[okfn-advisory] Advising Open Knowledge in 2015

Tue Jan 27 21:20:23 UTC 2015

On 27 January 2015 at 09:25, Laura James <lbjames at gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> I'm delighted to be joining the Advisory Council now that I've finished
> work at Open Knowledge.  The Council (primarily through conversations with
> individual members) was a valuable support whilst I co-led Open Knowledge
> with Rufus, for which many thanks to you all.
>

+1

As we start 2015 and what I imagine will be a time of change and evolution
> for the organisation, with a new ED coming in and continuing rapid
> development in the open data sector, I hope the Advisory Council can
> continue to be useful to Open Knowledge's leadership, both reactively and
> proactively.
>

I think this is a great point and that it would be great to both continue
the existing contribution and develop it somewhat further (both in terms of
use of this list and, for example, in terms of specific regular meetings).

> *Advisory Council members: *what do you think the Advisory Council and
> Open Knowledge should be doing in 2015? Are there issues or events that we
> should be paying attention to?
>

I'd really like to hear people's thoughts here.

> *Rufus:* what do you want and need from the Council this year? How can we
> most effectively help you?
>

I think I would frame this even more broadly as helping the organization
and helping e.g. the new ED. For me immediate thoughts are:

- Understanding and keeping in touch with a fast-evolving Open Knowledge
space. What issues are coming up, what opportunities (and threats) are
there to open knowledge as an area and to Open Knowledge the organization

- On specific policy issues it would be especially useful to get both
proactive and reactive input regarding whether we should have a position
and what it should be

- Developing effective governance and processes for running a growing (and
now large) international networked organization. In particular, I think
this is a year to really look at how we seek support for the overall scale
of the Open Knowledge community through more input from Chapters and Local
Groups and other formal constituents of the network. To put this more
concretely think of it like this: Open Knowledge International has approx
the same number of team members to support the overall Network as it has
2-3 years ago yet the Network is several times larger. This will only work
if we start having members of the Network take on more responsibility and
authority for running and developing the Network).

I note all of this is me personally thinking out loud not reflecting for
all my colleagues.

The Council has, of late, mostly been consulted as individuals and this
> email list has, perhaps, been underused.  Occasionally there's been a
> suggestion of meetings, or a chair. I think it's worth considering how we
> work, perhaps once we have an idea of what we want to do this year :)
>

I would really welcome this and especially having a chair who was able to
help proactively organize meetings and input.

Many thanks for starting this thread and for the thoughtful suggestions.

All the best,

Rufus

>
> Best regards,
>
> Laura
>
>
>
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-- 

*Rufus PollockFounder and President | skype: rufuspollock | @rufuspollock
<https://twitter.com/rufuspollock>Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/> - see
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