Dear Rayna, As per my response just now to Pierre I've delayed a bit in responding to because I wanted to give some space for the online community discussions plus the tagline discussion. At the same time, I did want to follow-up with as many folks as possible here - so herewith a belated response!
On 15 April 2014 15:26, Rayna <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey there, > > I haven't been very talkative on this list but the discussion is an > important one and I feel like I have things to share. Not sure I'll be able > to join the community call, am sick and kinda voiceless, so here are some > thoughts. > First off a big thanks for sharing - I know it takes time and energy but its super-important and useful. Would welcome chance to chat if you have more thoughts you'd like to share! [snip] Apologies if this sounds blunt but I do not identify with the tagline. My > aim within OKFN is not this one. The tagline reflects *a* vision, but is > not a comprehensive vision. And again the whole thing was done without any > interaction whatsoever with the community. If it is true that OKFN has > grown organically, it is also true that this needs structure -- but not > shoehorning. Why centering on data? Data is a means, not an aim. Data is a > particular "dress-up", not a goal *per se*. How will science or access to > research or GLAM or hardware or climate fit in this 'data' tagline? Should > we all try to twist our angles to fit a data-driven vision if we want to > continue working on these topics within OKFN? Should I go into explaining > that for some places in the world, such a direction will be redhibitory > because it'll be seen as an intrusion to national security? (Whether you > find this ridiculous or not is not the point; the point is that such a > brand will make an already Herculean task impossible to fulfill. > Point very much taken. I should emphasize, as I wrote to Peter, that I'm worried a bit too much has got read in the tagline - it isn't a subtle signal of some change in identity. Also, the tagline is now open for suggestions and ideas on how we could better capture our vision / essence in a succinct, compelling and understandable way would be *very* welcome :-) > Over the past few months, I've had quite a few discussions with staff and > community members regarding diversity. The observation is that, despite its > non-tech-centricity, if I may say so, OKFN is still quite uniform when it > boils down to diversity (gender, nationality, social status, pick yours). > The new brand will probably make this worse as it is much more > tech-centered. I have been in many other communities before -- and much > more tech-centered, too -- yet what pleased me with OKFN was precisely this > capacity to speak nerdy without requiring that everyone able to respond is > necessarily able to write software. Let me explain further: > :-) > Before we get into a n-th round of how much external communication experts > have provided great advise, I want just to emphasize that the whole fuss > around this is because a) *external* people do not provide proper feedback > about the community; b) communication is not about what you say but about > what people hear. My a) speaks for itself and just complements my own > frustration of being an active member of the community and of not being > consulted on such an important topic given that people outside of the > community assume I represent OKFN up to a certain extent. I guess others > from the community have/will relate(d) to such a frustration. > > My b) might need some more elaboration. We can play with the words, make > modular statements and taglines and decide to cut-paste stuff to fit > whatever purpose. This is not a tagline, it's tinkering. Tinkering is > awesome by the way. Yet, if I need cut-paste-arranging-tinkering, then a > tagline is useless. Complementarily, what people hear is not necessarily > what you want to convey. When you speak to people outside of the 'usual > data suspects', you see that opening up information or knowledge is NOT > about data. They need to have some information accessible because stuff. > The formalism of "knowledge" or "data" comes at a much later stage. The > rebranding process IMHO should have been much more focused on outreach and > usability than on data in order to include the overwhelming majority of > humans whose brains are not rewired in data-centric way. > Very good points and well-taken. Do you have any thoughts on what this should concretely mean for the language or terminology we could use here to reflect these points? > Thus, sticking to data will not just alienate many from the community but > will also put others off. Nowhere in the rebranding we spoke about people, > about outreach. The rebranding is done to speak to a very particular type > of people, a result in striking contrast with the org's mission, to open > knowledge to the widest possible number of humans. People need information. > If experts narrow these needs to mean some flavour of data, then fine. Yet, > you can have all the data in the world, if you don't get people to use and > comprehend it, then it's useless. Data, just as code, is speech. You need > to make use of them for the change to happen. If you open up data but > nobody cares about using it for real social and political transformation, > than we have failed to achieve freedom. (Amen :) ) > We all agree that "data in itself isn't useful" :-) (cf http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-a-means-to-an-end-not-an-end-in-itself/ ) Let me reiterate my point above that I worry the tagline has suggested some change in identity or purpose. That is not the case. The challenge we have with the tagline is to have something simple and meaningful - and meaningful beyond the immediate "core" of people who are very knowledgeable and very engaged :-) > In conclusion: May we have 'knowledge' and 'people' back, pretty please? :) > Absolutely - they never went away :-) More seriously how do we best convey this? Do you have thoughts or improvements for the tagline (see suggestions on the wiki) and/or the "vision" statement on the front page? Rufus
_______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-discuss
