[ckan-discuss] CKAN advisory group?

Tue May 25 18:02:47 BST 2010

Jonathan,

I think it makes a ton of sense. Figuring out how to improve CKAN's 
different aspects is the right goal.

Two thoughts on this.

First... it might be hard to get mind share from people like TBL, they 
are obviously getting pulled in thousands of different directions. I'm 
wondering if recruiting some lesser known talent, but one who an see 
their star attached to CKAN more directly might yield more input and a 
longer relationship?

Second, another way to do this might be to ask to ask a developer from 
CKAN to do a 5 min ignite talk at conferences which focus on the aspects 
of CKAN you talked about (e.g. design, UI) in which the purpose of the 
talk was to share the key challenges of CKAN in that area and invite the 
audience for feedback. You might find several people at the conference 
pull you aside and give you a treasure in feedback and suggestion - 
possibly even cultivate some new contributors.

I know neither of these are ground breeaking suggestions but wanted to 
put them out there.

cheers,
dave

On 10-05-25 5:18 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> 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
>    