said it “is happy to note that IPO is taking the right steps in the direction of protecting inventions...Moving from the notion of ‘Computer Implemented Invention’ to ‘Computer Related Invention’ itself is a positive shift...”

	“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback. It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback.

It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

According to Rajiv Kumar Choudhari, a lawyer specializing in IT patent law, a computer program is software ‘per se’ because there may be no transformation of data/signal/input, or there is no tangible benefit to the device if this software is run on the device. “The benefit to the device may be in terms of efficiency, or increase/decrease in certain attributes,” he said in a blog in SpicyIP where he analyzed software patenting position in India earlier.

In such cases, if the applicant fails to define the exact benefit to the device in a tangible manner, the examiner may refuse to grant a patent. In January 2012, for instance, the Delhi patent office rejected a software patent application filed by Netomat Inc., on grounds that it did not fulfil the requirement of Section 3(k).

According to section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act, “a mathematical or business method or computer programs per se or algorithms” are not inventions.

Between 2006 and 2011, the latest available data, 34,967 IT patent applications were filed with the Indian patent office. It granted about 5,594 patents during the same period.

“We hope that through this consultation (feedback) the prevailing evaluation methods for computer related inventions will become more efficient and encourage the Industry to file and protect their IP. However, we have some major concerns related to the draft guidelines,” said Nassom, the country’s software lobby body.

Overall, the guidelines appear to be “restrictive and may be a hindrance to grant of patents in India, even when such rights would be granted in other countries like Europe, Japan, etc,” said Nasscom, adding that “over a period of time”, it will discourage innovative activities from being carried out in India.

For instance, Nasscom pointed out that since the patent office has not defined ‘per se’, the phrase “computer program per se” should mean a set of instructions by itself or computer program by itself. “This meaning is generally accepted even in the UK and before the EPO (European Patent Office),” it added. The software lobby body has suggested that the scope of the “per se” limitation in Section 3(k) should be changed to cover hardware features, irrespective of whether the features are novel or not.

The guidelines, said Nasscom, seem to imply that for computer program-related claims to be allowed, the software needs to be “machine specific”, which “will unfortunately exclude patent protection for any computer-implemented invention designed to be interoperable across platforms, and not specific to a machine”.

In its feedback to the patent office, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an organization that works on Internet privacy-related issues, underscored the complexity that new technologies could introduce by citing the example of CRIs in the field of data storage.

The first compact disc (CD) was invented in 1982, the digital video disc (DVD) in 1995 and the flash drive in 1999.

“While each of these inventions was far superior to their predecessor, the time between each incremental innovation has drastically reduced,” CIS noted in its feedback

“If an invention can become obsolete in as little as 2 years, it would make little sense to grant monopoly rights for 20 years. So even if a CRI passes the three tests of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, it needs to be evaluated from the perspective of its possible obsolescence. In such a scenario, the examiner should look at the history of innovation in that particular field to ascertain that the invention does not become obsolete in a short time.”

Also consider for instance the term, “business methods”. It involves a whole gamut of activities in a commercial or industrial enterprise relating to transaction of goods or services but “the claims are at times drafted not directly as business methods but apparently with hitherto available technical features such as Internet, networks, satellites, tele-communications, etc”, the draft stated.

“The exclusions are carved out for all business methods and, therefore, if in substance the claims relate to business method even with the help of technology, they are not considered patentable,” the guidelines added.

The Japan intellectual Property Association, in its reaction to the India’s new CRI patenting guidelines, also noted that recent computers, including processors or memories, mostly do not rely on any specific programs.

“In addition, software-related inventions should be patentable originally for their functioning on the basis of novel computer programs in combination with general purpose devices. However, these computer-related inventions would be excluded from protection under the new standards for patentability,” it cautioned.

The draft guidelines “have interpreted and applied Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act 1970 in a more restrictive way to conclude as to what is patentable, which is a cause of concern to various stakeholders”, said Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in its reaction.

Software patents remain an emotive issue.

Their proponents argue that patents promote investment in research and development, accelerate software development by making previously unknown and not obvious software inventions public and protect IP of software companies. They also encourage the creation of software companies and jobs and increase the valuation of small companies, the proponents add.

Critics counter that traditional copyright has provided sufficient protection to facilitate massive investment in software development and that most software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.

Globally, patents in the IT and software sector are being revisited due to litigation and compensation claims over misuse of patents including the much-hyped patent battle of Apple Inc. with Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. with Microsoft Corp.

In June 2008, technology companies including Google, Intel Corp, Oracle Corp, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Co. set up the ‘Allied Security Trust’ to address the risk of patent-infringement suits by buying those patents which they feel are most important to their businesses.

AST has 26 members from Europe, North America and Asia. It buys patents that its members have expressed interest from the patent holder, and the cost would be deducted from those companies’ Escrow accounts. AST argues that non-practicing entities, or NPEs, also known as patent trolls, produce no products or services of their own, and yet acquire patents—sometimes hundreds of them—with the sole intention of asserting their right and conduct patent litigation to extract settlements or licensing fees.

In 2008, AST estimated that it costs operating companies an average of $3.2 million through the end of discovery and $5.2 million through trial to defend cases in which there is more than $25 million at stake.

The costs of determining if a particular piece of software infringes any issued patents are too high and the results too are uncertain. A software patent costs, on average, around $20,000, it said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-ch-unnikrishnan-dictionary-words-in-software-patent-guidelines-puzzle-industry

Text to Speech Synthesizer

praskrishna — 2014-04-01T03:31:59Z

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer (May to August 2013)

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer (March to May 2013)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/text-to-speech-synthesizer-reports

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer Report (August 2013)

praskrishna — 2013-08-27T09:38:33Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/text-to-speech-synthesizer-report-august-2013.pdf

Text-to-Speech Synthesizer Report (May 2013)

praskrishna — 2013-08-27T09:36:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/text-to-speech-synthesizer-report-may-2013.pdf

India's Internet Privacy Woes

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T11:09:30Z

“For the sake of national security and to protect the privacy of its citizens, India should develop its own social media platforms,” says Dr Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO of Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a Nasscom-promoted ‘self-regulatory’ organisation on data protection and privacy in India, in a blog post dated August 13.

This article by Rohin Dharmakumar was published in Forbes India on August 26, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Citing a litany of woes, including American control over internet infrastructure, Bajaj makes the case for India to take a leaf out of China’s playbook (“even though its reasons were different”) and encourages the creation of “Indian” social media sites and search engines.

“Unfortunately, Dr Bajaj provides a wrong solution to a correct diagnosis,” says Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society. “First, I can’t think of any governmental intervention—short of a ban on existing foreign services—that can make a new Indian service successful. Second, India’s privacy laws are worse than those in the US. Nothing will stop the US and Indian governments from coming after this company too.”

The problem arises because services like Facebook and Google store all your data unencrypted on their servers, making it easy for them, or governments and hackers, to monitor everything you do. The correct solution, says Prakash, would be to encourage the creation and use of de-centralised and end-to-end encrypted services that do not store all your data in one place.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/forbesindia-august-26-2013-india-internet-privacy-woes

Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T10:23:41Z

In the run-up to the 2014 polls, parties are drawing up media strategies that have a focus on young voters.

This article by Venkatesh Upadhyay was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Major national political parties have begun to sharpen and tweak their tools of public relations and media engagement in the run-up to the 2014 general election, with an eager nod towards a voters list that is expected to be packed by the young.

National parties currently in the process of shortlisting their advertising, public relations and mobile marketing agencies declined to share details.

“The advertising strategy will crystalize by January. We will go for multiple agencies,” said Manish Tewari, spokesperson for the Congress as well as minister for information and broadcasting.

According to people familiar with the selection process, JWT, Crayons Communications and Dentsu India, among others, are all in the race for the Congress business. Home-grown Crayons has worked closely with the Delhi government and Congress in the past.

Refusing to confirm the names on the shortlist, Tewari said it was a line-up of the “usual suspects”.

For social media, the Congress has engaged Delhi-based OMLogic, an online media marketing company, which helped create the website fekuexpress.com that seeks to highlight the supposedly braggart nature of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief campaigner Narendra Modi.

The website ran contests in which winners received film tickets. OMLogic was among three shortlisted agencies from 22 that competed for the same account, a person familiar with the bid said. According to others aware of the developments, senior Congress leaders such as Digvijay Singh and Deepender Singh Hooda helped select the agencies.

OMLogic helps clients enhance their brands across platforms and creates social media applications for them. The company declined to comment for this story.

“I believe these elections will represent the first time that political parties will have a conscious media strategy,” said Sanjaya Baru, communications advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2008.

	“By conscious I mean that political parties have acknowledged the role of mass media in getting their message across to voters. TV has taken the space of political rallies.” Baru said the media strategy for the coming elections was essentially focused on TV and social media as “both these platforms allow parties to reach out to large parts of the urban and semi-urban demographic”. Close to 60 million new voters have been enrolled for the 2014 election, of whom 17.6 million are 18-19 year-old first-timers. A study by the Iris Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates the number of urban social media users to be around 78 million. The main users were in the age groups of 18-24 and 25-34 years.

“By conscious I mean that political parties have acknowledged the role of mass media in getting their message across to voters. TV has taken the space of political rallies.”

Baru said the media strategy for the coming elections was essentially focused on TV and social media as “both these platforms allow parties to reach out to large parts of the urban and semi-urban demographic”.

Close to 60 million new voters have been enrolled for the 2014 election, of whom 17.6 million are 18-19 year-old first-timers. A study by the Iris Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates the number of urban social media users to be around 78 million. The main users were in the age groups of 18-24 and 25-34 years.

The Congress has already highlighted the role of social media in its communication strategy. The party held a special session on the use of social media by party members on 22 August that was addressed by minister of state for human resources Shashi Tharoor, and Manish Tewari. In a similar meeting last month, party members were briefed on how to comment on key issues, including the state of the economy, and personalities like Modi, who is also Gujarat chief minister.

It also launched an intranet software called Khidki (Hindi for window) for use by Congress members. According to party politicians, another important part of last month’s exercise was to identify young members who would make up a cadre of spokespersons that would then participate across news channels.

The BJP, meanwhile, has drafted Internet entrepreneurs B.G. Mahesh and Rajesh Jain to help the party with its social media operations. Acknowledging the role of social media in the party’s media strategy, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman said, “Our exercise has already taken on board the position which the party enjoys on various social media. We only emphasized the content that such media ought to have,” she added.

Prominent members of the party, led by Modi, have large followings on social media. Modi’s Twitter account is followed by close to 2.1 million people.

Last week, the BJP launched india272.com that would “crowd source” suggestions by the electorate. It also launched a website where its members can upload “chargesheets” on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. Visitors to www.bjp.org/upachargesheet can also make use of different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to register their complaints.

Some Internet activists are sceptical about such strategies. “The average Indian netizen is not that well equipped to critically analyse the content coming from so-called crowdsourced mechanisms,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based Internet policy research organization. “I believe that social media might be one step removed from actual voters and might be more oriented towards opinion makers. In that sense social media (in India) behaves very differently from the way it has been used in the US.”

According to an online media expert familiar with the BJP’s social media campaign, the interactive nature of social media helps build up an image of transparency while making the party more accessible to a young audience that has been switching off television news.

In addition, social media allows political leaders to gauge public response quickly.

Ajay Maken, Congress general secretary and the man who heads the party’s communication strategy, pointed out in an article published this month that subjects that become influential on Twitter during the day tend to turn into full-fledged TV debates by the evening.

But political parties are not giving up on television channels just yet.

According to a report by consulting firm KPMG, the number of Indian households with TV sets is estimated to be 154 million, and is expected to grow to 173 million by 2017. TAM Media research estimated the number of TV households to be 123 million in 2009. Meanwhile, cable- and satellite-owning TV households has in the period 2009-2012 ballooned from 90 million to 126 million, according to TAM.

The Congress has issued guidelines to its members on how to behave on television. According to individuals familiar with the move, the party has also set up a research cell that informs Congress spokespersons about subjects that they are asked to speak on.

Congress members who participate in televised debates have been given strict orders to not go on air without a thorough understanding of the nuances of issues—provided to them by Congress researchers. For instance, spokespersons have been advised to rely on facts and be data-specific when confronted with the twin issues of Gujarat’s high-growth economy and Modi’s governance record.

In order to streamline the process, the party has come up with lists of speakers who are focused on specific issues. It has also constituted media cells in each state capitals with three units—spokespersons, social media cell and research —and a social media division for every urban centre with a population of at least a million.

The BJP has devised a similar strategy. Party spokespersons have been asked to mention chief ministers other than Modi if asked about the leadership for the 2014 elections. Arun Jaitley, in a interview to The Hindu, on 19 August had spoken about the possibility of there being close to 10 prime ministerial candidates in the BJP.

The BJP, which held a closed-door media workshop for party members last week, is also keen on research. “A lot of policy requires specialized understanding which is largely domain-specific. In that regard, members of our party will need to be prepared when they speak on such issues,” said spokesperson Seetharaman.

The Congress has already begun a television ads-blitzkrieg to trumpet its record in government. Begun in May, these ads have sought to showcase the fruits of the welfare state, including schemes aimed at the poor, such as theMahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, as well a long list of rights-based laws. One well-known ad tells the story of a fictional young woman named Priya who lives in a village but makes use of opportunities in education and improved electricity connections to become a successful entrepreneur.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-venkatesh-upadhyay-election-campaign

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:30:54Z

Wikimania is the annual international conference of the Wikimedia movement. It's organized by a different local team each year. In 2013 the conference took place in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wikimania allows the community and the general public to learn about and share their experiences with free knowledge initiatives all over the world. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Click to read the details published on the Wikimania website.

The previous conferences were held in Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Boston, USA (2006), Taipei, Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009), Gdańsk, Poland (2010), Haifa, Israel (2011), and Washington, D.C., USA (2012).

Picture: Wikimania 2013. Official site, CC-BY-SA 3.0

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikimania-2013

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 in Hong Kong

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T05:31:59Z

WikiSym + OpenSym took place in Hong Kong on August 5-7, 2013. The event emphasized the open collaboration aspect of WikiSym both for researchers as well as practitioners. The event was organized by the International Symposium on Open Collaboration. T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event.

See the event details posted on wikisym.org and also read the blog entry posted by Dirk Riehle on opensym.org.

A Short Report on WikiSym + OpenSym 2013

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 took place at Hong Kong’s Cyberport facility. 98 registered participants from around the world enjoyed a two-track program centered on the common topic of open collaboration. Four keynotes and invited talks covered topics of open access, open educational resources, Wikipedia research, and open science. Open access, open source, and traditional wiki research contributed several sessions. A main thread was Wikipedia research, which was strongly represented at the conference, perhaps not surprisingly given that we had co-located WikiSym with Wikimania, the Wikipedia user conference. Social media coverage was strong, as can be seen from Twitter and Google Plus searches.

A host of community events, including demos, posters, and workshop on the topic of open collaboration rounded out the program. Even though most participants were international’s, events on open data in business and the GLAM sector added a local flavor to the event. Participants also got a taste of the richness of the city of Hong Kong, for example through the conference banquet at Top Deck, a restaurant ship that provided an enjoyable mingling opportunity and an excellent food to conference participants.

All tracks and events are supplemented by an open space track. Open space is a technique for organizing events to allow otherwise passive participants to become an active part of the conference. Open space is like an “unconference”, just more organized and much more effective. Open space has a long and distinguished history at WikiSym. Using open space, WikiSym + OpenSym activates not only traditional speakers but every participant, creating the desired synergy between all strands of open collaboration researchers and practitioners.


Some of the event participants, photo by Subhashish Panigrahi

Finally, a few links of WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 reporting from this blog:

The proceedings are available from the event’s website.

Sponsors of WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 were the Wikimedia Foundation, Google, InvestHK, Cyberport, and EuroCham Hong Kong. The event was held in-cooperation with the ACM SIGWEB and SIGSOFT and was fiscally sponsored by The John Ernest Foundation.

Next year’s conference, OpenSym 2014, will be held in Berlin, Germany, on August 27-29, 2014. Please see here for the initial call for submissions (papers).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikisym-opensym-2013-hong-kong

Wikipedia writes a new script

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:27:27Z

Wikipedia is available in over 30 Indian languages. Add Konkani to that list. The Centre for Internet and Society has just completed a programme of training students to write for Konkani Wikipedia.

The article was published in the Goan on August 24, 2013.

They sat listening to Subhashish Panigrahi, learning how to seamlessly flow from English to Konkani. Panigrahi walked around the room, 40 sets of eyes and ears followed him eagerly, latching on to his every word. Then the team moved into a small conference room at the new Central Library, where they sat down to work on a few articles in Konkani. The reason: Because Wikipedia has a new language – Konkani.

When on February 4, 1987, Konkani in Devnagri script was declared the official language of Goa according to the Goa Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987, little did the officials know that one day, one of the largest web-based encyclopaedias would want the encyclopaedia to be available also in Konkani for the 30, 00000 or so Konkani language speakers over the world.

Wikipedia, a multi-lingual, web-based, free content encyclopaedia is available in over 30 Indian languages and several languages of other nations. The project to begin a Konkani Wikipedia began in 2006. “Sadly, even after seven years of inception, Konkani Wikipedia has only 90 articles,” says Nitika Tandon, of the CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet & Society, Access to Knowledge) team. The CIS is a movement for open access to web-based information. “Rather than being open receivers of knowledge, we want people to be active producers of knowledge,” she adds. The CIS has selected five Indian languages to uplift and Konkani is one of them.

Carlos Fernandes, the Curator of the Central Library said, “We supported it because this will maintain the culture and develop the language using technology. Articles in Konkani language will be available to people all over the world and thus should one want to research something in Konkani, his search will not be limited to the books of the library.” Another project by the CIS team to make Konkani more well-known is digitising the 4-volume Konkani encyclopaedia published by the Goa University. “This encyclopaedia will be uploaded by this team and will be available under the creative commons licence,” says Dr Gopakumar, the university Librarian.

The programme covered aspects like how Wikipedia works, how to edit articles, how to type in Devnagri, how to create a new article, etc. “We are learning how to about editing and writing in Wikipedia. The 40 students are of MA part 2, and the group is divided into two. The first 20 will work on the first two days and the others will work on the last two,” says Fr Luis Xavier Gomes who is doing his MA in Konkani at Goa University. Fr Gomes will be writing on Konkani tiatr and Konkani cantar after having researched and referenced about the same.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/thegoan-joyce-dias-august-24-2013-wikipedia-writes-a-new-script

Workshop on e-Content Development

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T05:56:16Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan, A2K Programme Director at CIS will be teaching at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad from September 4 to 6, 2013.

Vishnu Vardhan will give guest lecture for the following:

Open Source to Open Knowledge
Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet
e-Content in Indian languages – History, Challenges and Opportunities
Wikipedia Users to Wikipedia Authors – Exploring Wikipedia as an OER Tool
e-Content, e-Student, e-Faculty – Reimagining classroom in the digital Age

Click to download the programme brochure

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/workshop-on-e-content-development

Konkani Wikipedia makes headway

praskrishna — 2013-09-17T06:07:54Z

The first floor of the Krishnadas Central Library has been bustling with activity for the last four days. A closer look reveals the concentration, thought and precision that is put into each letter of the Devnagri script Konkani they type. Still further and you realise it’s a Wikipedia site that final year MA Konkani students of Goa University are busy with.

This article by Diana Fernandes was published in OHeraldO on August 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon is quoted.

A follow up to the Konkani Wikipedia workshop that was held earlier last month at St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa and King’s school, Margao, the Centre for Internet and Society ( CIS) in its Access to Knowledge ( A2K) initiative were back to try and bring to life a seven year incubation Konkani Wikipedia page.

The final year MA Konkani students were busy typing away at their screen as I went to pay them a visit. Nitika Tandon, Goa in- charge from the CIS- A2K team says Goan students have shown the most interest so far. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head of Department at Goa University says she’s thrilled for the project as it will not only help students update and reach out to other writers but also help in popularising Goa’s mother tongue.

“ So far there was nothing in Konkani on Wikipedia. There are so many articles about Goa in English but not in Konkani. Those who do not know only to read or develop their Konkani skills can probably use this.

Also for the students it’s an opportunity for them to discuss their thoughts with other editors,” says Tadkodkar.

The last time she was in the state, Tandon says people were more inclined to hear of the English Wikipedia rather than Konkani, but sees this workshop as a definite success story.

Students were visibly interested in not only writing about Goa but to change the way people look at Goa. “ Goa is only seen as beaches, parties and cheap liquor. There is so much more. Like Goa’s unique cuisine or its famous personalities like D D Kosambi,” says Supriya.

“ People say that Konkani will die in another 20 – 25 years. I see this as an opportunity to save it,” says another student John.

Articles written by the students will be assessed by Madhavi Sardesai, editor of Jaan, a Konkani literary journal, after which students will be asked to make the corrections online.

A total of 38 students attended over the span of two days. Each session comprised eight hours of training a day. Topics discussed during the workshop included basics of Wikipedia and the status of Konkani Wikipedia as well as typing in Devnagri script, the sort of articles that are required for the site and using references other than Facebook and how to site them in the article.

“ Forty- two pages of content were generated in two days and have already been put up on the site. The students love it. Students who came in the first batch wanted to join the second one simply because they want to write. Though they don’t get credit for this workshop as part of the syllabus students are indeed interested,” says Tandon.

Though a total of 140 articles on topics ranging from Goa’s heritage, culture, traditions and famous personalities have been uploaded, she says it requires at least five contributors to add to the existing database regularly.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/epaperoheraldo-august-24-2013-diana-fernandes-konkani-wikipedia-makes-headway

A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-08-23T16:00:46Z

The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) is holding a workshop on Wikipedia editing at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai on August 24, 10.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.

The morning session will be having a discussion and demonstration on Wikipedia (10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.), which will be followed by a practical session (2.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.).

As part of the run-up to the Indian Languages Mela (planned for September 20-21, 2013), CILHE will conduct a workshop for those who would like create new articles in any Indian Language Wikipedia. The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) and the Wikipedia Hyderabad community. The objective of the workshop is to train students to edit Wikipedia. Participants are encouraged to work with Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu or any other language of their choice. Although the workshop is mainly intended for potential competitors for the Mela awards for Best New Article in an Indian Language Wikipedia, anyone interested in Wikipedia is welcome.

As you may know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and is the 5th most-visited website in the world! It's completely free to use and re-use, it has no advertising, and is available in more than 286 different languages - including 20+ Indian languages. Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people who volunteer to share their knowledge with the world.

The CILHE is committed to producing material in Indian languages for higher education, and is partnering Wikipedia in drawing new editors to the Indian language Wikipedias so that they become an important knowledge resource.

What students gain from Wikipedia editing:

It improves writing skills. Wikipedia provides students a platform to hone their writing skills. Writing on Wikipedia enhances critical thinking and the ability to see all sides of a story. Students will find this incredibility useful in both their personal and professional lives while evaluating the pros and cons of different situations, projects, assignments etc. Wikipedia editing also strengthens research skills. A Wikipedia editor has to provide credible references by looking up books, journals and online materials. Writing on Wikipedia is good practice for those who will also work on a thesis or a research project.

Your articles will be read by thousands of people across the globe. If you edit a Wikipedia article, it is there *forever* and the audience can be any number from the 500 million who read Wikipedia every month!

It'll boost your chances in admissions or scholarships or placements.

It teaches students how to collaborate! Editing Wikipedia is magical. You add some content and someone from some other part of the class or school or town or country or somewhere else in the world adds a little bit more and makes the contribution that much better. Wikipedia helps one learn how to work productively with other people, even those you don’t know and may never actually meet.

The workshop will cover the following:

What exactly is Wikipedia and how does it work?
Who edits Wikipedia?
How do I edit Wikipedia?
What can I edit?
How can I input text in Indian languages?
How do I insert images?
How do I find and add references?
Do’s and Don’ts

Participants are required to register at least by August 23, 2013. Send your names to Ritesh Khunyakari riteshpk@gmail.com.

Important Instructions

Each student attending the Wikipedia Training programme should register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by August 23, 2013. Please note that you will not be able to register more than 5 Usernames from a single IP address within 24 hours (a security feature of Wikipedia). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration
Once registered the students must furnish their details on the google doc. I have already entered my data just as sample. Please circulate this link to all the students at the earliest. This should be done by August 24, 2013 before the commencement of the Workshop https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AshSF7ZKRBR5dFBfM2lTaExINTZodVZ4ejd3VURzMEE&usp=sharing
All the students are expected to do editing on Wikipedia. We will choose Telugu Wikipedia (www.te.wikipedia) as a site to do some editing. Please be assured that we will also show how to use English and other language Wikipedias. For this workshop each student should come up with one article at least in an Indian language. This should be typed and be available in a soft copy form and could be carried in a thumb drive or any other storage media which should be easily accessible to them during the training programme.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-editing-wikipedia-in-mumbai