We Are CKAN - looking for some help :)

[Steven De Costa]

Hi folks,

I've had a spike in productivity in a few areas over the last few weeks.

I've setup the Community and Communications Team for the CKAN Association and it's moving forward with a global campaign from tomorrow morning based on the concept I've posted further below.

Although CKAN is used globally we have a pretty good group of highly engaged users here in Australia. CKAN runs most of the open data portals in Australia so its the platform upon which much of the OpenAustralia Community will rely on when it comes to Government publishing data in open and accessible formats.

There are a few very cool opportunities to work with industry to open even more data here in Australia, and that is something I think we can demonstrate locally as a best practice approach internationally.

For those don't know me, I have some conflicts to disclose surrounding CKAN and open data (it helps to pay for the internet connection I'm using and the toast I had for breakfast). The bio for the stuff I'm involved in is:

Steven is an open data and open knowledge community contributor. He is on the Board of Open Knowledge Australia, member of the Advisory Group and Community Team Lead for the CKAN Association, an organizer of GovHack.org, founder of DataShades.com and Executive Director of the data first digital agency Link Digital.

So with that said, I was keen to ping this group and try to entice a few people who are interested in learning more about the CKAN Community and Communications Team. I'm recruiting for people who can help with the project and ensure its long term success.

The team page can be found here: http://ckan.org/about/community-and-communication-team/

The Google Group is looking for you to: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB#!forum/ckan-association-community-and-communication-team-group

Getting involved in the google group is a great start. There is no obligation there, I'm just keen to have people with insight following the threads and giving comment.

For those that want to fully jump in I'm growing a core team of people within a basecamp project. That's where things start to have timelines and deliveries so responsibilities begin to emerge.

Enough said. If you already know about CKAN but haven't been following the updates then you might now be interested to check the links and learn more.

The campaign we are starting tomorrow will be based on the following ideas...

We Are CKAN

 Open Data = Open Knowledge = Open Source = Openness, Participation and Collaboration = CKAN

No other project has all of these qualities

We are CKAN; the users, developers, bureaucrats, academics, volunteers and good people working to open data to create a better society. We are more than the code; we are comprehensive in scope, we seek knowledge as a recognized good; we open, share and cultivate the archive; we form, organise and respond via our network of awesome people.

Tomorrow is the first of March. Lets begin with a 'MARCH' campaign for the month of March. Let's focus the message of CKAN on the principles of openness, participation and collaboration.

This month we release CKAN 2.3, but lets not have this be the first step. Lets do a little each day, starting tomorrow.

Primary objective: Rally people to the cause and grow our network - #WeAreCKAN
Secondary objective: Re establish CKAN at the center of the open data conversation

Tactics:
Lots of options... we'll remain agile and get bigger in scope as people rally to the idea. I've started a basecamp project for these and will bring people in slowly to grow a core team.

An important note:

This is not an open data campaign, this is a CKAN campaign. 

hashtag: #WeAreCKAN