Tracking 2017: Looking back the positive side
In 2016 I consider myself as an amateur and decided to achieve 12 things in 2017. But looking back, I had already marked the year 2017 as an unsuccessful with lots of ups and downs. Together with my enthusiastic team, we did lots of activities around Open Data and had gained a reputed position at the Open Data Ecosystem. In 2018, I haven’t decided yet a but I desperately want to change the old strategy and be more focus on services and products. Because as I keep discussing with my mentors with huge experience of working in Nepal’s market, they always highlight the process of Advocacy>Research>Service is so complicated and difficult to sustain. Year 2017 had also taught me to find the space between my organizational achievements and personal achievements because I personally believe this is something which will hamper the colleagues who are working with me constantly day and night in the long run.
And I marked 2017 as unsuccessful only because inside my mind I had this huge disagreement running and in 2018 I decided to work on it. In 2017 we did some awesome work which I would like to highlight on this blog.
- Structuring and registering Open Knowledge Nepal as a non-profit organization. 3 years ago we (Prakash dai, Kashitiz dai and me) used to discuss this in our every meeting, finally, that day came in 2017. Grateful to Prakash Neupane, Ksitiz Khanal, Sagar Ghimire, Shubham Ghimire and Firoj Ghimire for making it possible.
- Organizing first out of valley event. Yes in 2017, we from Open Knowledge Nepal organize our first out of valley event at Pokhara. Many thanks to Kathmandu Living Labs team for helping us by being co-organizer of Open Data Day celebration and Ashok Raj Parajuli — Gandaki College, Sushil Magar — my colleague and the guys from WCR Pokhara.
- Getting selected as U.S Embassy Youth Council 2017/18 — Would definitely like to thanks, Ravi Kumar Neal — Co-founder of Code for Nepal for preparing recommendation letter overnight, he is the real source of inspiration and motivation. The youth council had given me a separate family to learn and explore more. They are simply awesome with lots of enthusiasm and motivation. Very much grateful to the family of Code for Nepal.
- Launching Open Data Handbook Nepali Version — The dream of localizing the meaning of Open Data was finally successful in 2017. Thanks to all translators and my colleagues of Open Knowledge Nepal for their hard work. Especial thanks to Shubham Ghimire, Sagar Ghimire, and Saroj Dhakal, they are the one work make the things possible.
- Tracking the Local Election, launching the project like Election Nepal and Local Boundaries. The only reason why I can never understand the feeling of the developer who took a long time to develop things cuz my colleague Sagar Ghimire can develop things overnight. I hope this process of launching new project never stops.
- Choosing to go further, decided to take the lead of Project Coordinator at Code for Nepal — Started as an AskNepal lead, I decided to make it more diverse by choosing separate position at Code for Nepal so that we can do more collaboration and promotion activities in Nepal for the betterment of digital literacy and open data.
- Developing Open Data Curriculum and Open Data Manual — This is something which I believe will be the future of Open Data Ecosystem. A resource which can be used by anyone for their own purpose. Thanks to my OKN team and special thanks, Nikki Sharma for helping us throughout the process.
- Open Data Awareness Program — Something which I always wanted, taking the concept of Open Data at the local level. Yes, we reached 7 districts to sensitize more than 335 youths of Nepal. Open Data Hackathon was also a grand success.
- Asian Regional Meeting on Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education — Sitting at the back bench of the conference table, yes we helped Open Access Nepal to organize ARM17 in Kathmandu. Managing Nepalese delegated, doing outreach and promotion, documentation and many more…
Besides all this activities, I gave a presentation at different events and conferences like Software Freedom Day, State of Map Asia, AI Meetup etc and I hope this journey will continue in 2018, making this thing impactful because, at the end of the day, all we want is to empower the youth of Nepal to be proactive and demanding.
