[iRail] Let's move together

Tue Nov 20 18:50:29 UTC 2012

Hi Christophe,

Thanks for your reply. Our communication will be: "iRail is the open
transport working group at OKFN Belgium". The problem was that iRail was
not only the geek for geek organisation, but also a lot of different
things (like Apps For Ghent organiser, iRail Summer of code, creator of
BeLaws) and some things are better with OKFN than with iRail.

The goal of this merge is to have a better focus for your geek
organisation ;)

Kind regards,

Pieter

On 11/20/2012 07:40 PM, C. Versieux wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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
>     <http://hello.iRail.be> moves to
>     transport.okfn.be <http://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 <tel:%2B32%20%280%29%20486%2F747122>
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> 
> 
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