[ckan-discuss] CKAN advisory group?

Fri May 28 09:58:35 BST 2010

On 25 May 2010 18:02, David Eaves <david at eaves.ca> wrote:
> 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?

I agree.

> 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.

This is another great suggestion and we'd very much like to speak at
places. I also think it important to say that giving a talk or intro
to CKAN should not be limited to core developers: I'm pretty sure many
people could give a good general intro and overview both to CKAN and
the broader issues around open data, catalogues etc (especially with
discussion in advance here or by skype).

To put this explicitly: if there is anyone out there who wants to go
and give a talk somewhere about CKAN and open data, or even more
directly CKAN's "behalf" that would be great and they shouldn't hold
back because they aren't a "core" developer or the like.

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

Both very useful David. Thanks.

Rufus

> 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
>>
>
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