[OKFN-MENA] OKFestival 2014

Wed Mar 5 23:12:34 UTC 2014

Hey everyone,
Me again ;-)

I wanted to draw your attention to the Open Knowledge Festival scheduled
to happen between 15 and 17 July 2014 (http://2014.okfestival.org/).
Everyone can pitch a proposal for a session, see here:
http://2014.okfestival.org/programme/propose-a-session/ A few things:

I have been involved in the discussions around bringing more diversity
to the event. Thus for ex., sessions at OKFest do not need to be in English.

Methinks, we can pitch session proposals. Disclaimer: I'm on the
Programme Committee and unless you can invest in HUGE amounts of
chocolate, I am not easy to bribe. To avoid conflict of interest, each
Programme Team member will retain from voting on his/her own proposals.
The record set straight, I believe we could come up with (at least) one
or two such proposals.

Coming to Berlin: there will be travel bursaries which will be announced
soon. Everyone can apply, but I have no oversight whatsoever about the
attributions. Additionally, dealing with visa is on everyone's charge...

This might sound somewhat discouraging. But -- there is always a 'but'
-- last year, we ran quite offline-combined-with-online sessions, and it
was pretty cool. We managed to update several Wikipedia pages, think of
ways to analyze particular datasets with R, draft an Open Science
manifesto, finish and proofread translations of a nice Python-based
platform (PyBossa for those who know about it), etc.

Thus, I believe this can be a good way to have an OpenMENA session :-)
Here are a few tips for framing the proposal
(http://2014.okfestival.org/programme/session-tips/) and we're running a
hangout
(http://blog.okfn.org/2014/03/05/tips-tricks-a-hangout-for-okfestival-session-planners/)
where people can ask questions.

What do you think?
Nighty,
Rayna