OKI providing tools to enhance OK-chapters local efforts

It is a suggested topic at the “Open Knowledge Network guidelines”, that is in consultation… But I think it is not matter to a simple “give feedback”, we need some discussion, to show to OKI what the OK-chapters need.


Trying to start discussion…

The most obvious is a common infrastructure… As @PJPauwels (of OK-BE chapter) showed,

  1. this discussion forum (provided they do not lose the e-mail standard interaction)

  2. website (the hosting and the template/Github sources with community participation)

  3. … I would add the Wiki, it have a rule as “official chapter’s governance register”… It is where a chapter can build (in auditing and collaborative way) all its formal documentation, like an official gazette. Of course, any other software, as CKAN with some adaptations to work with Google-Docs, or register/control by Github, will be also good to the task.

  4. … I would add also an abstract thing, “governance models” (reference models or general “templates”, with some “maturity levels” to match chapter’s life-cycles, and chapters choice to use more or less democratic mechanisms, etc.), to contractual clarity, for all internal members and all Open Knowledge Network… An OKI’s approved “menu of models”, for common “governance infrastructure”.

5*. … more tools?, more hosting space? online access to work in bigdata databases? “… there are a ton of other challenges that all from local groups to chapters face (…) Basically anything that can help a local group / ambassador / chapter / working group / lab focus on what matters and not on overhead would be amazing and a true incentive to startup a local group”, as Pieter say.

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Peter, can you move this to the original thread please? Open Knowledge Network guidelines consultation - give us your feedback!

BTW - wiki is not always a secure place, it’s actually quite easy to hack and really hard to maintain and update constantly as a tool (both of the technological side and the content side). The main one is not abandoned by OKI, it’s actually abandoned by the whole network. I suggest you should also read this paper about the challenges of using a wiki for Knowledge Management) . Peter, please explain what are your needs as a chapter, and let’s try to fit the right tool for it, and not be fixated on a specific tool…

Hi Mor,
((sorry, I created in separated topic because see my post as “pollution” at Network Guidelines… Confirm if you preffer to delete here, I can copy/paste to there, no problem!)).

I edited and removed the Wiki details in the post text, thanks the suggestion, please check if it is better.

The interesting thing in the topic-3 (now numerated) is not the Wiki, is to show that the chapters not need an ERP platform, at least in their early years or early maturing stages. They need solid and active community, so, on my opinion, the first years need a solid transition from informal to formal.

Organization grows in responsibility and support, when its core members (and core volunteers) participate with formal registration of activities, plans and decisions/agreements. When the organization opts to a democratic governance, and its community grows, it is difficult to preserve formality… So flexible tools (simple as Wiki) and reference-models (topic 4) are chapters needs.


PS: about Wiki problems, the main one, that cause the community abandon in Wikipedia and many others (I think OKFN-Wiki also), was the ugly editor, and solved in recent years by adoption of usual friendly VisualEditor. The rescue of lost images, and update to VisualEditor are perhaps the main and sufficient technical issue to maintain wiki.okfn.org.