[okfn-discuss] Our vision: Why, How and What for the Open Knowledge Foundation

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Jonathan Gray<jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Luis Villa<luis.villa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If Apache is the model maybe we should spend some time thinking about
>> what OKFN brings to the table for new projects- why would I want to
>> make my project part of OKFN?
>
> This is a really very useful question! :-)
>
> [snip]
>> What are OKFN's equivalents? How should OKFN strengthen/modify/etc.
>> those equivalents over the next five years?
>
> Further down the line I would hope that we could offer:

...

>  * Expertise (mainly via community, mailing lists, working groups,
> events, etc.)

It might be good to think about how to organize this so that new
projects feel that they are part of a bigger community, and so that
they understand how they fit in that community (I don't think I'd
really understood the relationship of OKFN and ODC until today, for
example, though maybe that is just because I'm not good at paying
attention ;)

>  * Legal structure? (E.g. via One Click Orgs, which we support -
> http://www.oneclickor.gs/)

Perfect! Had forgotten about them. (Such a broad spectrum of things
OKFN has fingers in...)

> Another major function that I think is important is 'clearing house'
> to try to strengthen communication/ties between various different
> communities that support open knowledge in its various forms (open
> government/PSI, civic hacker, free culture, CC, F/OSS, open access,
> open data, open science, public domain, OER, digital scholarship, data
> visualisation, data management, digital resources, ...). Hence events,
> working groups and so on.

I think in the event space in particular there is a lot of potential,
in part because you can tie things to locale and perhaps make an OKFN
event *the* event to go to if you're in the UK and interested in a
broad spectrum of open knowledge issues.

It'd be interesting to see a list of formal organizations (not just
informal groupings like you've listed above) that are active in the UK
and which might OKFN might formally reach out to to see if there is
interest in working together. OSI has considered (among other things)
moving in this direction, with open source software foundations like
Apache, GNOME, etc., becoming 'member organizations' of OSI and each
having some sort of formal representation in planning, organization,
etc. Perhaps OKFN could put together a similar 'advisory council' of
open-knowledge-related groups in the UK (or more broadly).

Luis