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

[Jonathan Gray]

Fantastic suggestions James! :-)

In order to give people an incentive to contribute, I'm going to
commit to coming back to review all input in detail in a week
(Wednesday 2nd March). So please see this as a glorious (and slowly
closing) window of opportunity to say what you'd like to be done with
respect to CKAN's community of users!

http://ckan.okfnpad.org/community

And for those of you who use Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/jwyg/status/40361752961097728

All the best,

Jonathan


On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 11:30 AM, James Gardner <james at 3aims.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

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

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