[open-science] Open Science and OKF at the White House this week

Tue Jun 18 23:50:52 UTC 2013

Hello everyone,

Along with at least a couple other people on this list, I have been invited
to the White House for the Champions of Change in Open Science event this
Thursday, <
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/07/seeking-outstanding-open-science-champions-change
>. I was invited to represent the Open Science Federation but will of
course have on my OKF lapel pin -- well if they existed, then I would wear
one!

Will anyone else be there who is officially from or affiliated with
OKF? Granted
this is a decidedly American event, and small because few in a massive
country can be invited, I thought maybe, per the recent data.gov CKAN
deployment and other Washington, DC - OKF connections.

In my conversations there -- I don't expect to give any remarks -- I want
to underline the contributions of this working group, of OKF and
connections between Open Science and other areas of Open Knowledge, and
finally the importance of the international Open Science community. This is
somewhat contrary the recognition of individual Americans for their
achievements, but I've been called worse than contrarian.

Tea leaves indicate WH awards are understandably political, e.g. likely to
focus on US federal grant recipients and not likely to represent the
breadth of the Open Science community, even in America. That's not a
complaint of course; it's their award! I will try to be grateful and also
not kick anyone in the shins too hard over being less than open as OKF, and
I define it.

I should restate my own OKF affiliations. The Advisory for this Open
Science Working Group has not taken many meetings, but I was and am happy
to volunteer for that. My general volunteerism with OKF extends back
roughly five years, and has included bits and pieces like improvements to
the OKF network of WordPress sites. We in the Open Science Federation share
access to our accounts, such as @openscience on Twitter, with people who
are also active with OKF, and our circles overlap significantly with this
list.

Here in the States, I am also active in open government and have often
introduced OKF code and projects at hackdays, and have co-organized OKF
meetups. Finally and more substantively, I recently began a stronger tie to
OKF by co-founding a local group in the US, which we started in earnest
only in later 2012. We are not only focused on Open Science, of course, but
here for example is a comment I left recently at PLOS on our support of the
OKF meetup they hosted
http://blogs.plos.org/tech/recipe-for-a-good-event/#comment-341.

We are a registered nonprofit organization of which I am the president, not
because I think that's representative of our cooperative efforts but
because legally, someone needs to be. We are currently pursuing formal
chapter status with OKF, but are not OKF's only American representatives.
There are a couple American OKF staff, a new Ambassador in Texas, and we
hope for more of that in addition to the national chapter.

Our first office is in Seattle, where later today a group of us will be
hacking at http://us.okfn.org to better represent our projects, and we're
also active at https://twitter.com/okfnus. BG

-- 
Brian Glanz
Director, Open Science Federation

office +1 206.289.0575
mobile +1 917.621.5429
twitter @brianglanz <https://twitter.com/brianglanz>
skype brian.glanz
google brian.glanz

*We are @openscience on Twitter <http://twitter.com/openscience>, an
account shared by our organizers.*
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