[ckan-discuss] CKAN advisory group?

Tue May 25 13:18:51 BST 2010

I've recently been thinking about how we can try to make sure that the
CKAN project is harnessing as much external expertise and experience
as possible in relation to developing robust registry/catalogue
software -- that will continue to be useful in X years time. (This is
partly triggered by looking into the history of open government data
in the UK and US -- and realising how many people out there must have
been thinking for decades about things which we are now dealing with!
[1])

Perhaps at this stage -- where we're beginning to have a number of
instances deployed around the world, internationalisation, and a
growing user base -- it might be good to think about specifically
inviting experts from different areas to form an advisory group to the
project? The main purpose of this group would be (i) to help address
specific questions in different domains and (ii) to generally keep an
eye on the overall trajectory of the project, and to make suggestions
about things we should bear in mind, people we should contact, and so
on. An international group of experts in different domains would also
help to emphasise how we are striving not to reinvent the wheel, and
are keen to listen to/implement suggestions from users, domain
experts, etc.

For example we could invite:

  * W3C/semantic web folk? Tim Berners-Lee?
  * Information management experts -- e.g. in geospatial or
environmental data discovery
  * Representatives from key user communities -- civic web developers,
scientists, etc
  * Software archive/packaging experts -- e.g. apt get, CPAN, etc
  * Python gurus
  * Metadata standard veterans
  * Social web service developers (e.g. who have made good UI stuff:
delicious, Flickr etc -- or successful open services e.g. Evan
Prodromou/identica)
  * Etc etc

While at the moment many people will not know about CKAN or may not
spontaneously comment or contribute, if we specifically invite people
that we think are amazing in the different areas they might pitch in
with good suggestions?

What do people think? If people think it's a good idea would anyone be
willing to liaise with me to write some invitations?

All the best,

Jonathan

[1] E.g. 2004 or 1994?;-)  "Every year, the Federal Government spends
billions of dollars collecting and processing information (e.g.,
economic data, environmental data, and technical information).
Unfortunately, while much of this information is very valuable, many
potential users either do not know that it exists or do not know how
to access it. We are committed to using new computer and networking
technology to make this information more accessible to the taxpayers
who paid for it." --
http://archive.ifla.org/documents/libraries/cataloging/metadata/gils.txt
-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg