The Open Knowledge Foundation international community has grown tremendously over the past decade. Since 2004 people have come together in over 46 countries (and growing!) to do amazing things with open knowledge in a huge variety of ways, across so many domains and topics, and working in collaboration on some incredible initiatives.
It’s clear though that there are many awesome things going on, and we love hearing about them, but the community has grown too large for anybody to have a true sense of the breadth of work in our field at any given time.
So; we want to hear — and share — more of these stories! In the past we ran a blogpost series outlining great work by Local Groups, and others from Working Groups, as well as updates from project communities, but given the rate at which community activities are happening (incredibly quickly, in case you were wondering!) we wanted to give you all an easier, and faster, way to share.
Our solution: the Open Knowledge Foundation Community Stories Tumblr, http://okfncommunity.tumblr.com/
Whether it be people organising spending parties in Japan or Nigeria, to diving into election data in Nepal; holding governments in Morocco and Germany accountable thanks to the Open Data Index, or remixing the public domain in France, it’s these stories that make the open knowledge movement really make sense, and help us all see what it is that we are part of.
These stories help people understand what the open knowledge movement actually is, and why we do what we do. On our quest to build a truly global and change-making open knowledge movement sharing our stories of successes and failures is ever more important to sustaining our efforts.
This is a space for you to tell the Open Knowledge Foundation community about what you are up to in your part of the world.
Managed to convince your government to use CKAN for a new open government data portal? Translated a handbook or two into your local language, or launched a new project? Made a splash in the local press? Tell us, so we can share it with the world.
Submit your stories by dropping an email to communitystories[at]okfn.org, or directly on the Tumblr itself.
We want to see photos, hear audio interviews, video clips, see your slide decks, and read updates from you all. Ever wondered why your local coordinator/fellow community member/Ambassador is involved in the open knowledge movement? Why not ask them, record it with your phone and share with the rest of us?
Sharing what you’re doing inspires others all across our global network — it can help you find new collaborators and get ideas from other people, and it will, we hope, show the world why the open movement is so important.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Zara works with School of Data leading our research and learning, and the 2015 Fellowship Scheme. She is based in Berlin, and can be found tweeting @zararah.
