Open Economics website improvements

Hello all,

I’m here writing to ask for @rufuspollock’s attention and time, but this thread will/should be kept open for others to give their feedback and suggestions about the open economics website.

I believe it is crucial to change the website’s layout to something more informal and less close to those colleges over there, in the UK. I understand their importance to the progress of the group so far, but I believe it is time to move on to a different approach.
I’m suggesting to pass most of the content related with colleges to a thank you page, although I am not sure if the Foundation’s logo should be kept - Are they still collaborating/supporting OK?

What do you think?

@gsilvapt first definitely fine to rework the website and +1 to making it more informal.

I don’t quite understand this. What content is there related to “colleges”?

Thanks! I can propose something more concrete if you wish to have a look before changing it.

The top photos are fine, even though they are clearly inside class rooms and auditoriums, but the bottom logos seem connected to CIPIL (Cambridge) and Alfred P. Sloan. Even in the about pages, it sounds that the group is based in Cambridge University. And they probably were in past! For now, I believe we have no geographical foundation. We are an online group. Also, I am not very enthusiastic about a “Advisory Panel” or a public “Members” list. It sounds very formal.

The new project focuses in establishing standards for open economic data, implying a place to find a lot of economic data (open, free and in an universal format like JSON and/or CSV) and, of course, to make economic data open. This last step is the hardest, although it might be possible to achieve in the long run with small projects like Econ Factbook that can become huge for the group’s purpose. To achieve any of these objectives, we need to work hard on several fronts and we have to give an example to other academics, providing excellent works if possible. Up until now, it seems they managed to have a list of relevant publications. I’m not sure if we can keep up with those.

Nevertheless, it would be extremely positive if we could keep a regular publication through the blog about researches done with open (economic) data, to show how much countries and companies have improved once they adopted open principles, and so on.

These are basically my ideas. Once again, I can try to sketch something and propose to you and the group to see if everyone is in favor of such changes.