[open-economics] [Discussion] Projects

Sun Feb 1 01:41:39 UTC 2015

Hi everybody,

My plans to restart this work group consists in calling back some of the
guys that were once involved in the group and get new people involved. This
is a noble cause and it is not an easy task to get people involved. I'm
sure after we get enough resources (well, mostly human for now), projects
will start to flow naturally.

Therefore, one of the best ways to get new people is by showing activity
and showing off great results. Unfortunately, we don't have enough
resources to fulfil some requests (for now, as far as I know) like this one
<http://discuss.okfn.org/t/idea-brainstorm/179/2>. Considering our lack of
resources, I believe our best bet is to try to get some of our old projects
updated and running.
Personally, I find the failed bank tracker the best fit because it is
simpler and I have already thought about what can we do about it
<http://discuss.okfn.org/t/project-failed-bank-tracker/155/1>. However,
apparently nobody is interested on that. Please let me know what you think
of my suggestions - either on the forums or by email.

I also found out that, previously, the group has tried to develop a theoretical
model of an oil contract
<http://openeconomics.net/2013/10/22/open-model-of-an-oil-contract/>. Seems
that project didn't go very far. Do you think we could revive it? Seems we
have this  crisis in that industry so it looks like a great opportunity.
It can be very troublesome, but if we have enough economists in the group,
I am pretty sure we can develop something very interesting, under CC
licenses, and prove it using open data. There are a lot of open groups that
can help us on that, like Open Oil. Open Data, Open Spending and Open
Government (just a few). The idea would be to try and explain how these
firms behave in their industry and what really counts when they define
their prices (or quantities). What are your thoughts?

I also thought about using open data to investigate about the effectiveness
of the austerity measures the European Union has implemented throughout
time, since 2008. What do you guys think?

I am running out of ideas for new projects. I would really appreciate your
help for the time being. Since I am still waiting to get access to our
social media channels (namely, our Twitter account)  and website, this is
the perfect time to develop a project and publish it, or even advertise it,
after I get access to the social media channels. How we will proceed in
regard to any project we decide to go for, we will discuss that in another
email. Let's focus on getting a project to get started and then we will
arrange our necessary conditions.
Feel free to brought to discuss ANY project you may have think of. Maybe
something in your daily job or something you can use to extend your
master's thesis/research paper.

-- 
Best Regards / Obrigado e com os melhores cumprimentos,
Gustavo
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