Dear All, I'm sad to say that I'll be leaving India for good on Jan 4th. It was not an easy decision, but I've been in Bangalore for 7 wonderful years and feel it's time to head back to the US.
I'm so proud and happy to be apart of this community, while I won't be able to do offline events and work anymore, I'll continue to moderate the Google Group and assist with any online work. Over the past 6 years we have been at the table for most data discussions and that reflects a lot about how we have been able to build a solid community of people. We have managed to run events, campaigns, free data, build resources, and do policy work; for a group like ours the list of accomplishments is profound considering we are just a community of volunteers with no money. A few years ago the stress of dealing with all the asks of us, made THej, Anand, and I take a step back and evaluate what we were trying to do. The decision to not raise money and to continue as volunteers was difficult but necessary given that we wanted to continue to concentrate on freeing essential data important to the community not trying to run around and collect money for projects that don't meet everyone's needs. For the past year we have concentrated on policy work, partnerships, and geospatial data. The community wants shapefiles we have worked to get them and make them open. While there has been delay we will have a complete village shapefile set in the public domain soon. And as we continue on we will do urban areas as we go along. This is a major accomplishment for us. And as the work winds down and me transitioning out it is a good time to take a look at what we should concentrate on next. We have created a survey to start collecting ideas. If you have some time this week please fill it out: https://goo.gl/forms/APbUYf9TyY2bcmgP2 What started out as a place to complain about Indian data has really become a family to me and has made my time in India really special. Thank you all for being awesome. I know this community will continue to thrive. I will miss everyone dearly. Nisha -- Nisha Thompson DataMeet.org [email protected] skype: nishaqt mobile: 876-266-9960 -- Datameet is a community of Data Science enthusiasts in India. Know more about us by visiting http://datameet.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "datameet" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
