If you are interested in getting involved in Open Knowledge England we invite you to introduce yourself here. It can be as brief or as long as you wish. Suggested things to cover:
Nick Halliday
Happy to help in any way. Am pretty good at organising events and know quite a few people in central and local government. One of my big interests is data.
Ah, brilliant to have this here, I had to rush off after Wednesday’s meet up in London and didn’t really have time to talk to anyone.
So, my name’s Mathilde, I joined the forum earlier this week, got into open access/open science about a year ago. I’m coordinating a European research project at the University of Oxford after getting an MA in EU affairs (political science), and I spend a lot of my free time volunteering as a group facilitator for a youth organisation and as a translator for various projects. I’m still unsure how I can contribute to OKFN, but I guess I’ll find out as I become more familiar with what’s going on here!
Hello! My name is Maria Crosas and based in Birmingham. I just signed up some month ago and still looking how this place works and how can I help. I guess I’ll find out as I become more familiar as well. I am a journalist and gaining experience in data journalism and data visualisation .
A big welcome to all of you and great to hear you are interested.
@all: I have just created this topic suggesting 3 major areas where people can get involved with Open Knowledge England:
Please take a look and comment a) on what you think b) where you might like to contribute.
@nickmhalliday - great to have you on here! If you are interested, would be wonderful to have joj join the mini organizing group for London Meetups. Also take a look at the “Policy and Advocacy” group in the structuring proposal.
@MathPascal Mathilde great to meet you and delighted you got to come on Wednesday. Please take a look at the 3 areas proposal to get a sense of where you could contribute.
@mariacrosas great to hear from you and that you are based in Birmingham. Fantastic that you are looking to develop your data journalism skills. I assume you know about the Open Knowledge project http://schoolofdata.org/? If you were looking to contribute there are definite areas where data “storytelling” would be really useful.
@Yeba: great to meet you - and interestingly your about you was an “image” 
It would be fantastic to have yoru contribution, perhaps in helping promote and organize the next meetup. Also, have a look at the [areas proposal] and see what you think.
Hello! Yes, I know about the http://schoolofdata.org/, it’s great! I am still developing my skills but I’d be very happy to contribute on the Information to Insight (Storytelling): “Providing visualization and storytelling skills to support advocacy and other work”. It’s what enjoy doing the most and I’ve been working on lately. (Some work here: www.dinfografia.wordpress.com). Thanks!
Hi
Thanks for the response. Yep, it all sounds interesting. I am happy to start by helping out with organising the next London meetup on the 13th of April ( I have registered to attend) and then go from there. Let me know what you need me to do.
Apologies if the image thing happens again.
Hi everyone, I’m Javiera Atenas, I’m based in London and work at UCL but also I co-coordinate the Open Education Working Group http://education.okfn.org. Unfortunately I won’t be able to join you on the 13th as I will be in the Open Education Global Conference, but as mentioned to Joe and Mor I will be able participate remotely.
@Javiera_Atenas great to hear from you and you may want to check out:
I also recommend checking you get notifications from the forum and also “watching” the “England Category”. To do that visit here:
Then select the watching icon (highlighted in red):
Hello, my name is Lata, I came along to the talk at the beginning of April and was inspired to get involved. I am currently trying to be an intellectual property lawyer, after doing a Biomedical Sciences degree, but I am taking a some time out to consider a masters and gain some ground knowledge in IP and Data Protection.
I enjoy reading about IP and data, dabbled in science journalism and I’m a part-time Pilates Instructor. (Hence) I have always been an advocate for diversity in learning and taking a multidisciplinary approach to tackling policy issues. I guess I would be best suited for the research part of Policy and Advocacy, but I have about two months of free capacity so wouldn’t mind getting involved in anything really!
My name is Nora. I work in Secondary Education and am one of the Coordinators of the Leicester Open Schools Network, which is a group of staff across secondary ed in Leicester working towards promoting open practice in secondary schools, developing training around open practice for pupils and staff and ensuring that the permission to openly license granted by Leicester City Council is extended to Voluntary Aided Schools and Academies. I manage a blog as part of promoting and sharing the work of the project (www.oerschools.com) and would welcome your support through the form of contributions, comments and sharing our work with others.
@rufuspollock fyi… I just got this in the post; Design Rights Infringement Survey 2016 conducted on behalf of UK IPO; I guess the ‘anonymised summaries of data’ could be something to look out for.
@Lata useful to see - can i suggest you split this out as a new topic in the England section (I think there should be an option on your post here that allows you to move it out this way).
Hello!
I’m Rachael and I’m behind #HackOnWheels, the movement to create the first open source fully customizable wheelchair. It all started in Vienna with the help of Open Knowledge Austria 
I’m now developing the movement here in London and I’m super keen to connect with open hardware people here in the UK.
You can read about it here www.hackonwheels.org. Our next makeathon is on 16 July at the Machines Room in Bethnal Green and will focus on developing open source designs and an online library of open designs www.hackonwheels.org/events. It would be amazing if you could come!
If you’d like to know more or think you might be able to help with the project please email me!
Rachael Wallach
www.hackonwheels.org
rachael.wallach@hackonwheels.org
Hi Rachael and welcome! Our next meetup will be in September /cc @Yeba
