[open-government] We've reached 500 members - what next?

[Tim McNamara]

Thanks for raising these points Paul.

I guess the problem (or benefit) of working in the government arena rather
than a scientific or academic discipline is that its data and information
spans all types:: geospatial, unstructured text, databases, paper records
and more.

Another potential issue is that people's local political situations mean
that cross-border collaboration and communication can be difficult. Still,
the large numbers of members here demonstrates that people feel it is
valuable.

My initial thinking was that we as a group should aim to get runs on the
board with some small pieces of work (apologies for the cricket analogy ;).
My assumptions are that we would need to work towards peoples' interests,
even if it might be more strategic to work towards principles or goals.


On 3 June 2011 00:21, Uhlir, Paul <PUhlir at nas.edu> wrote:

>   This is good to know, Tim. Given the large list of no doubt
> knowledgeable participants, I think that solicitation of ideas for goals,
> activities and subgroups is a potentially useful exercise, if there is
> enough time to manage new ones. Some obvious examples of possible topics
> would be focusing on types of info (text, databases, statistics,
> images/visualizations, audio, etc), info functions (e.g.,
> citations/metadata/rights management, etc), sectors (e.g.,
> geospatial/health/human rights, etc), or geographic (e.g.,
> regions/countries). There may be problems with some (many) of these topics
> and redundancies with other specialized groups, but it's worth exploring.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> *Paul F. Uhlir, J.D.*
>
> Director, NRC Board on Research Data and Information, and
>
>   IAP Program on Digital Knowledge Resources and Infrastructure in
> Developing Countries
>
> National Academy of Sciences, Keck-511
>
> 500 Fifth Street NW
>
> Washington, DC 20001
>
> USA
>
> Tel. + 1 202 334 1531
>
> Fax + 1 202 334 2231
>
> Email: puhlir at nas.edu
>
> Web: http://www.nationalacademies.org/brdi
>
> Web: http://www.interacademies.net/CMS/Programmes/4704.aspx
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org [
> open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Tim McNamara [
> paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 01, 2011 10:12 PM
> *To:* open-government at lists.okfn.org
> *Subject:* [open-government] We've reached 500 members - what next?
>
>  I've just checked this list's administration page, and the group's
> membership count has reached 508. Amazing.
>
>  I would like to make sure that we're ensuring people have options to
> participate in activities other than communicating amongst each other.
> Noting that we're the open government working group, let's make sure that if
> there are people who would like jobs to do that they have an opportunity to
> do so.
>
>  Does anyone have any views on:
>
>   - what the goals of this community are or should be?
>  - what kinds of activities we could or should undertake?
>  - whether a smaller group should be formed from within this community to
> do activities, and allow the mailing list to be for broader communication?
>
>  I am very keen to host a teleconference over Skype for anyone interested.
>
>
>
> Tim McNamara
> Professional \\  paperlessprojects.com
> Personal \\  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
> timmcnamara.co.nz
>
>
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