Professional Role

Photos

Uploaded Photos

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Flickr Photostream

Videos

Pratham Books @ Connexions 2009

A video of our presentation at the 2009 Connexions Conference. http://cnxconference.rice.edu/ On openly accessible and reusable children's content. Slides @ http://www.scribd.com/doc/12586396/Pratham-Books-Connexions-2009

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Gautam K. John at the IndiaSocial Summit 2012

Gautam K. John, works with the Akshara Foundation and advisor to Inclusive Planet giving his presentation at the Power Talks: Future of Content, at the IndiaSocial Summit 2012.

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Participation Empowering Citizens to Demand Change

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Projects

Social Publishing
01/01/2007 – 12/31/2012
Our Social Publishing strategy aims to help us achieve goals of flexibility, scalability, and our mission of placing a book in every child’s hands. In particular, we want to create a shared value system of sharing and openness with a growing community of users and increasing the scale of the project. We curate communities that are passionate about reading and they help them us create and distribute content. This model rests on the idea of a participatory culture and an essential ingredient is a permissive licensing strategy along with a large community with shared values and an ecosystem to tap in to.
Project Website »

Karnataka Learning Partnership
01/01/2010 – present
The Karnataka Learning Partnership is a is a public platform where all the stakeholders involved in primary education can participate and contribute to the cause of ensuring better schools and education for all children in Karnataka. This effort envisages a system where a network of non-profits working across multiple verticals - education, health, nutrition etc., will bring their data together to present a factual assessment and this will be used to galvanize community led ownership of the public schooling system to drive change. We anchor this effort on both ends of the equation - by building a network of non-profits, creating a technology platform for them to share data and hosting a common public platform to engage communities and citizens through multiple channels, both offline and online.
Project Website »

Biography

I started out as a lawyer with a focus on Intellectual Property Laws. Post that, I have been an entrepreneur in the food industry, an agriculturalist of sorts, worked as a small wheel in the cogs of a large company and now work in the non-profit field within the folds of education and publishing. I work at the Akshara Foundation where I helped build and lead the Karnataka Learning Partnership project, which is a leverage, policy and advocacy project, and handle their data and technology functions as well as work on organizational strategy. Previously, I worked at Pratham Books where I built the social media presence, community strategy and built an open source children's book publishing model. Currently, I am an advisor to Pratham Book and to, STIR Education in India. Previously, I have been an advisor to Inclusive Planet, an organisation that works in the print disability space During this time, I have also been fortunate to advise a few small startups in the legal, food and social entrepreneurship spaces and have been a founding board member of the Wikimedia India Chapter. My passion is 'access' as applied to knowledge and information.

Fun facts

Favorite meal:
I was recently in the Serengeti and had a meal that has been the best thus far. It was a combination of the setting (the plains of Serengeti with elephants and buffalo and giraffe and birds of all kind in the background and on the horizon), the food (a wonderful picnic hamper filled with every imaginable treat), the company (my wonderful wife and our lovely guide) and the occasion (our honeymoon). By far, my most favourite meal yet.