Wednesday 17th October, 16.30 CEST

Participants: (Doodle)

• Zara Rahman
• Christian Villum
• Neal Bastek
• Laura James
• Tom Alvarenga
• Charalampos Bratsas
• Anastasios Ventouris
• Rayna Stamboliyska
• Oleg Lavrovsky
• Heather Leson

Apologies (unable to attend):

• Prakash Neupane (Nepal)

• Daniel Dietrich (Germany)

• Julia Kloiber (Germany) – at Code for America summit

• Rufus Pollock (on holiday)

Agenda and meeting minutes

1. #topic Update on Actions from last call + introduction

• Introduction – new member of Local Groups team, Heather Leson!

• Better folder management of documents to share with International Council
  • website now updated, and one folder shared with you all, linked to from website page
  • Participants invited to look at above links and come back with questions, if any.

• Standard mail aliases for all Local Groups requested from sysadmin

• info@xx.okfn.org ; our new Technical Director, Nick Stenning, has advised against having this but would rather have @_____.okfn.org addresses standardised across community.

• Codes of Conduct signed by all Ambassadors (to roll out this/next week for Local Initiatives)

• Projects page from OKFN Central has been updated: https://okfn.org/projects/

• Forum suggestion – we started using Tenderappas a helpdesk, it can also be used as an online forum home. Should we follow up on this?
  • possibly integrating Forum functionality into the wikispace

• Community Resources page on the site now up

• Fundraising help – have liaised with James Hamilton, our new Development Director; his suggestion = a concept note hack session, bringing together group of 5-8 people including himself to look through concept notes, on a monthly basis.

2. #topic Other updates within Local Groups network

a. OKCon

• Representatives from 55 countries, including many Local Groups (picture)

• Feedback survey for participants

  • In general people had an awesome time, great meeting new and old faces etc.
  • Next year’s OKFestival – longer, festival, with heavy international community involvement. Updates / input to be sought soon!

a. Local Groups Community Fund

• The Local Groups Community Fund – administering 100-150 euros to groups, more details: https://okfn.org/local/community-resources/#local-groups-community-fund
  • How to decide who gets these resources / review process? Selection process document started here.
  • Lots of interest in this from the community + brainstorming
  • Need transparency when it comes to distributing the funds, perhaps making use of the wiki

c. Open Data Partnership for Development

• Project launched in collaboration with World Bank and the UK Open Data Institute, more details to focus on developing countries. Led by Heather Leson from Open Knowledge Foundation, more updates coming soon.

d. Data gathered from Ambassadors

• Asked to sign Codes of Conduct and fill in Workplan forms (sample here) outlining their scope of activity over next 12 months

• Biography and photo from each Ambassador – to be put online in country profiles

• #todo – same information from Local Initiatives and Chapters

3. #topic Input sought

a. Email addresses for community members (individuals)

• Domain suggestions? @okfn.org to be used going forward for paid staff members only. Suggestions:

  • @network.okfn.org
  • @local.okfn.org
  • @community.okfn.org
  • suggested that we have country specific domains, but that could possibly alienate working group and other community members
  • other suggestion from the community was @net.okfn.org

b. Communications channels with community

• #suggestion – a weekly community hangout, like ‘office hours’ where people are free to come and chat with Local Groups team / community members

• general positive support for something like this

• #suggestion – more use of IRC ?

• neutral response, not many alternative suggestions

• wiki came up again as a place for spontaneous connections

• #suggestion online skillshare sessions – eg. social media use, customising blog sites.

• yes, a good idea

c. Knowledge sharing within community

• #suggestion – reviving the wiki as the main community knowledge space [currently very out of date]

• Participants were generally in favor of this.

• Have to deal with the spam issue constructively.

• How to, for example, share information on transitioning from Initiative to Chapter / challenges facing Local Groups, lessons learned cross-network?

• mentioned by Finnish Local Group (Jaakko)

3. #topic Upcoming

• Upcoming events: Open Data Day, February 22nd 2014

  • Updates coming soon – anything planned?

  • Get it on the wiki and/or a public calendar

• International Council – any members you would recommend being added? Full list on website

• #suggestion having representation from each Local Initiative and particularly active Ambassadors ?

Wednesday 7th August, 16.30 CEST = 14.30 GMT+0 (see Doodle)

Participants: (Doodle)

1. Oleg Lavrovsky (Switzerland)
2. Everton Zanella (OKF Brazil)
3. Tomo Watanabe (Japan)
4. Laura James (OKF Central)
5. Rufus Pollock (OKF Central)
6. Julia Kloiber (OKF Germany)
7. Ventouris Anastasios (OKF Greece)
8. Christian Villum (OKF Central)
9. Zara Rahman (OKF Central)
10. Neal Bastek (OKF Central)
11. Primavera (OKF France)
12. Prakash Neupane(Nepal)

Apologies (unable to attend):

1. Daniel Dietrich (Germany)
2. Samuel Goeta (France)
3. Charalampos Bratsas (Greece)
4. 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

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