Skip to content

2012

Newsletter February 2012

In this newsletter:

  • a wrap-up of the past Open Tea and announcement of the next one.
  • an update on international aid data networking
  • current developments on the IATI NGO working group

Open Tea

On December the 8th the Open for Change network had its first Open Tea at the Amlab in Amterdam, to look back at the past year and discuss where we will be heading in 2012.

Mark Tiele Westra from Akvo presented openaid.nl, an initiative that makes open data on Dutch development aid visualized and searchable.
Marijn Rijken from TNO informed  and invited us to participate on a research project on the effects of open data for the development sector.

We discussed the organization of the Open for Change network. Evident in the discussion was the important role the Open for Change network holds in connecting, exchanging and supporting open data initiatives and knowledge in the development sector. How this role should be filled in is something we are working on in 2012.

We want to thank the 1%CLUB, Akvo and TextToChange for hosting the open tea in the gorgeous Amlab, and hope to see you there again at the next Open Tea: March 8th, 15:00- 17:00 and after that Open drinks!

International networking

At various meet-ups at conferences in 2011, we discussed ways to strengthen the international network of open aid data activists.

In November, we submitted a proposal for a European Aid Data Network to the EuropeAid budget line of the European Commission, led by AidInfo in the UK, with Partos (NL), FORS (CZ), ACEP (PT), IGO (PL) and the Open Knowledge Foundation (UK). We hope to hear by early March whether we are invited to submit a full proposal.

In the meantime, AidInfo has asked Claudia Schwegmann of OpenAid.de to continue building out this emerging European network. We had a first conference call last Tuesday, and plan to have the next one on March 2nd.

To create joint channels of communication, we invite you all to:

  1. Join the open-development mailing list to discuss international open aid data: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-development
  2. Track our guide of open aid data-related events, and submit yours: http://lanyrd.com/guides/open-aid-data/

IATI and NGOs

The IATI NGO Working Group is a CSO-led forum that was created with the approval of the IATI Steering Committee to discuss the application of the IATI Standards to the work of CSOs and to present practical proposals on CSO-specific approaches to publication of IATI compatible data.

The CSO Working Group is co-chaired by Beris Gwynne, representing the International NGO Charter of Accountability Company, and Brian Tomlinson, representing the CSO Open Forum.

Both Partos and Open for Change are represented in the group, and we’re aiming to organise an “intervision meeting” for Dutch NGOs in March.

The next peer reference meeting is planned for beginning of March. The first general consultation will hopefully take place in April 2012. Read more on our blog!

Got news?

If you want to bring in subjects or interesting news for next newsletter, you are more than welcome: send your contributions to info@openforchange.info

  • in Ideas
  • 2 min read

Stable communities and the Suck Principle

../../../assets/posts/2b6ffe4744471450f8a98e8e4bf692ab_MD5.jpgsecretlonden123")

“For anyplace to stay cool it has to suck.” Dmytri Kleiner wrote up some interesting thoughts on making communities more continuous and stable. When a place becomes too cool, it becomes too crowded, and the regulars are replaced by a more transient crowd that has no deep bonds to the community of regulars. Referring to a quote by Yogi Berra, “ nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded “.Dmytri draws on his experience with 28C3, the latest Chaos Computer Congress, held yearly at the end of December, in Berlin, and proposes The Suck Principle:

Only places that suck can really have a continuous community, because if nothing about the place sucks, it will attract more and more people until it sucks because of crowding. So if you want a continuous, closely knit community, something about the venue or event must suck, your only choice is what should suck or how it should suck.

I think it’s a variation on what I regularly tell organisations who want to build an online platform around their mission: community is about exclusion, not about inclusion. It’s about constructing boundaries, whether enforced or self-selective.

Offline, physical location or dimensions are usually one of the barriers. Dmytri dismisses the option of relocation CCC, but my experience with for instance Web of Change at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island. off the West coast of British Columbia, is that “traversing the barrier to entry together” is a bonding experience in itself, creating community bonds that extend well beyond the few days that participants spend together.

Online, there usually is plenty of stuff that sucks. But little of it forms barriers to entry that double as “social objects”, around which participants can come together and bond, both with each other as well as with the social norms of the community you then enter.