[okfn-coord] Response from Ford on Weaving History: a negative

[Jonathan]

Hey,

Unfortunate about the Ford Foundation.

I'm going to try to look our for potential partners/funding sources for 
Weaving History at a Royal Historical Society/National Archives 
conference on digital resources in historical study. Also I wonder if 
Virginia Center for Digital History could be a good partner, if only to 
strengthen ties with, e.g. US curricula/educational objectives, which 
could increase interest of US grant-making bodies?

I'm currently looking at which are the best other grantmaking bodies to 
take this to.

Full list of pages with fundraising notes/materials etc. is at:

  http://eu0.okfn.org/board/wiki/Funding

Pages need to be merged to some extent and the whole lot could do with 
an update and a tidy. (This is on my list!)

As Rufus said Soren Auer is our main contact for European funding (he's 
focusing on FP7 research grants at the moment). He's mentioned forming 
partnerships between several organisations in different European 
countries and think he's got 'business' connections covered to some 
extent by his affiliation with 'Business Information Systems' at 
University of Leipzig... Next hurdle is in January 2008 I believe.

Out of interest, does anyone know anything about/has anyone had any 
contact with COMMUNIA, "The European Thematic Network on the Public 
Domain in the Digital Age"? They got funded back in the 2006 bids (just 
starting) for the eContentplus scheme:

  
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/projects/psi/communia/index_en.htm

Could be useful to keep in touch with them. I'm happy to write if no-one 
else has.

Best,

J.


Rufus Pollock wrote:
> Jo Walsh wrote:
>> dear Rufus, Jonny, all,
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 01:00:11PM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>>> Just received the Ford letter regarding Weaving History in which 
>>> they politely say no:
>>>
>>> Given that they receive around 40000 requests a year this isn't 
>>> perhaps very surprising and we can now move on to the next set of 
>>> possible funders (Sloan/Macarthur etc -- btw anyone in the EU/UK we 
>>> can think of?). With this stuff I think we've just got to keep trying.
>>
>> I am sorry to hear of this and the previous, and as you say we just
>> have to keep trying. Every year I hear about eContentPlus. 
>
> Absolutely -- I'm not particularly disheartened here as with this 
> stuff you just have to do the percentages ...
>
>> http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm 
>>
>> This year's CFP has just closed but it would be worth thinking about
>> next year. The application process is a *lot* of overhead but smaller
>> schemes may be upcoming. 
>
> We've kept an eye on this but the overhead you mention has put us off. 
> We've been talking with Soren Aurer (of DBPedia and now on advisory 
> council) about possible EU funding stuff.
>
>> As with all these things it helps to be part of a consortium, members
>> in several countries, with some academic and business representation. 
>> There may be matching funds constraints. There are Vast Sums available
>> through these channels but it could burn a lot of grantwriting energy.
>
> Any suggestions please say. I think this is the time to start burning 
> a bit of grantwriting energy (there are also significant economies of 
> scale ...). BTW there is a wiki page on the board wiki at:
>
> http://eu0.okfn.org/board/wiki/FundRaising
>
> (user: okfn password: plaworr9)
>
>> I notice Saul is involved in this series of workshops about open
>> source software for small "creative" business; 
>> http://nm-x.com/project/open-business and remember that "plundering
>> the public trust" workshop that he blogged about a while back.
>> What was it called again? I can't find it on the blog. 
>
> What this the consultation about the public service publisher?
>
> <http://blog.okfn.org/2007/03/26/response-to-ofcoms-public-service-publisher-consultation/> 
>
> <http://blog.okfn.org/2007/01/30/zoetropes-and-nickelodeons-a-response-to-ofcoms-public-service-publisher-proposal/> 
>
>
>> Hey, the blog is great! I like Francis' recent rant, i wrote a very
>
> I know its fantastic -- i always learn something new when someone else 
> (such as yourself of Francis) blog there!
>
>> similar one the same day. More Open Social Graph wet feet, huh?
>>
>> http://blog.okfn.org/2007/10/11/google-vs-facebook/
>> http://frot.org/devlog/2007/10/11/open-social-scene/
>
> Yeah, marketers will just love to have your social graph. Reminds me 
> of attention trust and 'owning your own clickstream so you can sell it 
> to advertisers' type stuff.
>
> ~rufus