[okfn-za] Ideas for an initial group project - input wanted!

[Carolina Ödman]

Hi everyone,

Sorry to jump onto the thread so late. Saturday sounds doable, as long as
little kids are welcome :) Rufus, are you in ZA?

There's also this guy from government who decided to go open source and 3
months of in-house development after being sent quotes in the tens of
millions and years of development to create an online heritage archive web
tool. I scanned the article I found about him in the local newspaper. Great
story. I've made it available here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2359293/HeritagePlatformArticle.jpg

I wanted to invite him to come and give us a talk followed by a Q&A on the
topic of how to make organisations (especially government) more aware of
the potential of open source tools. There's been a lot in the news recently
about how government uses consultants too much and it's too expensive...

Another quick thought below:

>> > 3) degrees of separation mind-mappish type thingy for 500 most
> >> > influential South Africans.
> >> > Type in two names, and thingy finds the shortest routes between the
> >> > two people (boards of directors, relatives, education, political
> >> > events, tenders).
> >> > Not "quite simple" as you requested but would be fascinating.
> >>
> >> So we need the SA companies register including directors. theyrule for
> >> South Africa [1]. Is the Companies Register available in machine
> >> readable format
> >
> > The companies register is pathetic. It only provides the name and
> > registration number of the company. There is a cost to finding out who
> the
> > directors are. This is a prime target for a FOI application - although
> it's
> > unlikely to be successful without costly litigation.
>
> Let's get the FoI presses cranking :-) Even if unsuccessful it could
> be the start of a nice campaign!


Wasn't Open Corporates busy with importing and cleaning up the SA companies
register data? I seem to remember that from the last HH meeting.

Heading to the google doc now for more ideas....

Cheers,

Carolina


-- 
twitter: @carolune
+27 82 302 8167 *new number*
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