Ex. 1. The Suffocated Victim – This was a favorite illustration of Mr. Love, the polyphonist. A large box or close cupboard is used indiscriminately, as it may be handy. The student will rap or kick the box apparently by accident. The voice will then utter a hoarse and subdued groan, apparently from the box or closet.

Student (pointing to the box with an air of astonishment) : “What is that ?
Voice: I won’t do so any more. I am nearly dead.
Student: Who are you ? How came you there ?
Voice: I only wanted to see what was going on. Let me out, do.
Student: But I don’t know who you are.
Voice: Oh yes, you do.
Student: Who are you ?
Voice: Your old schoolfellow, Tom. You know me.
Student: Why, he’s in Canada.
Voice (sharply): No he aint, he’s here; but be quick.
Student (opening the lid): Perhaps he’s come by the underground railroad ? Hallo !
Voice (not so muffled as described in direction): Now then, give us a hand.
Student (closing the lid or door sharply): No, I won’t.
Voice (as before): Have pity (Tom, or Jack, or Mr_____, as the case may be), or I shall be choked.
Student: I don’t believe you are what you say.
Voice : Why don’t you let me out and see before I am dead ?
Student {opening and shutting the lid or door and varying the voice accordingly): Dead ! not you. When did you leave Canada?
Voice: Last week. Oh ? I am choking.
Student : Shall I let him out ? {opening the door). There’s no one here.

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The following pages are not intended to make the young reader either a cheat or a trickster; there is nothing perhaps so utterly contemptible in every-day life as trickery and deceit, and we would caution our young friends not to cultivate a love of deception, which is only allowable in such feats of amusement, because it is in fact not deception at all, when everybody expects to be puzzled, and is only left to find out the mystery the best way he can.

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Ci vediamo al cafe del Chiostro del Bramante (http://chiostrodelbramante.it/) per parlare di open data ed conoscenza aperta, e per parlare di alcuni progetti attivi al momento.

Brevi presentazioni di ciò che sta succedendo (2 o 3 minuti) sono benvenute! Condividi questo evento, incontra altre persone interessate al mondo open data e scopri attività interessanti nella tua zona!

Velichka Dimitrova, Project Manager of Open Economics, presenterà i progetti su cui è attivo al momento il gruppo di lavoro per raccogliere suggerimenti e idee.

Maggiori informazioni: http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/Roma/699862/

Team meeting 14th May around 1.30 pm UK time. (12:30 UTC)

Headlines

• Strategy for ongoing calls still being considered, also management of events
• Meetups on Mon (Cambridge), Wed (Edinburgh) and Thu (Manchester) this week. If you have contacts in who’d like to meet the OKFN team, please invite them!
• Hackathon with DevCSI, Open Biblio, Open GLAM and Cultural Heritage 12-14th June – pass on these details for interested parties to join the party!

Participants

• Kat Braybrooke
• Lucy Chambers
• Marcus Dapp
• Velichka Dimitrova
• Laura James
• Sam Leon
• Naomi Lillie
• Laura Newman
• Joris Pekel
• Darwin Peltan
• Rufus Pollock
• Tom Rees
• Mark Wainwright

Apologies

• Daniel Dietrich (on his way to Geneva WSIS)

Agenda

• Histories of Open Knowledge Project (SL) – confirmed
• Who should attend all-hands meeting other than wolfpack? (LJ) – email LJ within next day or so if you have further ideas after this call. Who we actually invite other than core team will depend on venue & costs etc.
  • PMR (& Jenny Molloy?)
  • new paid team people since last all-hands (LJ can compile list)
  • Joris
  • Ira & David Raznick & MarkW (depending on where, may also make sense to get rest of ckan team along)
• One Europe response – LN to follow up

Updates & FAO (paste your notebook link in here name):

• Daniel Dietrich
• Naomi Lillie FAO: all, please promote Hackathon 12-14 June; anyone with contacts in Edinburgh, please promote #OpenDataEDB Meet-up this Wednesday
• Sam Leon
• Joris Pekel
• Laura Newman
• Kat Braybrooke FAO: mega focus on getting a bunch of essential OKFestival releases out to public this week, at FutureEverything Thurs/Fri in Manchester, so am a bit manic. Sorry in advance

Events – refer to spreadsheet

• Community-powered digital transformations in learning – too short notice
• Personal Democracy Forum, Brussels – LC invited but needs some desk time!
• Data UY – School of Data Journalism / Hacker Bus – LC to discuss with KB (perhaps one for OKFN_BR to pick up)
• Ogov – training course for open government officials in Spain (line 34, RGRP) – discuss with RP
• FOCAS, Aspen Institute, Colorado (line 30, RGRP) – discuss with RP
• New Media Forum Plenary Chamber, Brussels (line 26, RGRP) – discuss with RP
• Daniel added some events – discuss with DD
• STRATA – please get your proposals in now <- FAO CKAN TEAM
• Apps4Italy Award Ceremony and Event – http://www.apps4italy.org/shortlist/ – YourTopia Italia shortlisted – May 19 (http://blog.okfn.org/2012/05/10/launching-yourtopia-italia-progress-in-italy-defined-by-you/) – Also: http://www.festivaldellafelicita.it/doc/1/festival-della-felicit-2012-si-parte.htm – Giacomo Luchetta making a presentation about YourTopia – VD to discuss Romevisit with RP
• Digital Agenda Assembly: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/daa/ – IB invited, if anyone has experience talk to Ira; DP advises attendance; MD to go (back2back with W3C OD workshop)
• festival of happiness in Italy (VD), where we could make a presentation about Yourtopia – some top level people involved in research about mearing well-being will be there – a guy form the YourTopia team is based in the town where the event is organised so he would be able to cover that.
• Domain-specific events should be agreed by Project Manager and try to pay from paid projects where possible, process for Core is still to be determined

Questions

• Facebook – continue discussion on email
• Process for deciding events, and allocating budget and travel (still an open question – one for later meetings)
  • budget (should be project manager if it’s a specific domain and there’s a funded project, or Foundation Coord if it’s core)
  • is the event worthwhile? does it have good reputation? is it a senior key note type thing or an informal community event or a technical event? (this sort of question is a good one for our collective memory rather than a project manager)
  • who goes
• Notebook posts – also a question for ongoing discussion
  • is the process of writing them useful?
  • is the process of reading other people’s useful?
  • is there a better way to get uptodate on others’ news?

AOB

• 2nd (and final) call for OKFestival proposals to be released to public today/tomorrow – deadline early June – and those of you who are Guest Programme Planning leads have been notified in the past week – but let Kat know if have any questions about this process

Actions

• Ongoing actions under control

For those looking for yet another reason to join us for OKFestival in Helsinki this September, the OKFestival Core Organising Team is proud to announce the inspiring public outcomes of our unconventional First Call for Proposals – and to request your participation for our Second Call to share your ideas in Finland.

As we’ve noted previously, because OKFestival is the first event of its kind, combining Open Knowledge Conference and Open Government Data Camp together for a week-long celebration of action and collaboration, we decided to take a risk by opening up over 2/3 of the week’s programme to you as festival participants.

So last month, we released the First Call for Proposals, crossing our fingers expectantly as we did it. A few of us on the Core Organising Team (photo) were, admittedly, a tad worried – would global communities rise to the challenge? Or would we be left alone in cyberspace without even a programme to our name? We presented the festival to audiences at FREE CITY in Tallinn, at Re:Publica in Berlin and to local stakeholders in Finland. And we waited in anticipation.

In the end, we didn’t have to worry at all. The response to our First Call for Proposals was both overwhelming and encouraging. Open knowledge and data enthusiasts around the world did take the reins – and now, a month later, we have a groundbreaking, action-focused programme planned in co-operation with citizen teams of Guest Programme Planners all over the world. For a summary of the Open Knowledge Festival planning process in 14 slides, see our first Slideshare presentation here.

As you'll see above, the First Call for Proposals allowed the Core Organising Team to determine the most important themes and salient ideas, the subjects of which are highlighted through our 13 guest-organised Topic Streams of 2012:

1. Open Democracy and Citizen Movements
2. Open Government Data
3. Open Cities
4. Open Design, Hardware & Manufacturing
5. Open Cultural Heritage
6. Open Development
7. Open Research and Education
8. Open Geodata
9. Open Source Software
10. Data Journalism and Data Visualization
11. Gender / Diversity in Openness
12. Open Business and Corporate Data
13. Open Knowledge and Sustainability

The breadth of these topics is quite diverse - indeed, the variance is somewhat unprecedented for an event of this kind. Going through the topics above and learning more about how their Guest Programme Planners are determining the programming on the Public Planning Wiki, it's hard not to feel a sense of excitement about what's to come.

For the Second (and last!) Call for Proposals, we encourage ideas that further enrich each of these themes with new perspectives. We want your lightning talks, lectures, panel discussions, workshops, hackathons and all things in between. Let's fill Helsinki's streets with innovative new ideas, new collaborations between civil society and government, and new projects that provoke openness in unexpected ways.

It is our hope that together, these themes will illustrate the importance of diverse understandings within open knowledge and open data communities - and we look forward to seeing even more of you get involved in this inspiring process.

The Second Call for Proposals is here. Deadline for submission is June 1st - go to okfestival.org for details. And feel free to mix and remix the Slideshare presentation above for your own uses - it's meant to be shared!

The results of a lot of hard work from the CKAN team saw the light last week when CKAN version 1.7 was released. We’re excited about some of the changes, and it seems that some other people are too. Some highlights are mentioned below; the complete change list is here.

New ways to handle data

A major change is the improved DataStore, which was covered in this blog post, and related improvements to the data viewer, including a completely new map view:

The crucial innovation making this possible is the data API, which also introduces the possibility of automated tools for handling data, including querying and updating data without having to download and upload potentially large data files.

For data publishers: Organizations and analytics

Another significant area is the new Organization configuration for CKAN groups. When this is enabled, groups include both datasets and users, and can be used to control access permissions in a smoother way, so that, for example, a new user added to a group automatically has permission to edit the group’s datasets. This will significantly ease the workflow of collaborative projects hosted on a CKAN instance, or where a datahub is used by different publishing organisations.

CKAN 1.7 also includes new analytics to help gauge levels of interest and activity by keeping count of views and dowloads.

For data users: Change feeds and related items

Atom feeds let a user follow updates on datasets, groups, or other search terms that they are interested in. If you have a browser that handles Atom (such as Firefox) or another feed reader, you can see an example here. The Related Items extension gives a convenient way to link a dataset to other things – for example, a news article about it, an app that uses it, or a neat visualisation of the data.

Trying it out

CKAN 1.7 is live on the DataHub. To download and install your own copy, see the installation guide.

• All week
• In Manchester for Future Everything Thursday and Friday

Last Week

• In San Francisco for ONEF meeting
• Previous weeks: travelling in Brazil

This Week

• Future Everything
• DataHub, CKAN and Recline work including roadmap planning
• School of Data
• Various Reports and Proposals

A V A I L A B I L I T Y |

• Cambridge on Monday for #OpenDataCBG; London Tues-Wed; Manchester Thurs-Fri for FutureEverything (speaking at FABsummit about OKFestival and the Open Design Topic Stream within it)

F A O |

• The final deadline for OKFestival submission proposals is June 2nd; the thirteen 2012 festival Topic Streams have been published here and their Guest Programming Teams notified; the Call for Proposals is to be published Tuesday.
• Open Knowledge Drinks meetup in Manchester this Thursday; please share with contacts in the region!

L A S T (2) W E E K S | 30 April – 11th May 2012

OKFest

• Many hours/meetings/calls spent sorting, organising and finalising the 13 topic stream submissions; updating OKFestival website with new additions; finalising the June Call for Submissions; dialogues with Guest Programme Planners of each stream; answering public queries and doing introductions between Finns/international folk re: festival elements
• Created OKFestival slidedeck presentation to explain festival in 14 slides for public use / has gotten 375+ views on one week, yay!

Local Chapters

• OKFN DE Meetups in Berlin w Republica
• Updates / conversations / actions & tools made re OKFN:LOCAL Brasil, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, South Africa, Italy.

Core Meetings/ Collaborations

• Preparation and delivery of workshop/panel on May 2nd – “Hacking Open Data for Communities” with PublishWhatYouFund.org at Re:Publica. Details of our session on festival site here.
• Notified contacts in Berlin about our OKFN Meetups at Re:Publica on Wed, Thurs, Fri; Details on OKFN blog here.
• Created general OKFN Slidedeck for Core Team use w images/fonts etc attached in Open format; Helped Laura N use for Norway Open Data Portal representatives presentation
• Meetings in Berlin re: Open Design / Hardware / Fabrication stream at OKFestival, re: OKFN DE involvement, OKFestival funding;
• Created 1st informal/public ‘Open Knowledge Drinks‘ meetup for Rufus and I being in Manchester during FutureEverything; shared with networks/contacts

T H I S W E E K | 14-18 May 2012

OKFest

• Publish blog post + public posts + promo + form re: 2nd and last Call for Proposals
• Further organisation of Guest Programme Planners of the 13 Topic Streams
• Planning for OKFestival Core Organiser Sprint #2 in Helsinki early June
• Updating/adding to OKFestival website of all the elements of past few weeks planning; move to new server
• Finish preparing/learning Github/ making slidedeck for public workshop at FutureEverything festival in Manchester on OKFestival and Open Design Topic Stream as example of its collaborative approach

Local Chapters

• Publish blog post + updates re: conclusion of trip to Thessaloniki, Greece a few weeks ago for OKFN:LOCAL Greece panel series at Aristotle University
• Figure out strategy re potential connections within OKFN:LOCAL Eastern Europe and South America.
• Other OKFN:LOCAL Community work and planning/meetings will have to be postponed until next week, when it can finally become my main focus again after weeks of travel/catching up..

Core Meetings/ Collaborations

• Notify more contacts about 1st informal/public ‘Open Knowledge Drinks‘ meetup in Manchester during FutureEverything

FAO: all, please promote Hackathon 12-14 June; anyone with contacts in Edinburgh, please promote #OpenDataEDB Meet-up this Wednesday

Last weeks

• Open Biblio Community Coordination
  • Hackathon 12-14 June confirmed – see here for blog post and spread the word!
  • #OpenDataEDB arranged for 16th May
  • Blogged updates to site, inc new software:
    • BibServer Technical Development
    • BibJSON Updates
    • BiBServer features on BibSoup
• Foundation Administration
  • Finance – reconciliation, invoice processing+chasing, pay-run, donations spreadsheet, re-coding for VAT
  • Jobs – acknowledged applications and updated requirements, jobs page, spreadsheet and applicants

This week

• Open Biblio CC
  • #OpenDataEDB Meet-up on Wednesday
  • Promote Hackathon
  • Write-up Hackathon and latest project developments with external blogs
• FA
  • Finance – further re-coding for VAT, chase invoices
  • Jobs – acknowledge applications, update spreadsheet and applicants