International Council meeting agenda – Weds 7th August
August 8, 2013 in Meeting Notes
Wednesday 7th August, 16.30 CEST = 14.30 GMT+0 (see Doodle)
Participants: (Doodle)
- Oleg Lavrovsky (Switzerland)
- Everton Zanella (OKF Brazil)
- Tomo Watanabe (Japan)
- Laura James (OKF Central)
- Rufus Pollock (OKF Central)
- Julia Kloiber (OKF Germany)
- Ventouris Anastasios (OKF Greece)
- Christian Villum (OKF Central)
- Zara Rahman (OKF Central)
- Neal Bastek (OKF Central)
- Primavera (OKF France)
- Prakash Neupane(Nepal)
Apologies (unable to attend):
- Daniel Dietrich (Germany)
- Samuel Goeta (France)
- Charalampos Bratsas (Greece)
- Alberto Abella (OKF Spain)
Channel:
[1] IRC – freenode – #okfn-int (http://webchat.freenode.net/ if you don’t use an IRC client)
[2] Skype as backup
Agenda and meeting minutes
1. #topic State of world update following Summit
a. General
- Suggestion from previous call to create a simple spreadsheet of Local Coordinators contact details; have compiled addresses from Local-Coords list into a spreadsheet, privacy concerns though – we need to check with members if they would like their email addresses to appear on this [a]list (to be available to other local coords only, not public)
- Idea to set up email alias’ for each country, forwarding to relevant private emails (avoids privacy issue) – current examples, info@br.okfn.org
- Useful to include links to each of their websites
- Getting the International Council more involved in governance decisions; how best to do this?
- Sharing documents for your comments; is this efficient?
- No thanks to Trello, yes to well-organized folders in G Docs/Drive – to share a folder of all documents for the International Council
- +1 to having a public page with links to appropriate Google Docs (need to be careful with permissions for internal documents here)
- Also some reluctance towards Google products – Everton to put together document outlining pros/cons of using Google Docs, to discuss at next meeting.
- Set up local-coords-alerts
- Polls for quick input on decisions?
- Good idea- doesn’t require much time from Council members – quick and easy polls, which refer back to longer documents if people have time/interest
- International Council Trello Board
- -1 : too many Trello Boards already
- Challenges of growing the network
- Creating Codes of Conduct/ MoU’s for incoming Ambassadors
- Comments on this solicited from International Council – thanks!
- Making review procedure more rigorous [see below]
b. Review Committee
- Changes proposed to Ambassador review process following summit (see next section)
c. Projects & Outreach Committee
- How to get started?
- Which projects are out there at the moment? These project page links:
- https://okfn.org/projects/ –
- http://okfn.de/projects/
- http://br.okfn.org/projetos
- http://gr.okfn.org/blog/applications/
- Would help a lot if all local groups had up to date project pages – then, a centralised page of the projects could be built
- Open Data Census updating will be coming up
- Any other projects to rally around?
- Fundraising mentioned as a key point for projects – to be discussed further on the Projects discussion list
- Which projects are out there at the moment? These project page links:
d. Mentoring Committee
- #suggestion Setting up a Mentorship scheme – interest?
- Pairing up experienced members of the community to less experienced ones
- Yes- Local Groups team to look into this further, together with Mentorship Committee
- See also: “Regular hangouts per region” (just one happened so far between people in America continent)
- Really good experience reported from Everton on the first Transamerican hangout a couple of weeks back, although only two attended. They will try to do more of those.
- Hangouts to be recorded and shared online (can then be a standing resource)
- Prakash from Nepal and Tomo from Japan to organise an Asia hangout
e. Steering Committee
- Input welcomed on shared documents, but the Steering Committee have not yet been called upon
2.. #topic Ambassador scheme changes
a. Country Ambassador scheme
- Main change: to make the most of our own networks/contacts as a ‘first review’ , thanks all for your comments.
- Please see Ambassador Applicants sheet and comment if you know people as a first review
- Ambassador role – gathering community, or spreading the word of open knowledge? Potentially two different roles here, both skillsets needed within a Local Group.
- Prospects Community also launched- Local Groups team to update the website with details of this.
- Idea – that all Ambassador applicants should first pass through the Prospects Community?
b. City/State Ambassador scheme
- Taking advantage of Rufus’ visit there in order to pilot a scheme of having City/State Ambassadors.
- Allowing approved Local Initiatives to appoint their own City/State Ambassadors, in country
- How to organise discussion lists?
- Allowing for specialist discussions and encourage local/regional activity while remaining centralised – eg. one discussion list for the whole of Brazil, or one per state as well as the national one?
3. #topic Knowledge sharing between Local Groups
- #idea: Regular skillshare sessions – eg. Social Media, Volunteer Engagement, via Google Hangout, open to all in the community
- #idea: Mentorship scheme
- Regional hangouts – happening already
4. #topic Showcasing Local Groups activity better to the world
- Creating a Local Groups blog – +1
- Similar to planet.okfn.org but focus only on Local Groups sites – and perhaps layout similar to blog.okfn.org rather than long lists of blogs
- Good example to check out: Wikimedia Foundation Central blog, who sometimes post the same blogs in two or more languageshttp://blog.wikimedia.org/
- paper.li to gather tweets from the Local Groups:
- paper.li is an automated curator of twitter posts. We’ve set this one up to curate all of the local group social media accounts.
- Other ideas?
- An official OKFN forum with a General topic with global issues and a topic for each country, to let countries showcase their projects and let other users comment and discuss easier – – Anastasios to follow up with more detailed suggestions
- Creating a map to show what topics Local Groups are working on – this would need your input
- Encouraging LGs to keep website updated with current events/activities