Centre for Internet and Society

Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners)

praskrishna — 2012-04-28T04:07:50Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore invites you to a hands-on-free Arduino workshop in its office on 3 March 2012. The workshop will be held from 11.00 a.m. to 3 p.m.

What is Arduino?

Arduino, an Italian name meaning "strong friend", is a popular "open-source electronics prototyping platform based around a microcontroller. It accepts inputs, such as signals from sensors (light, temperature, moisture, etc.) or data from the Internet or wireless devices, and sends output signals to devices, such as LEDS, motors, speakers, MIDI sequencers, computers, and so on."

In simpler terms: It is a ready-to-use creative platform, designed to provide interactivity between humans, smartphones, PCs, sensors and the physical world. It is especially a boon for creative people who don't have a technical background and want to translate their wildest techno-ideas to reality in a snap.

A comic by Jody Culkin, introducing Arduino

What can Arduino Do?

Applications of Arduino could include anything under the sun, from making your LED lights glow in reaction to the weather to interactive punching bags: your imagination is the limit (besides the sensors).

Check what some folk did with a bunch of cameras for an amazing music video all in one day

For other examples, check out the Boing Boing listing

Who can Attend?

The workshop is especially meant for interaction designers, artists or anyone else enthusiastic to get started with creative projects and don't have prior experience with electronics, interfacing and all that hack talk. It would help to have a general understanding of instructional programming languages, but this shouldn't be a problem for starts as you will pick it up as we go along. Besides, we are super-friendly and patient folk who will assist participants to demystify geek code.

Apply Now

We have only 20 seats for this free workshop. Participants will work in groups of two. The workshop will last 4 hours, over a lunch break. All materials will be provided, and it would be great if you could get your laptop.

To apply please send a brief intro about yourself and why you think you will benefit from this to yelena@cis-india.org. Selected participants will be notified shortly.

A map, showing the location of CIS

VIDEOS

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/free-arduino-workshop

Free and Open Source Software and Standards for Public Health Information Systems in India: “Making them Work” by Bridging the Policy Practice Gap

praskrishna — 2017-02-27T15:36:25Z

Anubha Sinha spoke at the ORF Health Policy Workshop on the panel: The policy landscape in India with respect FOSS software and standards in the public sector more generally. The event was organized by Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi on February 27 and 28, 2017 in New Delhi.

For workshop background note click here
For agenda click here
For more info see the Observer Research Foundation website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/foss-for-public-health-information-systems-in-india

Frank Weaver

praskrishna — 2012-02-15T08:26:34Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/frankoweaver.jpg

Frank La Rue

praskrishna — 2011-02-24T08:11:57Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/frank_la_rue_121.jpg

Francis with the Award

praskrishna — 2012-02-29T10:28:29Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis1.jpg

Francis Jayakanth's Presentation

praskrishna — 2012-02-29T10:54:33Z

Dr. Jayakanth gave a presentation on Open Access.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-jayakanth-presentation

Francis Jayakanth

praskrishna — 2012-02-29T10:19:05Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis3.jpg

Francis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World

praskrishna — 2013-08-03T05:36:54Z

The Electronic Publishing Trust recently announced a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developed countries who have made significant contribution for the cause of open access and free exchange of research findings. There were 30 nominations from 17 countries around the world and Dr. Francis Jayakanth from the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was selected for the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access in the Developing World by a committee that went through all the nominations.

The award function organised by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore was held at the Sambasivan Auditorium, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai on 14 February 2012. Leading luminaries such as Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Prof. G Baskaran and Prof. K Mangala Sunder participated in the award felicitation ceremony.

Giving the welcome speech, Prof. Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at CIS said that Dr. Jayakanth works for the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has trained many students and helped a number of institutes to set up open access repositories. Prof. Arunachalam added that the event is being celebrated in India as the winner is from India and specified that it is being held at the MS Swaminathan Foundation as this was the institution that hosted the first workshop to promote open access. Prof. Swaminathan had a vital role in arranging funds for the workshop. About 50 people had learnt what open access was, how to set up open access repositories, how to use the EPrints software, etc. For this very reason it was decided to hold the event in Chennai and not Bangalore where Dr. Jayakanth is based.

Felicitating Dr. Jayakanth, Prof. Swaminathan who presented the award added that it is important to highlight the contributions of those who really convert the concept of social inclusion to reality. He said that today every politician talks about inclusive growth. What is this inclusive growth, how do you convert exclusion to inclusion? Exclusion creates large problems, social problems, economic problems, etc. On a concluding note, Prof. Swaminathan said that the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has declared 2012-13 as the year of science and he hopes that there will be a new science policy and technology policy and that he hopes that a very important component of that should be methods of ensuring open access including open access to knowledge and open access to literature.

In his award acceptance speech, Dr. Jayakanth said that the atmosphere was very overwhelming and never in his two-and-a-half decade old career he had the opportunity to speak amidst such luminaries and added that it was a privilege and prestige to have received the award from Prof. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India. He also added that no event in India or elsewhere is complete without the active participation and mentioning of the name of Prof. Arunachalam, the greatest advocate of open access that India has seen so far, and that he wouldn’t have been here at the award ceremony but for the timely intervention of Prof. Arunachalam.

Dr. Jayakanth concluded by saying that he would like to thank Prof. NV Joshi, Prof. Derek Law, Prof. Alma Swan, Prof. Balaram, Prof. N Balakrishnan, Prof. Giridhar, and Prof. TB Rajashekar, and particularly the students of the information and knowledge management programme at the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, who were responsible for the growth of a repository granting more visibility to the 32,000 publications that are part of the repository.

Prof. Mangala Sunder of IIT Madras and Prof. G Baskaran of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, also participated in the event. Prof. Sunder said that it is for the kind of information that we talk about, which we want to make public for which champions like Dr. Jayakanth have been working on the sidelines but working so efficiently to get institution after institution to convert what is known as a rigid framework into a flexible more open policy of bringing their scientific content to their intellectual information content. He said that he works in the area of content development from the point of view of education and he understands the difficulty of bringing material to the public.

There are many issues, such as issues about copyright, issues about people owning the information, issues about people feeling very rigid on what they want to say in the public, etc. Dr. Jayakanth has gone through all these exercises for the last 30 years in slowly creating the “little after little” what are called the waterways to finally see that everyone benefits. The linking of science, knowledge and sustainable development to open access to information, open access to research and open access to content completes the whole cycle of knowledge.

Prof. Baskaran said that it is a very well deserved award and Dr. Jayakanth has definitely raised the bar for future awardees. Prof. Baskaran stressed upon the aspects of open access. He said that as a theoretical physicist he understands the need for open access very well. Physicists, when they have new research results place them in arXiv, the open access repository for preprints in physics. Some people wonder what if some physicists deposit all kinds of articles in the arXiv. Experience has shown that 99 per cent of the articles appear in good journals later. He added that once it is put in the arXiv, the whole world gets access and a bad paper will be noticed and commented upon by many. No one likes to be the author of such a paper! He urged that other sciences, especially the life sciences should have a repository similar to arXiv and requested Prof. Swaminathan to take the intiative at MSSRF.

Dr. Francis Jayakanth

Dr. Francis Jayakanth is a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. He has played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and open access journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, open access journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, and the benefits of open access to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used. Dr. Jayakanth can indeed be considered an open access ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of open access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level.

See Francis's presentation on Who Benefits from Open Access to Scholarly Literature? [Powerpoint, 1523 KB]

See the video of the award function below:

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award

Framing the Digital Alternatives

praskrishna — 2012-04-04T07:35:13Z

They effect social change through social media, place their communities on the global map, and share spiritual connections with the digital world - meet the everyday digital native.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/framing-digital-alternatives

Fragmentation in a Democracy : The Role of Social Movements and the Media

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T07:45:31Z

The Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, together with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin, will be convening a Round-table on Fragmentation in a Democracy : The Role of Social Movements and the Media on October 16, 2013 at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. Sunil Abraham is a speaker in the session on Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance.

The round-table will examine the changing role of civil society as a political actor and also how this is being impacted by the Media and Social Media.

This round-table is being designed as a brainstorming session and therefore there will not be any formal written papers. Ideally, we will aim to have one or two prepared comments in each session to lay out the issues and a general discussion thereafter.

Agenda

10.00 10.05	Opening Remarks by Roundtable Chairperson:
10.05 11.45	Session 1: The Changing Role of Civil Society in a Democracy/Democratic Governance Trilochan Sastry, Founder and trustee, Association for Democratic Reform, Bangalore Chakshu Rai,/PRS Legislative Research Institute for Policy Research Studies, Delhi Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Independent Journalist, Delhi Anand Kumar, Professor, JNU, Delhi
11.45 12.00	Tea/Coffee Break
	Session 2: The Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance Sunil Abraham, CIS Bangalore Aditya Kalra, Thomson Rueters, Delhi R. Swaminathan, ORF, Mumbai Niranjan Sahoo, ORF, Delhi
13.45	Lunch

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/fragmentation-in-a-democracy

Fourth National Standards Conclave

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T08:05:19Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/fourth-national-standards-conclave.pdf

Fourth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T10:12:41Z

The next meeting of the two Sub-Groups (4th meeting) on privacy issues under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court is scheduled to be held on July 9, 2012 at 11.00 a.m. in Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Planning Commission, New Delhi.

Members of both the Sub-Groups are requested to send their final drafts as decided in the meeting held on June 27, 2012, by July 4, 2012 so that these could be circulated for obtaining feedback and for discussions/deliberations on July 9, 2012.

The above information was communicated by Shri S. Bose, Under Secretary, (CIT & I) to the following individuals:

Justice A.P. Shah, Chairman
Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj
Ms. Usha Ramanathan
Shri Sunil Abraham/Shri Pranesh Prakash
Prashant Reddy
Prof. Arghya Sengupta (requested to join the meeting on skype. Exact time for coming online will be communicated separately)
Shri Som Mittal
Shri Gulshan Rai
Ms. Mala Dutt

A copy of this information was sent to the following individuals:

Dr. C.M. Kumar, Sr, Adviser (CIT&I)

Shri R.K. Gupta, Adviser (CIT&I)

Shri Ramesh Kumar, Director (CIT&I)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/fourth-meeting-of-sub-groups-on-privacy-issues

Fourth IP Researchers Confluence

praskrishna — 2015-04-03T15:31:20Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/fourth-ip-research-confluence.pdf

Fourth Discussion Meeting of the Expert Committee to Discuss the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill

praskrishna — 2014-12-08T16:07:24Z

The fourth expert committee meeting was held on November 10, 2014 at the Department of Biotechnology to discuss the potential privacy concerns of the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill. Sunil Abraham however was unable to participate because of technical problems.

Agenda

Welcome and opening remarks by the Secretary, DBT
Remarks by the Chairman - Dr. T.S. Rao, Senior Adviser, DBT
A brief overview on deliberations and decisions of Hon’ble Supreme Court - Dr. Alka Sharma, Director, DBT
Discussion and finalization of the Bill by the members
Recommendations of the Expert Committee
Any other item with the permission of the Chairman.

Resources

Click here (Zip file, 2698 Kb) to download the following resources from earlier meetings:

Record note of discussions of the Expert Committee Meeting held on January 31, 2013 at DBT, New Delhi, to discuss the potential privacy concerns on draft Human DNA Profiling Bill.
Annexure 1 to Record note: Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012: The Privacy Issues and Concerns
Annexure 2 to Record note: Short background note on the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill
Record note of the 2nd discussion meeting of the Expert Committee held on May 13, 2013 in DBT to discuss the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill
Minutes of the 3rd meeting of the Expert Committee held on November 25, 2013 in DBT to discuss the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill
Record note of the discussions of the Experts Sub-committee Meeting on Human DNA Profiling Bill held on September 3, 2013 at CPFD, Hyderabad
Affidavit on behalf of DBT
Human Draft DNA Profiling Bill 2012 (Working Draft Version, April 29, 2012)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/fourth-discussion-meeting-of-expert-committee-to-discuss-draft-human-dna-profiling-bill

Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised

praskrishna — 2014-07-14T05:49:48Z

The content is available online under Creative Commons License.

The article by R. Krishna Kumar was published in the Hindu on July 12, 2014, Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.

Articles from the Kannada Encyclopaedia (Kannada Vishwakosha) of the University of Mysore can now be accessed online under the Creative Commons License. The move to make content of the Kannada Vishwakosha accessible is part of the ongoing effort to enrich Kannada content on Internet.

The University of Mysore is working with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) to digitise encyclopaedic publications for which the copyrights are owned by the varsity, and to re-release them under the Creative Common License.

U.B. Pavanaja of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, who is promoting Kannada content on the Internet, told The Hindu that of the 14 volumes, digitised content of the first four volumes has been uploaded.

And, the CIS is awaiting the release of the revised edition of the other two volumes. “Each volume has about 900 pages and hence over 3,600 pages of the Kannada Vishwakosha can now be accessed. What is significant is that people seeking quality information in Kannada can now access reliable content. It is also subject to editing in real time and hence will remain updated,” according to Mr. Pavanaja. The content was digitised and uploaded with the help of students who were interning with the CIS and included three boys and five girls, said Mr. Pavanaja.

The permission for digitising the content has been accorded for the first six volumes. However, the CIS has sought permission from the varsity for digitising the content of the other volumes, including Subject Encyclopaedia.

The Centre for Internet and Society signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of Mysore in February. The varsity issued a certificate to publish the work under the Creative Common License in May.

As per the plan, the digitised content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia, Wikisource and this is expected to enhance digital literacy in Kannada language while helping in free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to students, academics, researchers and the general public. As of now, the articles have been uploaded on Wikisource and will shortly be migrated to Wikipedia also.

Besides, the CIS is trying to hold talks with Kannada University, Hampi, on digitising the Janapada Vishwakosha and make it available under the Creative Common License, said Mr. Pavanaja.

Niranjan Vanalli, Director of EMMRC of the University of Mysore, said digitisation of Kannada Vishwakosha has given a new lease of life to publications. “The 14-volume Kannada Vishwakosha was not available to everyone earlier and was confined to research institutions or libraries. But now that the content is available online, it is accessible to all those who are interested. And, what it is more is that most articles, especially those pertaining to history, art and culture, will be of reference quality and that will act as a major boost to the cause of Kannada language,” he added.

Meanwhile, the University of Mysore and CIS will celebrate World Open Knowledge Festival on July 15 at the Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies from 11 a.m. to commemorate the event.

Those interested to access the Kannada Vishwakosha online can log on to: http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-12-2014-r-krishna-kumar-four-volumes-of-kannada-encyclopaedia-digitised