[Wikimania-l] Fwd: [okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Festival update
FYI that the Open Knowledge Foundation is not having their annual conference this year; may be worth reaching out to the Open Knowledge community to have a track or space at Wikimania. -- Forwarded message -- From: Naomi Lillie naomi.lil...@okfn.org Date: Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 5:06 AM Subject: [okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Festival update To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list okfn-disc...@lists.okfn.org, Open Knowledge Foundation Local Coordinators Mailing List okfn-local-co...@lists.okfn.org, wg-co...@lists.okfn.org wg-co...@lists.okfn.org Hello all, I have bad news and good news to share: The bad news: Open Knowledge will not run a large international event in 2015 (OKFestival or OKConference) - boo! :-( The good news: Open Knowledge will be supporting our Local Groups in running events around the world in 2015 and looking to hold future large international events outside of Europe - yay! :-) Why isn’t Open Knowledge running an OKFestival in 2015? I’m very sorry for the disappointment I know this will cause - along with many of you, OKFest 2012 / OKCon 2013 / OKFestival 2014 were the highlights of my years since joining this organisation and network in 2011… But we’ve been thinking hard here at ‘OKI’ (meaning ‘Open Knowledge International’, the informal name for the organisation that supports Local Groups and Working Groups, and the rest of the network) and it really came down to asking ourselves ‘how can we best support our groups around the world?’ Point 1: representing an international network https://okfn.org/network/ Towards the end of last year, Rufus asked the question ‘where should the next OKFestival be held?’ and members of the community on the OKFN-Discuss mailing list https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss responded, as well as leaders of Working Groups and Local Groups who were specifically invited to share thoughts (see here for the original message https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2014-October/010627.html and search the archives https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/ for responses). A theme appeared in the answers: people don’t want another European event, unless other parts of the world are being seriously considered for future events. That means we can’t go ahead with ‘business as usual’, but need to rethink how we do things for our next event. It’s clear that, while the organisation seeks to support a global network of people passionate about open knowledge, historically we haven’t been very good at extending in-person support beyond Europe, despite the growing representation of areas of the globe through Local Groups, projects and staff hires. The School of Data http://schoolofdata.org/ has been a brilliant flagship for reaching beyond Europe, with Partnership for Open Data https://okfn.org/projects/partnership-for-open-data/ doing excellent work in broadening awareness and access of work already happening in the Global South, but generally the overall organisation’s efforts in running in-person events have been in Berlin, with the occasional foray into countries such as Switzerland, Finland and the UK (see our events page https://okfn.org/get-involved/events/ for more information). We want that to change, and are committed to exploring how we can enable that to happen for future events. Point 2: supporting the international network https://okfn.org/network/ Open Knowledge has arranged a fair few gatherings over the years, and enjoyed the partnerships with the Finnish and Swiss Chapters in running the 2012 and 2013 events respectively as well as liaising with the German Chapter over several years, but generally there hasn’t been much room for supporting events around the community network beyond some promotion (such as here http://okfncommunity.tumblr.com/, here http://blog.okfn.org/2014/12/10/a-round-up-of-open-knowledge-community-events-around-the-world/ and here https://twitter.com/okfn). Here at “OKI” we do our best to empower others to lead, and it’s pretty hard to lead when someone else takes all the attention! So, rather than effectively asking our Local Groups and Working Groups to compete with us if they want their own events (going up against Open Knowledge the organisation for scheduling, attendees and sponsorship), we want to step aside and encourage others to facilitate significant events that attract people from around the world to attend where they are located. Furthermore, this organisation has its own agenda, goals, strategy and vision - it clearly won’t be exactly the same as groups in the Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Asia, Australia and indeed the rest of Europe! Open Knowledge “International” doesn’t claim to represent the UK, we just happen to be (mostly) UK-based; however we recognise that being primarily in the UK brings bias and assumptions, and we need the network’s help to ensure other agendas and priorities are given centre-stage. Moving to the side-lines, to allow others to step
Re: [Wikimania-l] Fwd: [okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Festival update
Ha, I just sent Naomi a note about the same thing :) Cool! A nice perspective from sister communities would be interesting. Especially since they ate thinking so much about how to be a good distributed community, multilingual and less euro centric, c. In the same vein, has anyone reached out to OKFN about the call for submissions? Can't wait until July, Sam On Feb 4, 2015 9:00 AM, Ivan Martínez gala...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Luis, we will have a track devoted to Open projects. I will share in their list our Call for Submissions. Thanks for sharing! El feb 4, 2015 10:52 a.m., Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org escribió: FYI that the Open Knowledge Foundation is not having their annual conference this year; may be worth reaching out to the Open Knowledge community to have a track or space at Wikimania. -- Forwarded message -- From: Naomi Lillie naomi.lil...@okfn.org Date: Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 5:06 AM Subject: [okfn-discuss] Open Knowledge Festival update To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list okfn-disc...@lists.okfn.org, Open Knowledge Foundation Local Coordinators Mailing List okfn-local-co...@lists.okfn.org, wg-co...@lists.okfn.org wg-co...@lists.okfn.org Hello all, I have bad news and good news to share: The bad news: Open Knowledge will not run a large international event in 2015 (OKFestival or OKConference) - boo! :-( The good news: Open Knowledge will be supporting our Local Groups in running events around the world in 2015 and looking to hold future large international events outside of Europe - yay! :-) Why isn’t Open Knowledge running an OKFestival in 2015? I’m very sorry for the disappointment I know this will cause - along with many of you, OKFest 2012 / OKCon 2013 / OKFestival 2014 were the highlights of my years since joining this organisation and network in 2011… But we’ve been thinking hard here at ‘OKI’ (meaning ‘Open Knowledge International’, the informal name for the organisation that supports Local Groups and Working Groups, and the rest of the network) and it really came down to asking ourselves ‘how can we best support our groups around the world?’ Point 1: representing an international network https://okfn.org/network/ Towards the end of last year, Rufus asked the question ‘where should the next OKFestival be held?’ and members of the community on the OKFN-Discuss mailing list https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss responded, as well as leaders of Working Groups and Local Groups who were specifically invited to share thoughts (see here for the original message https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2014-October/010627.html and search the archives https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/ for responses). A theme appeared in the answers: people don’t want another European event, unless other parts of the world are being seriously considered for future events. That means we can’t go ahead with ‘business as usual’, but need to rethink how we do things for our next event. It’s clear that, while the organisation seeks to support a global network of people passionate about open knowledge, historically we haven’t been very good at extending in-person support beyond Europe, despite the growing representation of areas of the globe through Local Groups, projects and staff hires. The School of Data http://schoolofdata.org/ has been a brilliant flagship for reaching beyond Europe, with Partnership for Open Data https://okfn.org/projects/partnership-for-open-data/ doing excellent work in broadening awareness and access of work already happening in the Global South, but generally the overall organisation’s efforts in running in-person events have been in Berlin, with the occasional foray into countries such as Switzerland, Finland and the UK (see our events page https://okfn.org/get-involved/events/ for more information). We want that to change, and are committed to exploring how we can enable that to happen for future events. Point 2: supporting the international network https://okfn.org/network/ Open Knowledge has arranged a fair few gatherings over the years, and enjoyed the partnerships with the Finnish and Swiss Chapters in running the 2012 and 2013 events respectively as well as liaising with the German Chapter over several years, but generally there hasn’t been much room for supporting events around the community network beyond some promotion (such as here http://okfncommunity.tumblr.com/, here http://blog.okfn.org/2014/12/10/a-round-up-of-open-knowledge-community-events-around-the-world/ and here https://twitter.com/okfn). Here at “OKI” we do our best to empower others to lead, and it’s pretty hard to lead when someone else takes all the attention! So, rather than effectively asking our Local Groups and Working Groups to compete with us if they want their own events (going up against Open Knowledge the organisation for scheduling, attendees and
