This is a read only archive of pad.okfn.org. See the
shutdown announcement
for details.
Open_Data_Communities
Notes from Greg’s group:
What are the needs?
- Being able to easily identify projects and other actors in this space
- Connecting with folks working on similar projects or with similar goals
- Having a better sense of what skills/abilities certain organizations have (both in terms of identifying partners and soliciting assistance)
What is the value added/goal?
- Building a network that allows for easier information sharing and collaboration
- Building an evidence base for openness work
- Expanding the size of the openness community -- esp. by including non-traditional actors in this space such as academia
How to ensure the project is sustainable?
- Vibrant communities have to be managed by people, a good tool or website isn’t sufficient to generate community-wide activity
- Sustainability depends on how clearly the goal is articulated and how much value people see in the project
- Getting folks to contribute regularly
Notes from Jen’s group:
1. Needs
Some things we discussed in the needs category. What the tool could have/do:
- Sharing things you’re doing
- Public directory / CRM system
- Help people find groups working on open data
- #1 on Google (incentive to keep updated)
- Help find tech groups
- Global reach
- Do we assign people to nominate other in this sphere in different regions
- NDI / Sunlight lists could be a good place to get the data from.
- Whatever we create needs to have the ability to export / download data
- No geographic constraints
- Allow people to upload tips and tools - sharing knowledge
- Usable for non-data literate people - so as not to alienate people
- Allow you to find out what people are doing and who they are - collective community
2. Sustainable Website creation
- A simple clickable website - perhaps re-using technology
- Has to be smarter than just a directory
- Something that autochecks a website after around 3 months to see if there are any updates
- Automatically sends an email if the site is dead / has had no activity for a year - to check if org is still running
- Cheap to host and run
- 6/7 largest players get together to do the platform
- Consolidating available data
- One click to edit
- List with database functionality
- Organisations on the list donate time to push on mailing lists
3. Sustainable updating
- Simple fields and not too many - ideas could be:
- Name Org
- Website
- Other online presences
- Tags
- Free text of what you want people to know about the org
- Location/Geolocation
- Countries in which org is active
- Specialist Skills - Tech/Advocacy etc
- Other orgs working with
- One organisation could oversee the management of the list & be responsible for running it
- Good design is key
Notes from Lindsay’s group:
- Group was skeptical about the need for this project and that organizations/actors would actually contribute
- Creation/Implementation:
- Should have an approval process
- In process of creation, should consider reaching out to the OpenSteps community if we haven’t already
- Could organize all groups/actors into quadrants and then have them identify with a particular issue or approach. Then we can cluster the groups/actors around the topics in which they are involved.
- Could also organize like GitHub profiles where people can see who fol;ows who as a way to see who is connected
- Might want to consider addressing regional needs or setting up via regions
- Sustainability:
- The project would have to be an easy lift for organizations in order to ensure that they will contribute
- Must get buy-in from major players in the field (ie. funders, organizational heads) to ramp up enthusiasm and the willingness of organizations to participate