[okfn-labs] where is the data - is labs / services interested?

Fri Oct 26 08:43:22 UTC 2012

Tom,

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 01:18:05PM +0100, Tom Rees wrote:
> One other product in our ecosystem of experiments and legacy things is
> http://getthedata.org/, which is a Q&A site with some voting power (based
> on OSQA). It never gained a great deal of traction. Clearly it's related,
> though, and we should understand why it never took off before trying
> another similar experiment.

Ack. I'd like to have some Q&A section in the future for ScoDa though. So
understanding why they fail might be crucial. One thing I think is
community.

> My $.02: Embedding a feature like this in a region-specific site (like
> africaopendata.org) will be more relevant to users and likely gain more
> traction than general-purpose global efforts like getthedata / isitopendata
> /etc. 

One of the ideas was to tightly couple it to the
Code4(kenya|africa|ghana|whatsoever) models AMI is spurring up now and
africaopendata.org

Michael

> 
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Michael Bauer <michael.bauer at okfn.org>wrote:
> 
> > Friedrich,
> >
> > To be honest I had an in depth look on what my society is doing and was
> > quite turned off by their system. Havend looked that much at froide though.
> > I agree that the system is very similar. Question is: will reinventing the
> > wheel take less time than force adapting an already existing one.
> >
> > Ad notifications: that would be the role of a moderator person - who needs
> > to be there anyhow to see whether requests have been followed up with.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 12:52:22PM +0200, Friedrich Lindenberg wrote:
> > > Hey,
> > >
> > > so help me understand how this is different. At the moment it seems to
> > > be a simple "post and idea" thing, which has little interactivity. In
> > > the medium term you'll want to extend it, to:
> > >
> > > a) Make it google-indexable so that people can find previous requests.
> > > b) Notify government officials when new requests come in
> > > c) Add voting so that people can express their interest in a dataset
> > > (i.e. it becomes a type of petition system).
> > >
> > > So, I agree that what you have now is a nice demo, but I wonder if
> > > there really isn't enough shared mass with existing FoI or Petitions
> > > systems to go from there, rather than reinventing the wheel?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > >  - Friedrich
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Michael Bauer <michael.bauer at okfn.org>
> > wrote:
> > > > Friedrich,
> > > >
> > > > Alaveteli and FrOI-DE are both more targetet towards FoI requests and
> > thus
> > > > a very different breed (IMO). isitopendata.org is a service before
> > unknown
> > > > to me and seems to target something different  - inquiries for terms
> > and
> > > > conditions for existing data. So I think there is a niche for it to
> > live
> > > > in. But I'd defer to these kind of services if the majority agrees
> > there is
> > > > such a thing that's useable.
> > > >
> > > > Michael
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 12:02:30PM +0200, Friedrich Lindenberg wrote:
> > > >> Hey Michael,
> > > >>
> > > >> I saw it when you posted it to twitter, it's a nice hack. My question
> > > >> is whether we really need to build a new technology for this, when we
> > > >> have both Alaveteli and OKFN's own FrOI-DE
> > > >> (https://github.com/stefanw/froide) and http://www.isitopendata.org/.
> > > >> Of course both of these would require some textual adaptations and
> > > >> perhaps a voting button, but that seems light-years simpler than
> > > >> starting from scratch.
> > > >>
> > > >> What do you think?
> > > >>
> > > >> - Friedrich
> > > >>
> > > >> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Michael Bauer <
> > michael.bauer at okfn.org> wrote:
> > > >> > All,
> > > >> >
> > > >> > While in tanzania I hacked together a little plattform called where
> > is the
> > > >> > data? that allows people to enter datasets they would want to be
> > released
> > > >> > by the governments. It was built in about 3-4h of hacking together
> > > >> > jekyll/bootstrap/recline and gdocs and is very minimal. It's up on
> > > >> > http://mihi-tr.github.com/whereisthedata-tz/ with some demo
> > requests.
> > > >> >
> > > >> > I demoed it to Justin Arenstein and he's very interested in making
> > this
> > > >> > part of africaopendata.org and the upcoming
> > code4(ghana|tanzania|kenya|africa)
> > > >> > programs. My aim now is to make it easily adaptable and then launch
> > this as
> > > >> > a set of micro plattforms. To succeed there needs to be one person
> > > >> > moderating the process in each country - e.q. having contact with
> > the Gov
> > > >> > and checking whenever datasets are released. It's net costs right
> > now are 0
> > > >> > + 4h of work.
> > > >> >
> > > >> > My question: Is the OKFN (OFKN-Labs/OKFN-Services) interested as
> > part of
> > > >> > this?
> > > >> > Michael
> > > >> >
> > > >> > --
> > > >> > Data Wrangler with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN.org)
> > > >> > GPG/PGP key: http://tentacleriot.eu/mihi.asc
> > > >> > Twitter: @mihi_tr Skype: mihi_tr
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Data Wrangler with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN.org)
> > > > GPG/PGP key: http://tentacleriot.eu/mihi.asc
> > > > Twitter: @mihi_tr Skype: mihi_tr
> >
> > --
> > Data Wrangler with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN.org)
> > GPG/PGP key: http://tentacleriot.eu/mihi.asc
> > Twitter: @mihi_tr Skype: mihi_tr
> >
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> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tom Rees
> Technical Lead
> Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://okfn.org

-- 
Data Wrangler with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN.org)
GPG/PGP key: http://tentacleriot.eu/mihi.asc
Twitter: @mihi_tr Skype: mihi_tr