[okfn-coord] Large phone bill from Advisory Board Member...

Ian Brown ian.brown at oii.ox.ac.uk
Sun Jan 10 12:29:35 UTC 2010 

I think in this circumstance it's reasonable to cover the whole mount, but as you say find some MUCH cheaper arrangement in future...

Cheers,
Ian.
--
http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/brown/

On 10 Jan 2010, at 12:23, Jonathan Gray wrote:

> Unfortunately Peter Suber, one of our Advisory Board Members, was
> charged $307.49 for dialling into our December Advisory Board meeting.
> I can confirm that he used a landline, and as far as I can tell this
> must just be the going rate for dialling internationally into a run of
> the mill UK conference call number.
> 
> We should probably start paying for a service whereby we can use local
> dial in numbers to prevent this sort of thing happening in future.
> Rufus and I thought we should probably offer Peter something in way of
> compensation. What do people think would be reasonable?
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Peter Suber <peter.suber at gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 1:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [okfn-advisory] Details and agenda for OKF Advisory Board
> conference call, Thursday 3rd December @ 1800 GMT
> To: Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>
> 
> 
> Hi Jonathan,
> My phone company charged me $307.49 for participating in the December
> 3 conference call.
> I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect that.
> Is there any way that OKF could help with some of bill?  If not, I
> understand.  I just thought I'd ask.
>     All the best,
>     Peter
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Please find below details for connecting to OKF Advisory Board
>> conference call on Thursday.
>> 
>> As requested, I've also drafted a summary of the OKF's recent
>> activities, and questions to guide discussion (also below). This is a
>> bit longer than I hoped, but a skim should give you a flavour of what
>> we've been up to and what we're looking for advice about!
>> 
>> Looking forward to it!
>> 
>> Jonathan
>> 
>> ## Connecting to call
>> 
>> To join the call, please dial in and then enter the Passcode when
>> prompted followed by the # key.
>> 
>> * When: Thursday 3rd December, 1800 GMT
>> * Passcode: 901854
>> * Telephone number:
>>   * UK only: 0844 84 84 84 0
>>   * Germany: 01805 123 0131
>>   * Everywhere else: +44 844 873 60 60 or +49 1803 002 063
>> 
>> Low cost evening rate via 0844 8 360 360 after 6pm.
>> 
>> ## Agenda
>> 
>> ### The Foundation and its community
>> 
>> The OKF (okfn.org) is a not-for-profit community-driven organisation
>> dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms, "from sonnets
>> to statistics, genes to geodata".
>> 
>> We have a wealth of projects and working groups, which can be seen here:
>> 
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwyg/3878224172/sizes/l/
>> http://okfn.org/projects
>> http://wiki.okfn.org/wg
>> 
>> I have provided a summary of the most important developments with
>> respect to these below.
>> 
>> We are currently working hard to make it easier to understand what the
>> OKF does, to make its operations more transparent and to make it
>> easier for people to get involved. We are reorganising its structure
>> and governance to reflect the fact that it is democratic, meritocratic
>> and, crucially, driven by representatives of the community it serves.
>> In the next few months we are planning to make a series of micro-short
>> films about different areas the OKF works in and why they matter.
>> 
>> Main general questions for Advisory Board:
>> 
>> * What should the OKF be focusing on?
>> * What can it do better?
>> * Any ideas for new opportunities?
>> * How can it encourage more people to get involved?
>> * Ideas for better publicity and communications?
>> 
>> ### CKAN, an open source registry of open data
>> 
>> CKAN (ckan.net) is one of the OKF's flagship projects. It is an open
>> source registry of open data and large collections of open content. It
>> aims to make it easier to find and reuse open material.
>> 
>> The UK Government recently decided to use the software for CKAN, the
>> OKF's open source registry of open data, to build data.gov.uk [1].
>> Though not yet launched, the new government site has received lots of
>> favourable media attention (partly in the wake of the US's data.gov).
>> We hope that in the near future the UK Government will authorise us to
>> publish the thousands of datasets they are listing on the main CKAN
>> site.
>> 
>> CKAN also contains the European Open Data Inventory, co-created with
>> the NGO EU Transparency and launched at a press conference in Brussels
>> [2]. We also launched a 'Linking Open Data' group for semantic web
>> data at a recent workshop in London [3]. We are currently creating a
>> German version of the site aimed at German open government data and
>> scientific datasets. We are also in discussion with several NGOs about
>> using CKAN for open data related to international development.
>> 
>> There are plenty of opportunities to use CKAN to document open
>> government data, open data in science, collections of open content and
>> public domain material. We are in touch with several groups about
>> using it, and are starting to advertise volunteer 'editorships' to
>> encourage people to get involved. We are testing a new 'Is It Open?'
>> service which will allow people to make publicly documented requests
>> asking if a given work or dataset is open.
>> 
>> Questions:
>> 
>> * What can we do to promote CKAN better (in different domains)?
>> * What can we do to improve it? (E.g. visualisation of tags, better
>> user profiles, ...)
>> * Ideas for specific people we could contact? (E.g. Scientific
>> organisations, Amazon Public Datasets, Google, ...?)
>> * Ideas for specific collections that we should create where there
>> might be demand? (E.g environmental data...)
>> 
>> [1] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/08/datagovuk-launched-and-its-using-ckan/
>> [2] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/05/11/european-open-data-summit/
>> [3] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/20/after-the-open-data-and-semantic-web-workshop/
>> 
>> ### Open Definition, defining the 'open' in open data, open content
>> and open services
>> 
>> The OKF aims to promote legal and technical guidance and standards for
>> making content, data and software services open.
>> 
>> Its most high profile success in this area is OKF Director Rufus
>> Pollock's 'Raw Data Now' meme which was taken up by Tim Berners-Lee,
>> who gave a TED talk on this topic (citing Rufus in his slides). This
>> has received lots of attention in the media and in the blogosphere.
>> Someone has kindly donated us RawDataNow.com, which we are planning to
>> set up with details on how and why to publish raw data [4].
>> 
>> Apart from that we have been continuing to work on OpenDefinition.org
>> - which we are currently in the process of revamping. Open Definition
>> includes definitions for 'openness' in content, data and services. We
>> are aiming to provide specific guidance for open data in science, as
>> well as for open government data (with input from Working Groups in
>> each area).
>> 
>> We recently authored a report on legal and technical aspects of making
>> data open, directed at international development data [5]. We are
>> currently starting to undertake a similar piece of work for the Open
>> Society Institute about open government data and the (older) freedom
>> of information movement.
>> 
>> * What can we do to better promote opendefinition.org?
>> * Are there specific people we should contact regarding third
>> parties adopting it as a standard?
>> * Ideas for how we might apply this work in new/emerging areas?
>> * Ideas for how we can improve documentation?
>> 
>> [4] http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2009-October/001710.html
>> [5] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/09/21/new-report-on-sharing-aid-information-is-now-open-for-comments/
>> 
>> ### Open Data Commons
>> 
>> OKF recently adopted the Open Data Commons legal tools for open data
>> (opendatacommons.org). These are legal tools, a bit like the Creative
>> Commons licenses, but specifically aimed at making data open. There is
>> a public domain legal tool (the PDDL) and a 'sharealike' style license
>> (the ODbL). Open Street Map is currently looking into using the ODbL.
>> Quite a number of open data projects have used them, including the
>> Guardian newspaper in the UK.
>> 
>> * What can we do to promote these tools effectively in different domains?
>> 
>> ### Where Does My Money Go?
>> 
>> 'Where Does My Money Go?' is project which analyses and visualises
>> information about UK public spending. It was a winner of the UK
>> Government's 'Show Us A Better Way' competition. We are currently
>> working on a prototype with funding from the Cabinet Office [6].
>> 
>> There has been lots of interest in the project, and we are currently
>> in discussion with the UK's Channel 4 about further funding. The next
>> stage is to have much more fine grained detail, more local
>> information, and more useful analysis. Ultimately we're interested in
>> porting this model to other countries.
>> 
>> [6] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/11/alpha-release-of-where-does-my-money-go-prototype/
>> 
>> ### Events: OKCon, workshops, COMMUNIA
>> 
>> We have been busy with several events.
>> 
>> In March we organised the EU funded 5th Communia Workshop (on "Public
>> Sector Content and Data"), for which we had UK Government Cabinet
>> Office minister as keynote, and talks from government departments,
>> NGOs and cultural heritage institutions across Europe [7]. We also had
>> our annual OKCon 2009 conference, which brought together open
>> knowledge users and advocates from different communities [8].
>> 
>> Last month we had a workshop on 'open data and the semantic web' which
>> was a major event for the UK Linked Data community [9]. We were
>> completely oversubscribed, and participants included the great and the
>> good from the UK semantic web community, as well plenty of people from
>> media and government. The BBC even came down to interview people! We
>> also had a small focused workshop on building a set of European public
>> domain calculators - to help find out which works are in the public
>> domain in a given jurisdiction [10].
>> 
>> We are currently organising OKCon 2010. We hope to have a big session
>> on open government data. Details on other events are at:
>> http://okfn.org/events
>> 
>> We are also a member of Communia, a European policy network for the
>> digital public domain. As such all advisory board members are eligible
>> to receive support to attend events. The next events are scheduled to
>> be in Luxembourg, Istanbul and Turin. Please let us know if any of you
>> would be interested in coming along to any of these events!
>> 
>> Questions:
>> 
>> * Any other ideas for workshops we should have?
>> * Ideas for sessions at OKCon 2010?
>> 
>> [7] http://communia-project.eu/ws05
>> [8] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/05/20/open-knowledge-conference-okcon-2009-post-event-information/
>> [9] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/20/after-the-open-data-and-semantic-web-workshop/
>> [10] http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/17/documentation-from-the-public-domain-calculators-meeting/
>> 
>> ### Other projects
>> 
>> We have lots of other projects, including:
>> 
>> * Open Shakespeare (complete works of Shakespeare in an open form
>> with associated material),
>> * Weaving History (exploring historical events using maps and timelines),
>> * Public Domain Works (registry of works in the public domain),
>> * Open Text Book (registry of open textbooks),
>> * Open Economics (economic data store plus basic graphing facilities)
>> 
>> More information can be found at:
>> 
>> http://okfn.org/projects
>> 
>> Thats all for now!
>> 
>> --
>> Jonathan Gray
>> 
>> Community Coordinator
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://www.okfn.org
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> okfn-advisory mailing list
>> okfn-advisory at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-advisory
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Jonathan Gray
> 
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://www.okfn.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> okfn-coord mailing list
> okfn-coord at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-coord

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