[open-development] practical answers

Fri Sep 21 15:15:47 UTC 2012

HI Jonathan 

Thanks for your fast response. At the moment we have a GNU Free
documentation licence allowing people to freely copy, distribute and
multiply. See our terms and conditions at
http://practicalaction.org/answers-terms-and-conditions I know we have
talked about creative commons in the past so I will definitely revisit
that. I will also see if we can get the copyright into the site footer -
as I just struggled to find it myself!

The "data" that we produce is mainly in the form of technical briefs -
these are accessible pdfs with simple engineering solutions for people
who work in development. There are about 400 of them varying for yoghurt
making (as a way to diversify income as a cattle owner) which you can
see here http://practicalaction.org/yoghurt-incubator  to building a
micro hydro electric generating station.
http://practicalaction.org/micro-hydro-power-2

Increasingly we are trying to move away from pdf and also include videos
and audio files - which are more accessible to the people we are trying
to reach

Hope this gives you a better idea of what we are about

Rob Cartridge

Head of Practical Answers

Practical Action
T 01926 634556
M 07867 507069

Skype rcartridge-practicalactionuk

Twitter @RobCartridge

P.S. Have you seen our new technical brief on appropriate technologies
for baking?. Find out more at http://practicalaction.org/baking

From: okfn.jonathan.gray at gmail.com [mailto:okfn.jonathan.gray at gmail.com]
On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray
Sent: 21 September 2012 16:01
To: Robert Cartridge
Cc: open-development at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [open-development] practical answers

Welcome Robert!

Thanks very much for getting in touch. Before adopting any particular
metadata scheme to expose your information, it would be good to take the
more basic step of using an explicit "open license" to publish
information on your site.

You say that (some of) your website is "open source" - but it isn't
clear to me which bit? It would be good to display an open license -
such as the Creative Commons Attribution license or any others listed at
opendefinition.org/licenses - in the footer of your site, and make it
clear to what this applies (presumably everything by default?):

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

With regards to publishing data - it would be great to hear more about
what kind of data you publish. Any links to the data would help people
to think about what other kinds of metadata schemes you might look at.

All the best,

Jonathan

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Robert Cartridge
<rob.cartridge at practicalaction.org.uk> wrote:

Hi

I am looking for some help and advice. I' have perused your website but
not sure quite where I fit!  

I run the knowledge sharing service of the international development NGO
Practical Action. We have a series of websites attracting more than 1.5
million visitors per year, to download information about appropriate
technologies for poverty reduction.  

The main site is www.practicalanswers.org The information is free of
charge and "open source". We want to get it as far and wide as we can.
Increasingly we want to provide feeds to other websites. Most recently
we have had contact with the people at http://www.reegle.info/ who are
encouraging us to adopt their metadata scheme "linked open data" in
order to facilitate better sharing and collaboration. 

Before we go down this route we wanted to try and map whether there are
any other open metadata schemes which we should be aware of so that we
don't end up investing in a potential "beta max". As a non- techy
marketing person, I am looking for some help in finding my way through
this maze - can you point me in the right direction please?

Many thanks

Rob

Rob Cartridge

Head of Practical Answers

Practical Action
T 01926 634556
M 07867 507069

Skype rcartridge-practicalactionuk

Twitter @RobCartridge

P.S. Have you seen our new technical brief on appropriate technologies
for baking?. Find out more at http://practicalaction.org/baking

<http://www.practicalaction.org/> 

Practical Action uses technology to challenge poverty, working with poor
women and men around the world. www.practicalaction.org
<http://www.practicalaction.org/> 

  <http://www.practicalaction.org/> 

<http://www.practicalaction.org/> 	

Practical Action
The Schumacher Centre for Technology and Development, Bourton on
Dunsmore, Rugby, Warwickshire, UK, CV23 9QZ.
Practical Action is a charity registered in England and Wales, and a
company limited by guarantee in England no. 871954.
VAT Reg No. 880992476. Reg Charity No. 247257.

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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Head of Community
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg

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