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

Sun Aug 9 21:39:45 UTC 2009

dear Saul,

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Saul Albert<saul at theps.net> wrote:
> 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.

I am standing down from the OSGeo board this year for similar reasons.
I would like to spend less time doing this sort of thing but more intensely.
There's no need to be in a titular part in order to get things done
and I hope we will see plenty of tangential participation from you :)

> My favourite bits of okf-coordship were WSFII and OK-con 2005-2007

I have such fond memories of WSFII. And anything seemed possible...

I would look forward to scaling up the conference a bit next year,
aiming for at least a couple of hundred people; as Soren suggested,
put on an "academic track" and make sure the all people working on
open access repositories, "open educational resources" get to hear
about that.

We could start to see more really open science data - cf the impact
that "Bad Science" may be having on the matter of open examination of
results of medical trials and studies; or the flaws in citation
metrics as a means of evaluation,
http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/how-myths-are-made/ mean we can
learn a lot better by seeing "data citation". Here, open data could
make quite an interesting difference. And we are being promised the
beginning "a flood" of open government data released in a "linked
data" oriented way.

So the scene next year will be quite different from the WSFII crowd of
louche young hackers, local currency organisers, free map obsessives,
development wireless geeks, artists and a few happy government data
wonks. But the people in it will be more directly powerful! These are
interesting times!

Much love, and looking forward to hearing about the eventual progress
of Directionless...

jo
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