This thread has been set up to provide a space for everyone to introduce themselves. As you find your way here and get settled in, we hope you’ll take a moment to say hi, let everyone know where you’re from, what you’re working on, and anything else you’d like to share.
I’ll start:
My name is Jamaica Jones - I work with Bob Gradeck (@rgradeck) at the University of Pittsburgh, where our team runs a CKAN portal providing access to open data shared by the City, the County, and other partners. I am currently funded through an NSF POSE Phase II award to support the CKAN ecosystem as a Community Coordinator.
I have worked in support of open knowledge initiatives for 20 years, getting my start in open science infrastructure before moving into federal policy work and then finding my way to open source community support, governance, and engagement. I have a particular interest in participatory and locally situated governance, and am also interested in the mutually-informing relationship between values and evaluation.
When I am not working, I enjoy soft-serve ice cream, public pools, and the overlooked, unsung, and yet nevertheless groundbreaking post-punk ingenuity of the B-52s.
As of right now (June 2026), I am one of the lead moderators of the CKAN category here in the OKFN forum. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out via DM or email (jaj160@pitt.edu).
I’m Joel, and I’ve been a member of the CKAN community since 2012!
We got into CKAN shortly after winning the NYCBigApps 3.0 in 2012 with NYCFacets, and we needed a system to store all the metadata/extrametadata we groomed, enriched and curated from NYC’s open data portal.
Since then, we’ve deployed close to 100 CKAN portals across the US!
When I’m not working, I maintain qsv (I don’t consider it work ), I collect Lego bust and helmet sets, and I contribute to several crates in the Rust ecosystem.
I’m Abdur Rahman, Data Engineer @ datHere and Product Owner for the CKAN Ecosystem Catalog.
Coincidentally, I first got connected to this community through the POSE Phase 1 workshop 3 years back, which is also where I met @patricio.delboca. Fast forward to Phase 2, and I’ve been working with the team at datHere alongside the folks at WPRDC to build out the Ecosystem Catalog. Pretty full-circle to now be here on this forum.
The Ecosystem Catalog brings CKAN-powered sites, extensions, tools, and organizations together in one searchable place. We currently have over 1,000 extensions and 740 sites indexed from around the globe, and the goal is to make it easy for anyone in the CKAN community to discover what’s out there and contribute their own.
Outside of work, I do calligraphy, brew coffee across as many methods as I can get my hands on, and have a growing interest in perfumes.
Hey Abdur Rahman! I hadn’t realized that it was a POSE Phase I workshop that first connected you - that is full-circle indeed! Thanks so much for all of your hard work behind the scenes of the Ecosystem Catalog, and for helping us get established here!
Hi all, I’m Ian and you’ll find me at our open developer meetings, on gitter and in the github issues and PRs.
I’ve been involved with the community since 2012 when I started working on open.canada.ca and I’ve been contributing to CKAN core and extension code since 2013.
Hi - I’m glad to be here - I’m Bob and work on the POSE initiative designed to strengthen the CKAN community. I’m at the University of Pittsburgh, where we’ve been using CKAN to host open data for 11 years.
So glad you’re here @wardi. We’ll be looking forward to hearing from you and @jqnatividad about Open Source Week at the UN (and any stray World Cup excitement you might have stumbled across while in NY/NJ).
At the time of writing this post, I’m integrating a geospatial CKAN extension with the new configurable storages API in CKAN 2.12 and opt-in features with the Geoconnex knowledge graph. I’m also building a neat integration testing suite and hope to share it too when ready.
Aside from work, I enjoy traveling and sports with family and friends especially spikeball and pickleball. I’m also building courses such as a beginner-friendly Typst course others have found useful (might be interesting to make a CKAN-related course), self-hosting open-source software, and reading self-help and digital privacy books and articles.
Hope to build software that has beneficial generational impact here while engaging with the community.
Hey Mueez! Welcome, and thanks so much for joining us! I am the CKAN category mod, so let me know if I can help you get settled in. We’d love to learn more about your extension when it’s ready for show and tell.
), I collect Lego bust and helmet sets, and I contribute to several crates in the Rust ecosystem.