[LINK] Open Knowledge Live from Canberra

[Roger Clarke]

At 12:23 +1000 28/8/13, Tom Worthington wrote:
>Greetings from the Australian Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation
>(which grew out of GovCamp). The keynote speaker is Dr. Rufus Pollock
>(Founder of Open Knowledge). This is being streamed live by AARnet:
>http://vmc.aarnet.edu.au/viewerportal/defaultdomain/selecttimezone.vp
>
>More at: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/08/open-knowledge-in-canberra.html

Echoing Brenda ...

I had deja vu feelings - it was 2005-08 all over again.

In this context, 'ambassador' seems to be about as meaningful as when 
a model gets a long-term gig for a department store.  It appears to 
mean spruiker + motivational-speaker + waffler.  In Rufus' own words, 
Open Knowledge Foundation is about "advocacy and evangelism not 
detailed policy".

On several occasions he'd just got to what I'd assumed the 
presentation would be about, and dropped the topic.

It doesn't help that he uses Information when he should say Data, and 
Knowledge when he should say Information.  One questioner skewered 
him by asking him 'what about Wisdom?'.

I did a few things in the open access arena in 2000-09, but haven't 
done much since.  I'd have expected the key issues by now to have 
been:
-   the right terms for particular kinds of data, expressed in licences
-   common data formats
     (The one bad example he offered was a columnar printout from a US
     govt agency.  He didn't even comment on .csv as a default format)
-   standards for:
     -   data formats
     -   data item definitions  (IRDS anyone?)
-   the remaining barriers, still hanging around
-   new barriers that arise as the field matures
-   ways to overcome barriers
-   reidentification techniques and how to defeat them
     (Another questioner skewered him on that one)
     (All Rufus could offer was a cliche: 'my data vs. our data'.
      There was no discussion of the challenges inherent in anonymity,
      de-identification, dataset merger, dataset-richness, small cells)

Basically, a lot of the audience was well ahead of the speaker.

Maybe the large team there knows a lot more than the CEO:
http://okfn.org/about/team/


I'm hopeful that the Aust version of OFK might do useful things, but 
the web-site suggests that's it's only at a formative stage:
http://au.okfn.org/communities/


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University