[open-development] what does open development mean to you?

Tue Aug 14 21:38:47 UTC 2012

Hello, as you know, open development is one of the core topics of this year's Open Knowledge Festival, and we've got some great sessions lined up - there'll be more info on the okfestival.org website shortly, including news of some special guests and a live link up with innovation hubs in Africa.

Even if you're not going along, we'd love for you to get involved. Please send us one sentence (or more than one if you're feeling lyrical) saying "what open development means to me". Either email them to this email list, or I'm happy for you to send them straight to me at sarah.johns at plan-international.org<mailto:sarah.johns at plan-international.org> or tweet to @geogrr. Please feel free to encourage other people you know to get involved too.
We plan to write the statements on index cards and display them during our sessions so that participants can add to them throughout the week. At the end of the Festival, we'll get them published in some way so they can be shared. It's a kind of crowd-sourcing of where open development is at in 2012.

To get you inspired, here's a couple that have already been sent in:

Ineke Buskens, GRACE: If I would have one sentence, it would be this one. "Open Development is a Freedom Song". If I would have more sentences it would be "Open Development is about people co-creating according to their own design, the spaces, ways and means that will evolve humanity into experiencing more life, liberty and happiness through the connecting power of ICT".

Matthew Smith, IDRC: To me open development means harnessing the power of sharing and cooperation over hoarding and competition to create a better future.
Tony Roberts, http://laptopburns.wordpress.com/about/ : To me open development means enabling the intended 'beneficiaries' of development (rather than technocrats) to be the authors, architects and artisans of any development activity.

It is not an API.

It is much more than a top-down technical fix of being technically open, and technically transparent.
To me open development requires commitment to a human process that is genuinely inclusive and collaborative
and which leaves people better able than before, to independently identify and realise any development that they have reason to value.

I look forward to finding out what open development means to you.

Kind regards,

Sarah
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-development/attachments/20120814/00b6c29f/attachment.html>