[okfn-advisory] Reminder (NOW): OKF Advisory Board conference call, Thursday 3rd December @ 1800 GMT

Thu Dec 3 19:01:39 UTC 2009

I'm sorry I couldn't join you all - I'm in a cascading series of 
meetings today in New York. Hope it goes well and looking forward to the 
notes.

Rufus Pollock wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> Just a final reminder of Advisory Board meeting today which starts in
> just over five minutes!
> 
> I look forward to speaking with people then.
> 
> 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
> 
> If anyone has problems please call me directly on +44 7795 176 976 or email me.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rufus Pollock
> 
> 2009/12/1 Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>:
>> 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
> 

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