[okfn-coord] Leaving the Foundation, Loving Open Knowledge

Fri Aug 7 14:59:31 UTC 2009

Dear Saul,

It's been great to have your involvement on Exec Group these last
years -- thanks so much for your efforts -- and I'll make sure you're
moved officially into the emeritus category on the people page!

Best of luck with your new ventures and I'm delighted my paper on the
DQ market has proved to be of such practical value (btw if you want
the raw data used for it I've got it all on disk ...).

Regards,

Rufus

2009/8/7 Saul Albert <saul at theps.net>:
> Dear OKFN-coord,
>
> I've been increasingly inactive as an OKF board member since OKcon 2008,
> and my presence on the list is no longer of much use. I'm therefore
> resigning from any official involvement with OKF, but will remain a
> supporter and friend, and will be very happy to help out when I can.
>
> My favourite bits of okf-coordship were WSFII and OK-con 2005-2007, and
> a recent experience which really highlighted the value of open knowledge
> for me, which I'll share with you now.
>
> I was researching a business plan I'm writing for a project involving a
> new Directory Enquiries service, and was finding it incredibly
> difficult to get market data.
>
> Ofcom has a wealth of commissioned market research, but all industry
> sensitive information (size of market, proportion held by certain
> companies etc...) was all obscured or purposefully withheld from public
> reports.
>
> Additionally, the self-appointed industry body for the Directory
> Enquiries industry in the UK (118tracker) recently removed all the
> useful public content from their website, replacing it with a lure for
> consultancy commissions: not a possibility for a small start-up.
>
> Then after extensive googling, I found Rufus's article about the market
> failure of 118:
> http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/192_to_118.pdf
>
> I found most of the basic data I required in that document, and was able
> to extract and use it. No need to ask Rufus, negotiate about rights,
> deal with intermediaries or do anything other than write a footnote.
>
> The business venture I'm working on, should it succeed, will in fact be
> addressing the market failure analysed in Rufus's paper. This story has
> a nicely recursive motif, open knowledge becomes a means of expressing,
> describing and addressing economic problems on both macro (market
> failure) and micro (market obscurity) levels, without the need for any
> kind of totalising coordination.
>
> So - thanks to Rufus, and my thanks to all of you for continuing the
> campaign. I'm very glad to have worked with you all over the last few
> years.
>
> Over & out,
>
> Saul.
>
> --
> The People Speak   | 17-25 Cremer St.  London E2 8HD | http://theps.net
> studio +44 (0)20 71007915 | saul: +44 (0)7941 255210 | ms at theps.net
>
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>

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