TLDR: Q1 Roundup, What’s ahead for Q2, Community Spotlight and opportunities including free conferences and Kiswahili Innovation Grants fund
Hello Common Voice Community,
It’s only been three months of 2022 and we have achieved so much! I would like to thank every one of you reading for your contribution and support! 
Q1 Roundup
The first quarter of the year is drawing to a close! Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far:
- Started our year with the first dataset release!
- Welcomed new members to the Common Voice Team
- Started to collect data for language variants through consulting with community members
- Designed sentence collection bands to reduce the barrier to voice collection
- Hosted Mozfest sessions with community members and partners
- New languages in Common Voice 8 and on the platform; include Igbo, Marathi, Danish, Norwegian Nynorsk, Central Kurdish, Malayalam, Swahili, Erzya, Moksha, Macedonian, Santali (Ol Chiki), Taiwanese (Minian), Cantonese, Tigre, Bengali/Bangla and Toki Pona
What’s ahead?
Over the year, our team are focusing on 5 key areas; Community and governance, Ecosystem building, Dataset health and access and Platform experience. Learn more on the Common Voice Public Roadmap
From Q2 April to June, we will be running several community engagements where you can influence the features and governance of the project. One really exciting goal we will be working on is; Making it easier for the community to customise the platform for their purposes for example having distinct CTAs on the platform, supporting multiple orthographies.
So please keep an eye out for future weekly updates for opportunities to engage with our community consultations.
Introducing Community Spotlight
Each week, I would like to highlight community members and activities that would be of interest to people across the Common Voice Community Ecosystem.
For this week, I would like to spotlight Txpoi from the Basque community, who has collaborated with me on the Community Events Workshop. Txpoi has made a really good comparative list of tools for virtual events. Learn more on Community Events Workshop Post.
Please reach out to me if you and your community would like to be featured by direct messaging me on discourse (or via email and matrix) before Tuesday 6 pm UTC each week.
Opportunities
Kiswahili Grant application
Kiswahili Common Voice Team are funding innovative ideas using the Common Voice Kiswahili data in new or integrated into existing voice technology solutions for the public good. If you are based in East Africa and have an idea please apply before 31st March (5 pm CAT) with a letter of intent.
Women in Voice Awards
Do you know someone who is an unsung hero in the Voice Technology Industry?
Here’s your opportunity to celebrate them by nominating a Woman or Non-binary person for the Women in Voice Awards! The application closes on April 15th apply here.
Strengthen your community management skills
On the 4th of April, Community Club is hosting Centre Ring: The Community Manager Empowerment Conference. Secure a free ticket and register via community.club
Thanks so much for reading this post !
If you have any questions please feel free to ask!
All the best,
Hillary