[Wikipedia-PA] *cross-post* India Program - Fortnightly IRC: Thursday March 15th @ 9pm IST (Indic Languages) & Thursday March 29th @9pm IST (Outreach & Communication) (#wikimedia-office)

[Hisham]

cross posting to reach pan-community; apologies if you received it from other mailing lists already

Hi Folks,

One of the essential things that India Program needs to constantly work out is keeping the community informed of the work that we are doing - so that this work is clearer but also to help cross-pollinate ideas amongst a wider set of community members who might not have been engaged on specific village pump / talk page discussion or involved in particular activities (e.g. outreach events) or wikiprojects.

We used to have a monthly IRC with the community and India Program.   (For those who are not familiar with IRC, it is an Internet messaging system similar to a regular chat room.  It's very simple to use and you can join in by clicking on the following link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-office.)  I have been remiss in conducting these for the past few months - and I'd like to make amends by restarting, with a couple of modifications.

a) I'd like to propose fortnightly instead of monthly.  (I was wary of doing it any more frequently than monthly earlier because I didn't know if there would be enough on the plate to discuss.  I have changed my mind now - because there is too much to discuss to cover in a single monthly session.)  I'd like to propose that we do it in the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month at 9pm IST (which is GMT + 0530) - THOUGH NOT THIS MONTH - BECAUSE I HAVE MISSED THE TIMELINE.  Just for March, we will do it on March 15th and March 29th (both at 9pm IST which is GMT + 0530)
b) I'd like to propose that we do it focussed on specific work streams instead of general.  The reason I say this is that - as with many community meet-ups, folks will give time to attend a meet-up or participate in an IRC only if there is a topic of relevance to them.  To that extent, we could do one IRC on Indic languages and one on Outreach & Communications.  I'd start both the IRCs with a re-cap of India Programs activities for the fortnight (or so) prior to the IRC and forward from the IRC - and then we could talk about either Indic langauges or Outreach & Communications.

The March 15th one will be focussed on Indic Languages and the one on March 29th will be on Outreach & Communications.  

Having said that, there is quite a bit of overlap on these topics - so feel free to join both.  The more the merrier! Please do also invite anyone who is interested to know more about India Program or - even more importantly - interact with fellow Wikimedians interested in a particular activity to join in.  (It's quite a lot of of fun {citation required} - and i've heard a rumour {citation required} that there was actually a romance that started on one of the IRCs...)

As always, the logs will be put up on meta for the benefit of those who can't attend and for the record.

I'll send a reminder on the day of the session and one 30 minutes before the session.

Thanks

hisham
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