[OKFN-MENA] (Good) News from the wider Open Knowledge community

Sat May 3 14:47:37 UTC 2014

Hi everyone,

A quick email to draw your attention to news from the Open Knowledge
community.

*Restructuring the Open Knowledge community*
I have already mentioned the word 'Ambassador' here (referring to
Abderahman for Morocco and to Tarek for Egypt). The whole network
structure has been a bit reworked, especially after a year of volunteer
work through the International Review Committee and suchlikes. There are
more and more people willing to represent the Open Knowledge Foundation
worldwide, which is good, but the drawback we've also increasingly
observed within the Int'l Review Committee is that there are more and
more people engaging into 'open washing' and keen to benefit from a
well-renowned label for their personal endeavours.

In order to cut down the number of such (pointless yet very
time-consuming) applications, the community coordinators after meaty
feedback from the Int'l Review Committee members (full disclosure: I am
one of them) decided to restructure the community. The outcome, after
feedback from the wider community through the mailing-list okfn-discuss,
is here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x3aw0pWhqVmKr3NlexuYDIXpTjiYAEn-MYDQ6Ixu4OU/edit
(3 pages 1/2)

*Community sessions*
There is a need to improve and nurture communication and exchanges
between community members. This is why the Community Sessions were
created: http://wiki.okfn.org/Community_Sessions

You can have a look at the April 2014 ones here:
http://wiki.okfn.org/Community_Session_Notes_-_April_2014

*OKFest 2014: Focus on the community*
This is a somewhat avant-première news :) I had suggested that this
year's OKFest encompasses a community-focused session in addition to the
Festival itself and to its fringe events. The community has grown
organically -- and impressively. Yet we don't have that many
opportunities to reconnect and spend more time chatting about our
achievements and challenges which is a pity given how rich the community
is.

The great news is that such a session will take place :) I have started
discussing the organizational matters with the community coordinators,
the idea being to have such a session on July 15 afternoon, right before
the official OKFest launch.

Will keep you posted. And you have an additional reason to come to
Berlin this summer ;)

Speak soon,
Rayna

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