This blog post is part of our on-going Community series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Austria.

September was largely a transition period between the old and new board to facilitate the takeover of responsibilities. We also involved our team and the community in the strategic processes we started in August, through multiple feedback rounds and a team call.

The output is a strategic paper, outlining the goals of Open Knowledge Austria for our board period and acting as a common ground. We also had a round of meetings with current and possible partners, to introduce us and discuss future collaborations.

30369400190_fc49b0dd74_zImage credit: Spektral Coding Workshop by murdelta

Internally, we continued working on guidelines, e.g. community management, how to set up a new project, or organize an event. The aim of these guidelines is to give members a head start in their activities. Additionally, we started to better coordinate Social Media activities between our working groups, and now regularly run campaigns emphasizing current events and activities. As board members, we also continue to learn and attend webinars on topics related to NGO-activities.

jugend-hacktImage credit: Jugend hackt, Foto: Leonard Wolf (CC-BY 4.0)

Now a quick review of events and projects:

  • In October and November activities got a lot more outward looking, in the ramp-up to “Jugend Hackt” in Linz and with a strong start of “Offene Wahlen” (Open Elections).
  • Jugend hackt turned out to be a great experience for all involved, with 35 young participants hacking on a wide range of projects (Flickr Album).
  • After the kick-off event at Netzpolitischer Abend in Metalab Vienna, “Offene Wahlen” attracted contributors from the community who helped with the website, participated in formulating demands, and helped running a “Beginner’s Coding Workshop” in Graz (Flickr Album).
  • The Open Science Working Group had the best-visited meet-up so far, which was held in cooperation with OpenKnowledgeMaps.
  • Unfortunately, although the Austrian City Open Data Census garnered initial interest, we did not get it launched as planned. We hope to continue working on it with the community in the next year.

Oh, and not to forget: We also printed a lot of stickers with Open Science, Open Data, and Open Knowledge!

open-knowledge-austria-stickers

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