[okfn-discuss] Next steps on the Open Knowledge Tagline

[Aaron Wolf]

Truly not just because it was my suggestion… I still think the best of the
lot is "Empowering people by freeing ideas"

I really don't understand why that has been excluded from the running given
that it meets 100% of the guidelines, perhaps moreso than any other option.
I had expected that if anyone didn't like it as is, that variants of it
would be proposed. The most significant feature of it: the political
message, that this *is* about freedom, people, and power. It begs the
question of each action for the organization "does this work empower the
public?" and "will this help free ideas?" That's much better than the
implications of the current tagline which might be "after we open this
[Pandora's box?], we will see what changes it brings…"

My second choice is NO tagline.

Third: Open knowledge, open data, open minds



--
Aaron Wolf
wolftune.com


On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We’ve now had a good amount of time for everyone to contribute ideas re
> the tagline - I've personally contributed quite a few!
>
> We’ve also had a chance to get some advice and input from Johnson Banks
> who have been the professional advisors helping us with the logo, the
> narrative etc.
>
> First, off it is worth reiterating a few key points:
>
>
>    -
>
>    The tagline complements the narrative (the longer paragraph) and our
>    name - it will usually be found with our name/logo and e.g. on the front
>    page leads into the narrative
>    -
>
>    The tagline aims to be a succinct statement of our core purpose and
>    reason for being, the driver of our work. It is not especially supposed to
>    summarize who we are in terms of our structure (e.g. we don’t need it to
>    say “we’re a community” or “we’re global” etc)
>    -
>
>    Common taglines for well known entities tend to be very short. E.g.
>    Greenpeace - tagline is (I believe) “caring for the environment” or Nike’s
>    “Just Do It”. Ours could be a bit longer since people are likely less
>    familiar with who we are and the kind of area we work in but we still want
>    it to be reasonably short
>    -
>
>    The tagline is aimed to be meaningful (if not a fully explanatory
>    since it is so short) to people who aren’t already part of the core
>    community
>    -
>
>    We almost certainly want the tagline to work in conjunction with the
>    name, so assume it reads "Open Knowledge: [tagline] ". This means taglines
>    which incorporate either open or knowledge run the risk of being repetitive
>    e.g. imagine tagline was opening knowledge around the world. We’d then
>    have: “Open Knowledge: opening knowledge around the world” which doesn’t
>    read so well
>    -
>
>    It would be nice - but not essential - if the tagline allowed for
>    customization for specific activities e.g. see how X can change the world
>    can have X replaced by different things (such as “open science”)
>
>
> Based on all of these considerations, reviewing the options on the wiki
> <http://wiki.okfn.org/About_the_Open_Knowledge_brand/tagline_discussion>,
> we have produced a suggested shortlist of:
>
>
>    -
>
>    Open Knowledge: see how information can change the world
>    -
>
>    Open Knowledge: see how data can change the world
>    -
>
>    [Open Knowledge:] Open knowledge, open data, open minds (we can
>    possibly drop the Open Knowledge: prefix here since we have that as the
>    first two words0
>    -
>
>    [No Tagline] - given the narrative and logo we could not have a
>    designated tagline for the time being (and where we need something for e.g.
>    t-shirts or stickers we could pull things from the narrative e.g. “creating
>    power for the many, not the few”)
>
> Does this seem a reasonable set of options? Are there other options people
> would like to see considered?
>
> If this is a good list, we can move to the next step which would be to
> select the tagline from the shortlist.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
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