These minutes are UNAPPROVED currently.

Open Knowledge Australia board meeting

7 December 2016 7:30 pm EDST

Present: Matthew Cengia, Fiona Tweedie, Rosie Williams, Helen Ensikat, Ann-Marie Elias, Nicholas Gruen, Markus Buchhorn

1. Welcome
2. Report on Open Knowledge Melbourne (Matt Cengia)
   1. Going well; weekly meetups etc. only support necessary is release of funds for weekly meetups.
3. Report on Health Hack 2016 (TBC)
   1. Follow up with Mike Imelfort about HH financials, especially Sydney expenses
4. Financial status
   1. Markus has asked Steven for a ‘full year’ version of the reports
5. Grant Application process
6. Tax concession charity registration
   1. Yes investigate further, FT to look at the forms
7. Board composition
   1. FT resigning, nominates Matt Cengia
   2. Rosie Williams replacing Alysha Thomas
8. Any other business
   1. Zoe Piper at Data 61 to offer advice and support
9. Close

Ginny, Markus and Nic are all in a hangout – on our own???

Original link to agenda/minutes is here.

The YouTube recording is below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GED_n05ifI0

The night started with Ri Liu giving a short presentation about her recent trip to Colombia as a finalist in a data visualisation prize for her work on Close the Gap – if you are interested in DataVis, check it out – it looks gorgeous, Ri has a great vision when it comes to presenting data. For those interested in working on data visualisation regularly, Ri has started a weekly Thursday night DataVis meetup.

After this we broke into very focused groups – three in particular focusing on Open Street Maps and the Nepalese earthquake, the Temporal Earth project and PTV data.

GovHack planning

Later in the evening a few of us started talking about the plans regarding the upcoming GovHack – mark July 2-4 into your calendars. In the lead up to GovHack, Open Knowledge Melbourne will be hosting a different introductory workshop on a number of the technologies available that we think are the most useful for an event like GovHack.

May 6th Scott Ludlum is talking about the Open Economy project that analyses the budget data.

May 13th The Code for Australia Fellows (the Coder Girrrlz Ruth, Alisha and Rosie) will be presenting what they have discovered in their work with the three city councils they have been placed with (Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat). This should be considered an in depth “Meet the data owners” event.

May 20th Steve, Matt and Lachlan will be talking Maps, mapping software and mapping tools – CartoDB (great for creating data, gather data, quick visualisation) and LeafletJS for mobile friendly live maps.

May 27th More Mapping and some Data Manipulation software. Steve will talk about TileMill and we will discuss tools like Google Refine, csvkit, and the JSON query builder jq

June 3rd More Data manipulation – Pandas and R – two very useful tools for splicing and dicing large data sets. Like Excel on steroids, with nice Pythonic languages.

June 10th Systems Administration – a very short introduction by Matt and Lachlan to the command line, ssh, and git. Teaching the most useful 5-7 commands for each – just enough for someone who needs a virtual machine on the weekend. We may also teach openstack if that’s a possibility. Refresher from previous week

June 17th Data visualisation, Ri Liu presenting on D3 and GovHack/HealthHack regular Fred Michna presenting Tableau.

June 24th Meet the data owners – the more general event including Victorian government agency representatives.

July 1st Will be dedicated to last minute questions and organising.

July 2-4th – GOVHACK

Glenn made icons – you know Glenn, he’s got those pants, and that guy with the beard – no, the other guy with the beard – he wrote down a heap of stuff on index cards which we converted to data points. Lots of people added locations.

Whaddaya mean, why can’t you see the roads? You can see the bike paths and train lines, can’t you? And the laneways? There’s like literally nothing on the main streets, haven’t you been to Melbourne? Look, fine – just zoom in, the roads will show up eventually. Why would you even want to do that, jeez. Besides, when you zoom in like that, all the OpenStreetMap cafes are shown, and they’re so mainstream. And see how we colour-coded suburbs according to density of free-range syntagmas? It’s a secondary indicator of pseudo-relevance.

Yeah, so, there are a couple of problems with this. We’re a bit worried this will become too kitsch – we risk schisms in the ideosphere. We experimented with being typeface agnostic but it was too much. I can’t even. We’re also not really sure about the ethical implications of sartorial gentrification. Like, how do we interact with readymade-free? It’s a bit twee, all that twitterigentsia clambering to understand our culture. On the other hand, we were concerned about the asymmetrical knowledge exchange so there’s a suggestion option. Yes, if you can think of something, let us know. Totally. Flexiterian, eh?

…

All right, that’s enough. I’m giving myself a headache.

The hipster map of Melbourne was created on the back of a frivolous idea by a bunch of volunteers. We wanted to see what we could achieve in an evening using nothing but open source technology and enthusiasm.

The underlying basemap is TileMill, an interactive open source mapping tool that uses OpenStreetMap data. The placemarkers are served from CartoDB, another open source interactive mapping resource. The whole lot sits on a web server hosted at hipstermelbourne.org that loads both the base map and the placemarkers.

Props to: Steve Bennett, Maia Sauren, Matt Cengia, Hamish, Mike Ebinum, Glenn Todd, Anthony Mockler, Nic Smythe, Peter Dudley, Fiona Tweedie, AJ, Tim Hordern.

Oh no, we hear you cry! Dirty hipsters are filthying my local with their fixietaches, I would like them to disappear to the even more obscure cafe down the road! Never fear. Let us know the name of your dinghy renovated sweatshop. Is it too cool to advertise its name? Even better. We’ll get to it as soon as we finish drinking out of these jars.

Drinks were so successful….We thought we might hold them again!

Thanks for coming along everyone! That was excellent. Can’t remember the last time I heard ‘You should talk to X!’ so many times.

Watch out for notices in March – we will be holding drinks in Melbourne every 2 months.

Come have a drink. Tell us what you’re doing. Find out what everyone else is into. Because why not.

Thurs 23rd Jan, 6pm, 1000 Pound Bend

See you there!

CKAN data catalogues are exciting because they provide a way not only to find and access the data but actually utilise it. Through a rich understanding of the content of data, they allow on the fly visualisation. For example, mobile developers can query the data directly from the government provided infrastructure.

There is still much work to be done in building the tools to allow interoperability and reinforce best practice in data publishing. For example, the data.gov.au roadmap which details specific functionality including better reporting on uses, richer metadata and new ways to both add and use data more efficiently. It is hoped these will provide greater accessibility of data to the wider community.

That’s why we are announcing a CKAN User Group to harness the communities connected with OKFNAu to drive better outcomes in data infrastructure. We hope to share with you our experiences and best practices to further enable open data in Australia and for the benefit of the global open data movement.

You can ask questions and stay up to date with developments about CKAN and Data Applications/Platforms on our mailing list http://lists.ckanau.org/mailman/listinfo/ckanau or contribute tools by becoming part of our GitHub organisation https://github.com/organizations/ckanau 

It is important to recognise that Ambassadors come and go, there are far too many wonderful causes and reasons in the world to assume that you will only dedicate your volunteer hours to one organisation forever. Naturally, we want you all to stay as long as you like, but for the most part we would hope that you will commit to participating over an 18 month period (naturally we are glad to shorten or lengthen this based on your personal endeavors – we are nothing if not flexible).

Of course, it is very difficult when a valuable volunteer Ambassador leaves because it is the brains of humans where knowledge is stored (not the machines – though they do a great job with the information).

Accordingly, we’ve implemented a “buddy system” recommendation to all volunteers.

The most important part of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Australia is community. A networked community begins with a simple relationship between two people, everyone needs a person whom you can bounce ideas off of and have a friendly and honest conversation. Accordingly, one of the first things we look to do as the Board is to help our volunteers find a like-minded buddy. The buddy system will not only help you work together but also help encourage the sharing of knowledge from one person to the next as the Open Knowledge Foundation grows and matures into a nation-wide community network.

Most of our Ambassadors already have a buddy (if not two or three) who share their Ambassadorship, but we’ll also be looking to buddy-up anyone else who volunteers for the Open Knowledge Foundation including the Board, Advisory Committee and the GovHack Committee.

Naturally, the above is only a recommendation, if you don’t want a buddy and are happy to do things on your own, we think that is great as we’ll do everything we can to support individuals as well. Otherwise, if you are looking for a volunteer buddy to do good things with, put on local events, start projects or participate in global working groups then please let the co-secretaries to the board know (yes the secretary to the board has a buddy now as well: David F. Flanders would like to welcome his buddy Anne Cregan as co-secretary to the board).

Further announcements on the co-chair of the board and it having ‘a buddy’ soon as well.

[1]= If you don’t like the term ‘buddy’ (yes it is a bit American), then please do replace it with whatever word you would prefer: mate, friend, foobar, etc. – the important part is not the word, but rather the idea of watching out for someone else http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_system

Attending: Dr. Rufus Pollock, Pia Waugh, David F. Flanders, Dr Markus Buchhorn, Paul Szymkowiak, Clare Paine, Anna Gerber, Matt Didcoe, John Baxter, Fiona Tweedie, Craig Butt, Mat Todd, Georgina Taylor, Steve Bennett, Maia SSauren, Silvana Fumega, Chris Sakkas, Anna Daniel, Alex Sadleir, Richard Tubb, Steven De Costa, Dr Anne Cregan-Wolfe, etc

Agenda:

Length of meeting: 1 hour

1. Welcome by Open Knowledge Foundation Australia Chair Pia Waugh – 15 mins

   1. Housekeeping – Meeting video will be public, please add your name to the google doc as attending, add questions/comments to chat on right hand side. Minutes will be emailed to okfn-au mailing list and put pertinent info on website with blog.

   2. Overview of the agenda, including for everyone to introduce themselves on chat and mention something cool they are working on

2. Discussion with Dr Rufus Pollock – Open Knowledge Foundation Founder

   1. Hello to/by Rufus, welcome to Australia

   2. The values and principles of the Open Knowledge Foundation

   3. Summary of tour to date by Rufus and observations

   4. #ACTION blog post summarising Rufus tour

      1. videos, audio, pictures ← who has what, where?

      2. video on main Open Knowledge Foundation website.

3. Overview of Open Knowledge Foundation Australia organisational structure Pia 15 mins

   1. Why Open Knowledge Foundation for Australia? Upside down support umbrella

   2. NICTA opportunity

   3. MoU with Open Knowledge Foundation Central – to ideally sign with NICTA in the first instance. DRAFT at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iCqY6y4R_B_f9pxoUMl9N39kuN1borvqu21oCo6yyJc/edit – Have now updated so you all have public access with link

   4. Roles of Open Knowledge Foundation Australia – proposal for discussion

      1. Community development – support, insurance, funding, encouragement, mailing list, blog

      2. Supporting open knowledge community projects – GovHack, BarCamp, usergroups, etc

      3. Collaboration between existing open knowledge communities

      4. Growth of public awareness of and engagement with open knowledge

      5. Co-developing & collating resources for the community, e.g. summit-retreat weekend with Ambassadors/Board/Advisory, skills development with School of Data

      6. International engagement, reputation building.

   5. Proposed structure for Open Knowledge Foundation Australia

      1. Board – initial Board interim for 12 months, then ½ Board elected each year (2 year terms) by community. Ideally 7-8 people+Chair & Secretary.

         • Introductions

           • Pia Waugh [Fed Govt, data.gov.au, Gov2.0]

           • David F. Flanders

           • Lauren Cochrane [ACT Govt, open gov, open data, Gov 2.0]

           • Dr Markus Buchhorn [Higher-ed Research community]

           • Paul Szymkowiak

           • Steven De Costa [Industry: http://www.linkdigital.com.au/]

           • Clare Paine [Fed Govt]

         • Call for last 2 spots on Board any (data-)journalists?

      2. Local Ambassadors – community development, activities/events in local area supported by Board, communications online, community development. Grows organically, no upper limit of people. This role is being scoped at this document

         • Introductions – introducing each Ambassador – name, location. Please mention at least one cool thing you are planning on the chat channel for others to see

      3. Topic Ambassadors – GLAMbassadors, Makebassadors, etc, Australian community development around a particular topic, engagement in any appropriate International Working Groups

         • Introductions – introducing each Ambassador – name, location. Please mention at least one cool thing you are planning on the chat channel for others to see

      4. Advisory Committee – 3 monthly meetings to give feedback, plus advocacy in own communities. Ideally no more than 15-20 people.

         • Introductions

      5. Projects as sub committees – Eg GovHack, BarCamp – set up specifically for projects with their own committees, support and oversight. Numbers according to project.

         • Overview by Pia

   6. Communications

      1. Monthly meetings – with Board, joined by Ambassadors, minutes published publicly and projects, progress, funding, activities, any necessary voting and any Open Knowledge Foundation Central meeting updates discussed

      2. Advisory Ctte – joins the meeting on a quarterly basis

      3. Formal Open Knowledge Foundation Central communications – A rep from Board plus one super keen Ambassador to represent Australia on the Open Knowledge Foundation International Council mailing list (http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-local-coord) and report back to monthly meetings

         • Identify people

      4. International OKF communities – Ambassadors and Advisory Committee members are encouraged to look at the OKF mailing lists (http://lists.Open Knowledge Foundation.org/mailman/listinfo) and Working Group list (International Working Groups) engage with other international groups that may be useful to their activities and communities.

      5. Community – Ambassadors, the Board and Advisory Ctte should communicate publicly with our community and the public through

         • OKF Australia Blog – the Board and Ambassadors will blog news, activites

         • A monthly newsletter and other thoughts regularly. Advisory Ctte are encouraged to contribute one or two a year.

         • Timeliner for activities / current projects on site so people (inc newcomers) can immediately get involved

         • Announce list – setting mailchimp up, monthly newsletter to include news from all Ambassadors and any relevant international news

         • Discuss listserv – for discussions okfnau@

         • Twitter – @okfnau account.

      6. Support documentation – Feedback on existing documentation please Course of action? a.) scope local Ambassador induction pack above to include Topic Ambassador role/responsibilities? b.) write new induction pack for Topic Ambassadors?, c.) other?

   7. Announcement post on Open Knowledge Foundation Australia website with launch information on Monday nights, with details of all Ambassadors, Board and Advisory Committee inc bio pages and contact details.

      1. Status of Ambassador/Board/Advisory bio pages.

      2. #ACTION publish announcement post of Ambassadors

      3. #ACTION help disseminate this announcement to gov’t and other audiences who should be aware of these communities?

      4. Todo: consolidated roadmap of activities for the year – need ambassador plans for this to be added into a Timeliner GoogleSpreadsheet.

4. Next meetings

   1. Meeting timing:

      1. Board – Monthly

      2. Ambassadors – Monthly, to join in on Board meeting

      3. Advisory Ctte – 3 monthly

      4. Project sub cttes – as required.

   2. Preference for meeting day/time?

      1. Sunday evening, 6pm-ish? [MB-3rd pref] [CS-1st pref] [FT 1st pref][GT – 1][LC-1]

      2. Weekday late, .e.g. Tues 5pm? [MB-1st pref] [CS-2nd pref][GT – 2][LC-2]

      3. Weekday early, e.g. Wed 8am [MB-2nd pref][CS-3rd pref][GT – 3][LC-3]

   3. #ACTION calendar invites for next meeting

5. Other Business

   1. If there is time what else would you like to discuss?  Anything we don’t discuss we’ll put at the top of this document to add to further meetings.

6. Actions – followup from the meeting

   1. Action – person responsible

7. Future agenda items (that should be considered for discussion) in this list:

   • tools for coordinating activities? Eg Basecamp?

   • a page on the blog for a list of chapters

   • national projects

   • GLAMbassadors ← topic ambassadors and their role.

   • Tools for organising local events, e.g. city specific listserv, basecamp, etc?

   • Shirts/Polos for Ambassadors?

(1) Political party funding data, which lists what companies donate money to which political parties.

(2) A database that includes the archives of all Age articles along with key words and relationships between those keywords.

(3) Weather data for Australia going back one-hundred years.

The challenge: hackers entered a beehive of activity called the ‘Data Newsroom’ where they were presented with the data and asked to form teams made up of journalists, developers and citizens so as to produce a story for TheAge.com.au

Fourteen teams were formed who then spent the day formulating a two minute ‘pitch’ to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ of data journalism experts.

Four teams were then shortlisted and participants were sent to the Public Lecture at Melbourne University by the Inventor of the Web (Sir Tim Berners Lee), where the winner would be announced and be congratulated by Sir Tim. See other posts on this blog for winner announcements and pictures.

Hacker = by ‘hacker‘ we are referring to anyone who likes to ‘playfully experiment with doing things quicker and more efficiently’, including the likes of our participants which included: developers, graphic design artists, journalists, students, lecturers, visualisation coders, programmers and citizens who care about