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

Mon Jun 9 16:57:17 UTC 2014

I think I chipped in at the time you suggested this – I think “empowering people by freeing ideas” is a fantastic strap line.

From my understanding of the theory of change behind much open knowledge work one of the key arguments for openness is increasing the possibility and probability ideas and knowledge will be accessible to a wider range of people allowing new ideas to develop. This seems to speak very clearly to the argument often used to advocate for openness in government in relation to stimulating innovation.

My penneth worth,

Duncan
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From: okfn-discuss [mailto:okfn-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Wolf
Sent: 09 June 2014 17:02
To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list
Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] Next steps on the Open Knowledge Tagline

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<http://wolftune.com/>

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