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

Tue Jun 17 13:48:05 UTC 2014

I'll be *this* bold (and it's totally honest!). I *love *the Public Domain
review! And with the new logo and tagline and all this discussion, I
*literally* forgot that the PDR was an OK project. I actually was trying to
remember if OK had anything to do with culture and art or if it was a false
impression.

If I could, I'd propose a plain old *veto* of the "See how data" tagline.
I'm honestly thinking like "holy moly, how could I forget the PDR!" But the
whole rebranding seems to have nothing to do with it and seems to be a
totally different organization…

I know you could read a lot of different emotion behind this text, but I'm
truly more surprised and baffled than anything else.

Sincerely,
Aaron

--
Aaron Wolf
wolftune.com

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 4:48 AM, Andrew Gray <andrew at generalist.org.uk>
wrote:

> On 16 June 2014 17:31, Aaron Wolf <wolftune at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks, Rufus. I agree. The concern was initially about potential shift
> in
> > focus and concern about inclusion of the community in the decisions.
> >
> > To be clear, I always thought it was great that lots of Open Data stuff
> was
> > happening, but I saw "Open Knowledge" as basically including "Free
> Culture",
> > and when I think of stuff cultural works like music and art, I see zero
> > place for that in "See how data can change the world". And I think that
> will
> > remain the case for everyone who ever sees that tagline. Nobody will ever
> > see that tagline and think OK has anything directly to do with free/open
> > art.
>
> Piping up from the background... I felt somewhat uncomfortable about
> the "data can change the world" idea, and I think this is a key point.
> It's certainly true to say "yes, of course, it encompasses cultural
> things as well, regardless of the tagline"... but that doesn't help
> someone who isn't familiar, doesn't already know that silent footnote,
> and may well be put off engaging by the emphasis on something that, to
> them, seems tangential.
>
> To me, one of the best and most interesting things OKFN has done is
> the Public Domain Review - which is a thousand miles from data.
> Likewise, the whole OpenGLAM work has been very much content-oriented
> (though data work plays a part). Neither of these are what you'd
> expect from "see how data can change the world"
>
> To go back to Rufus' comparisons, this is a bit like Greenpeace
> deciding its tagline should be "caring for the whales". I mean, yes,
> it's certainly correct, but it might also be a bit misleading ;-)
>
> (Obligatory preference: "Open knowledge: open data, open minds",
> without repetition, is quite neat at bridging the full range)
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
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