[iRail] Let's move together

Tue Nov 20 18:40:37 UTC 2012

Merging both organizations seems obviously the best idea.

« Eendracht maakt macht »

The only negative point for me is the name.
I currently iRail a geek for geek organization and I am sure you will prove
me I am wrong.

Okfn does not reflect at all the objectives... Go in the streets and ask
people what they think what the acronym mean, you won't receive a lot of
correct answers.
IRail was good at this... (The only positive point about this name)

But the more important: I am 300% in favor of the merge even if that is in
2 years.
On Nov 20, 2012 7:29 PM, "Pieter Colpaert" <pieter at irail.be> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We have 2 issues, with 2 organisation that I am part of.
>
> 1. iRail
>
> iRail supports digital creativity concerning mobility. We are pretty
> good at that, but our name does not reflect this any longer. We should
> change our name in something that reflects our "open" approach to
> current problems (such as mobility, transparency, identity management,
> business modelling, front-end design and so on).
>
> 2. Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN)
>
> OKFN international is an organisation founded in 2004 which support open
> knowledge. OKFN Belgium, a local chapter, is an umbrella organisation
> for Belgian "open" and "free culture" initiatives. Amongst our working
> groups we have the organisers of the Apps For X events, we have Creative
> Commons Belgium and we have currently several possible upcoming working
> groups, such as: open education(al resources), data journalism and
> wikimedia. As another working group, for me, iRail is the open transport
> working group.
>
> Currently there are a lot of people (not at all "all") of iRail involved
> in OKFN, and a lot of projects of iRail make more sense under OKFN (for
> instance: The DataTank, Summer of code, BeLaws, and so on) rather than
> under an organisation which support digital creativity concerning mobility.
>
> A very simple solution for iRail and OKFN would be for us to merge. This
> is currently impossible from a legal perspective as both organisations
> are active in public tenders at this moment.
>
> One solution would be that from now on, all communication is going
> through OKFN. iRail become the "open transport" working group at OKFN.
> iRail's current people helping at Apps For Ghent become people
> volunteering at OKFN, not iRail, and our blog hello.iRail.be moves to
> transport.okfn.be. This also means Miet will not be working for iRail
> anymore, but for the open transport working group at OKFN. In one or two
> years we will be able to merge both organisation legally.
>
> What is your take on this? Feel free to reply both privately as publicly.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Pieter
>
> P.S.: At this moment we are paying for a bookkeeper twice, we have 2
> different bylaws, we have 2 different boards. For 2 organisations which
> have such an extensive synergy, this makes no sense at all.
> --
> iRail vzw/asbl
> +32 (0) 486/747122
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>
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