[ckan-discuss] Building CKAN's user community?

Wed Feb 23 10:30:00 GMT 2011

Hi Jonathan,

As you know I think this is an excellent idea.

I see CKAN has having three customers really:

* Organisations who pay for CKAN to be customised for their needs
* Developers who build and customise CKAN themselves
* Users who use CKAN to help share open data

The core team has been quite focused on the first recently but we really 
need to focus on the second two as well. Out of the second two, the user 
community is the most important in my mind because encouraging the 
sharing of open data is what we are all about.

I agree with all your points but have extended the first one below and 
added some more which I think would help us from a development point of 
view. They don't have to be part of this person's role but they would 
help us if they were:

   * To proactively gather information about feature requests or 
experiences from the user community, to be relayed to the developer team 
via the trac systemand also to act as a first filter to ensure that only 
the important requirements get fed through to developers
   * Help answer the simple questions that regularly catch people out
   * Bring together existing information into a more formal "user guide" 
or tutorial rather than the developer-focused documentation we have at 
the moment, perhaps with a screencast of how to use CKAN (JG can help 
with this - it would also be a good first task for whoever we get in as 
it will help them understand the good/bad parts of the current CKAN from 
a user perspective)

Cheers,

James

On 22/02/11 21:28, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've recently been speaking to some of the core CKAN developers and
> have suggested that the project could benefit from a more proactive
> approach to growing and strengthening its community of users. Rufus
> and I and others try to do as much as we can to tell people about the
> project, but I think it might arguably be time that we had a dedicated
> person to help to do this (and I for one am not able to do as much as
> I'd like, due to other commitments!).
>
> I've put together a few notes on what a dedicated CKAN community
> person might do, which are pasted below and at the following URL:
>
>    http://ckan.okfnpad.org/community
>
> What do people think? Good idea? Bad idea? Is the project ready for
> this? Should we hold off for a bit?
>
> If people think this is worth pursuing, I'd be most grateful for ideas
> on how an extra pair of hands could help support the project (all
> ideas - however big, small or outlandish - are most welcome!). If
> there is general support for this, and we can make a strong case for
> why this is needed, then I may try and speak to some people to see if
> there is any way we could get funding to bring on a dedicated 'user
> community' person.
>
> All the best,
>
> Jonathan
>
> ### CKAN Community Coordinator
>
> CKAN aims to be a key point of reference for people interested in
> working with open data and open content - from governmental or
> scientific open datasets, to bulk downloadable library catalogues, to
> big collections of public domain documents or legal texts.
>
> A crucial measure of its success will be having large numbers of users
> who use the service to help them to find and reuse open material. In
> this sense it aspires to be a 'Debian for data', and ultimately aims
> to provide users with basic tools for working with datasets in all
> kinds of clever, machine-assisted ways.
>
> We are currently thinking of how we can actively support the growth of
> a flourishing community of CKAN users, including (but not limited to):
> web/mobile developers, researchers, data journalists, scientists,
> librarians, data literate citizens, public servants, and NGOs.
>
> As the project is expanding, we are thinking of adding a dedicated
> 'community building' person to our core team of developers. The role
> of this person might include:
>
>    * Being a first point of contact for people interested in using CKAN
>    * Keeping a regular rhythm of conference calls / virtual meetings
> for CKAN users
>    * Helping to facilitate the i18n process - to help make CKAN
> available in many different languages around the world
>    * Helping to liaise with users who maintain an instance of CKAN, to
> help them to add more datasets, to understand their needs from the
> system and to advise them about how to engage with prospective users
> in their community
>    * To proactively gather information about feature requests or
> experiences from the user community, to be relayed to the developer
> team via the trac system
>    * To start to approach prospective users in different domains more
> systematically - and look at useful features that could be introduced
> to support working with content and data in different domains (e.g.
> for chemical datasets, for geospatial datasets, for legal texts, and
> so on)
>    * General CKAN evangelism - at events, on mailing lists, and talking
> talking to core stakeholders and potential users (who might use the
> software, or integrate it or make it interoperable with other systems)
>   * Start a regular CKAN announcement list for (approximately)
> bi-monthly project updates and major feature announcements
>    * Starting to map core stakeholders more systematically and making
> sure we are engaging with as many of them as possible - including
> identifying current spots where more could be done (e.g. mobile
> developers)
>    * Helping to define discrete 'micro-tasks' with respect to cleaning
> up, or working with datasets on CKAN
>    * Liaising with others in various open source and developer
> communities to make sure people know about the project
>
>