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

Sun Jan 10 13:39:49 UTC 2010

The provider was chosen (by me) without any awareness which countries
we needed to dial in from.  We want to move to a paid service that
offers toll free or local numbers in each country.  e.g.:
 http://www.communiqueconferencing.com/globalconferencing/
 http://www.freeconferencecall.com/prodfreeintl.asp
 http://calliflower.com/international_calling_numbers_conference_call_feature

There seems no easy way to compare price.

2010/1/10 Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com>:
> I definitely agree with Ian. This also speaks to Jordan's explicit
> (and I suspect, quite a few other Board members' implicit) concerns
> that those who volunteer their time to OKFN for free should not face
> any financial penalty for doing so.
>
> 2010/1/10 Ian Brown <ian.brown at oii.ox.ac.uk>:
>> 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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