User:Planemad

Leave a new message or catch him on his blog twitter or just mail him at arun.planemad@gmail.com

My name is Arun Ganesh and Planemad on the web, great grandson of Indian freedom fighters Kamalambal and Kovai Subri. My ancestral roots are from the historic town of Suchindrum, a short ride from the southern tip of peninsular India where Swami Vivekananda had his vision for an Indian nation.

Papers qualify me as an Electronics & Communication Engineer from Anna University and an Information designer from National Institute of Design, but more importantly, I like to understand the earth and its contents.

I have been contributing maps, images and the occasional article to wikipedia since 2005 when I realized that crowd-sourced open knowledge has the potential to significantly impact the future of humanity. My contributions are now silently part of thousands of articles, been printed in newspapers, foreign magazines, books, research papers, advertising commercials, MIT OpenCourseWare, political hoardings, restaurant signages, television programmes, hotel reception desks, local guidebooks and other places where I have not looked yet.

WMF Contractor

I was on contract with the wmf:Localisation team from May-December 2012 as an Interaction designer to help make language tools more usable. For my wiki contributions in official capacity please see mw:user:aganesh

Gallery

• list of contribution to commons
• Flickr Photostream

Currently

Working on creating a free geodatabase of India using OpenStreetMap and building an online public transit information system for the country. Drop me a line if interested

Workshops/Talks

I love taking hands on workshops on map making and evangelizing open knowledge projects like wikipedia and openstreetmap.

• GIS course at Indian Institute for Human Settlements
• Talk on FOSS communities and OSM workshop at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
• Map making workshop at NERIST
• Map making workshop at NIT Arunachal Pradesh
• DC Data Engineering Meetup: Open Geodata Workshop
• 'Mapping India: A complex idea' lightning talk at State of the Map US 2015
• Keynote at State of the Map 2017

Planemad's Barn

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		I, Ganeshk, award you this Graphic designer's barnstar for your Indian map contributions to Wikipedia. Awesome stuff! - Thank you, Ganeshk (talk) 18:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		I =Nichalp «Talk»=, award you for your amazing contributions to India-related maps. Keep it up! =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

		The Geography Barnstar
		For doing stuff with maps that I can only dream of!! -- Lost(talk) 18:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		I, Chez , award you the Graphic designer's barnstar for your creation of Indian National Highways map which I and many others like me fell in love with. It is a featured picture now. Cheers. -- Chez (Discuss / Email) • 07:42, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

		The Mapmaker's Barnstar
		I present you this Mapmaker's Barnstar for uploading awesome state locator maps! They are colorful and informative. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 17:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		For his FP-quality contributions to articles like Climate of India. Only his map-making and template-designing work can compete. Thanks. Saravask 05:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		I, user:Dineshkannambadi award you this Graphic designer's barnstar for your various maps contributions to Karnataka History articles - Thank you and a Happy New Year Dineshkannambadi (talk) 19:18, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

		The Indian Barnstar of National Merit
		This user has been nominated by the community of Indian editors for recognition as a Noteworthy Wikimedian at WikiConference India 2011. AshLin (talk) 14:08, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	Nice maps for India! Cyrali (talk) 11:19, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

	The Photographer's Barnstar
	For producing some fine images of various regions of the country. You're a great asset to WP:IND. —Vensatry (Ping me) 06:29, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

This user contributes to OpenStreetMap.