mozilla

7Apr

Spring renewal: Pysanky and Community

One of my favourite rites of spring is to create Pysanky with family and friends. It is about renewal, taking off the wax and welcoming the rebirth of colours. As with most years, I host a pysanky day with friends and family. This year I decided to create a pysanka in honour of a community I admire that needs to renew. I’m answering Emma’s call with an art kitchen party.

Emma Irvin, Mozilla Rep: “I think blogging, or sharing positive messages about Mozilla and community would be most welcome. I agree the more the merrier – we know what brings us to Mozilla, reasons we contribute (or work) for Mozilla, and those perspectives and stories tell the Mozilla story better than any single attempt ever could.”

About Pysanky:

Pysanky is a traditional Ukrainian and Eastern European art based on many designs and stories. Some designs are very religious eggs such as the 40 triangles while others design pagan art or even modern art. It is up to the artist to remix.

Imagine you have a fragile egg in your hand, you use a stick, beeswax and colours to create a simple or intricate design. Then, after layers of colour, you wipe off the wax by the light of candle. Revealed is this egg – handmade by you. Often it takes hours to do. In the end, your home smells like honey and beeswax. You’ve created something fragile and beautiful. Smiles abound.

Reflection in photos:

1. Mix your dyes

2. Prepare your workstation

3. Get your decorating station ready

4. Design

Colours are added from lightest to darkest. Dip into colours. Each line that your draw with your kitska (stick) using hot beeswax becomes that layer of colour.

5. Be sure to snack on candy

6. Wax off

7. Create something special

8. Share the experience with friends

9. Spread the happy in your neighbourhood

10. Most of all: have fun

About the Mozilla community

Mozilla is one of my community homes online. Truly, as a community organizer, I learn so much which I remix and share in other communities. I’ve participated in some local Toronto meetups. Mozilla Drumbeat which became Mozfest continues to one of my favourite events. I believe in an open web. And, I think renewal to share all the parts of the community will take time, integrity, trust, dialogue and a willingness to build something special together. Mozilla’s global and diverse community inspires me. I am sure that each of us will work to keep building an open web.

Some of my Mozilla moments:

18Mar

Community is hard…and beautiful

We are polygamists. Seriously, do you belong to one community? I like to think that a number of us are all involved in many communities both locally and globally. For community leaders, we know that this journey is both beautiful and hard. We want to encourage active participation in a collaborative method.

Community Management – my top 5 go to list

Over the past months, I’ve had a few conversations with folks just starting out in Community Management, especially HFOSS Communities. They all ask for resources on how to get oriented and meet others. There are Community Manager Linked In groups and regional organizations. This is my top 5 go to list for community managers:

1. Community Roundtable
While the audience is focused on corporate Community Managers, they provide rich data with regular Roundtable newsletter and annual community survey.
2. Community Leadership Summit
OSCON is the largest OS conference in the world. The Community Leadership Summit happens right before it. I find that HFOSS groups still get a ton of value. You can read our notes from last year.
3. The Art of Community
Jono’s book, The Art of Community, is fantastic.
4. Dave Eaves – Django talk
Community is negotiation. I tend to re-listen to Dave Eaves’ Django talk (video) at least once a year. There are books on negotiation, but he really nails the nuances of global open source community.
5.Opensource.com
There is a wealth of articles on here about community engagement and open source projects.

Tech 4 Good Organizers

I started a google group for folks who lead in HFOSS or Business (corporate social responsibility) who run tech 4 good events or communities. There are a number of groups out there, but I feel like there is a gap for leaders in Tech 4 Good. It is just getting started but you are welcome to join: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tech4goodorganizers. We are stronger if we learn and engage together.

How to analyze and build a community:

Another question I often get is how to activate community. People have a finite amount of time and energy. If you build spaces and interactions, they will stay. To me the basics of service design are core to building community. Do something that is relevant, build ‘With‘ the community not only ‘For‘ your goals, and plan for the community to change you and your organization.

Everyone has their own methods, but here is a list that I tend to share:

1. Collect Data
What is the current state? Do some interviews with stakeholders, ask questions, ask to talk with people who have left the community, survey and use the stats (website, newsletter, blog, social media).
2. Do analysis and decide future goals
Assess the community maturation model. Decide what the community wants and build goals of organization with that in mind. Here are some tools to help: Diytoolkit and Reboot’s Service Design model.
3. Test ideas with the community. Prepare to adjust.
4. Start small for wins for engagement. You will know what these are because you’ve done your research and tested out the spirit of the community. Think in the frame of Dan Pink’s model of Drive: Autonomy, mastery and purpose.
5. Prioritize, co-brain and deliver
6. Delegate and co-lead
7. Global means that translation is part of your plan, not an afterthought.

(ps. Foxclocks and timeanddate are your event planning friends.)

Some Tech 4 Good Issues

I’ve been in a number of communities both volunteer and paid. These are some of the harder issues to consider. While I don’t have the answers, I think it is appropriate to share and see if we can learn to solve and adapt together.

How do we get to the next 1000 active community members. We know that the potential of small asks, big tasks is the key to community engagement. Communities like Zooiverse are schooling us on capacity, value and relevancy. How can we learn from them? (See Patrick Meier’s post on this topic)
Early adopters can sometimes scare, deter new strangers by their sense of ownership and entitlement. Building a community that serves all the types of community members, cultures, languages and, personality styles, is a tall order. But, it is necessary.I have been thinking of ways to build to the silent doers. (see my post on the Welcome Committee)
I think the social economy/social entrepreneurship model of NGOs builds accountability and transparency. Maybe it is my tech start up background, but I think that NGOs need to consider shaping to serve citizens with feedback loops and new funding models. In the last while, there have been a number of coalition and partnership funding programmes. This gives me tremendous hope in the adage that we are stronger when we build together.
There is an uncomfortable digital scramble for open territory which sometimes goes against the values of open and global collaboration. While it may be naive, I think there is enough digital space for everyone. This is not a gold rush. Being open and sharing will win. I trust in the Economic Impact of Open Source (Business model) transferring to other open communities. (see my presentation: Coining Global(especially the notes))
Building duplicate efforts hurts the opportunity to build with each other. Remember: Community is a beautiful gift in which people share their intellect, time and energy. We owe these folks so much as their interactions and contributions are a gift. The key is that they add value and that we, in return, reciprocate and thank them.

What are some of the community building conundrums you have encountered? Solutions, Ideas?

(Photo: The Lumiere path in Montreal, Heather Leson, January 2014)

3Feb

Currency of Change

What is the currency of change? What can coders (consumers) do with IATI data? How can suppliers deliver the data sets? Last week I had the honour of participating in the Open Data for Development Codeathon and the International Aid Transparency Initiative – Technical Advisory Group meetings. IATI’s goal is to make information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand. It was great that these events were back-to-back to push a big picture view.

My big takeaways included similar themes that I have learned on my open source journey:

You can talk about open data [insert tech or OS project] all you want, but if you don’t have an interactive community (including mentorship programmes), an education strategy, engagement/feedback loops plan, translation/localization plan and a process for people to learn how to contribute, then you build a double-edged barrier: barrier to entry and barrier for impact/contributor outputs.

About the Open Data in Development Codeathon

At the Codathon close, Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation, gave us a call to action to make the web. Well, in order to create a world of data makers, I think we should run aid and development processes through this mindset. What is the currency of change? I hear many people talking about theory of change and impact, but I’d like to add ‘currency’. This is not only about money, this is about using the best brainpower and best energy sources to solve real world problems in smart ways. I think if we heed Mark’s call to action with a “YES, AND”, then we can rethink how we approach complex change. Every single industry is suffering from the same issue – how to deal with the influx of supply/demand in information? We need to change how we approach the problem. Combined events like these give a window into tackling problems in a new format. It is not about the next greatest app, but more about ‘how can we learn from the Webmakers?’, and build with each other in our respective fields/networks.

Ease of Delivery

The IATI community / network is very passionate about moving the ball forward on releasing data. During the sessions, it was clear that the attendees see some gaps and are already working to fill them. The new IATI website is setup to grow with a Community component. The feedback from each of the sessions was distilled by the IATI – TAG and Civil Society Guidance groups to share with the IATI Secretariat.

In the Open Data in Development, Impact of Open Data in Developing Countries and CSO Guidance sessions, we discussed some key items about sharing, learning and using IATI data. Farai Matsika, with International HIV/Aids Alliance, was particularly poignant reminding #IATI CSO purpose – we need to share data with those we serve.

One of the biggest themes was data ethics. As we rush to ask NGOs and CSOs to release data, what are some of the data pitfalls? Anahi Ayala Iaccuci, Internews, and Linda Raftree, Plan International USA, both reminded participants that data needs to be anonymized and protect those at risk. Ms. Iaccuci asked that we consider the complex nature of sharing both sides of the open data story – successes and failures. As well, she advised: don’t create trust, but think about who are people trusting. Turning this model around is key to rethinking assumptions. I would add to her point: Trust and sharing are currency and will to add to the success measures of IATI. If people don’t trust the IATI data, they won’t share and use it.

Anne Crowe of Privacy International frequently asked attendees to consider the ramifications of opening data. It is clear that the IATI Tag does not curate the data that NGOS and CSOs share. Thus, it falls on each of these organizations to learn how to be data makers in order to contribute data to IATI. Perhaps organizations need a lead educator and curator to ensure that the future success of the IATI process, including quality data.

I think that the School of Data and the Partnership for Open Data have a huge part to play in with IATI. My colleague, Zara Rahman is collecting user feedback for the Open Development Toolkit and Katelyn Rogers is leading the Open Development mailing list. We collectively want to help people become datamakers and consumers to effectively achieve their development goals using open data. This also means also tackling the ongoing questions about data quality and data ethics.

Here are some additional resources shared during the IATI meetings.

24Jan

Sticky Ideas

….And then we broke out the sticky notes to make ideas dance. We all have been there. You are in a room, your feet itch, and your mind is waiting: If only we could just break out the sticky notes to collect, flush and organize our thoughts. It is so second nature to any event I run and any event I participate. My mind goes to the technique. How can we make a world of bright people across disciplines sing like a choir on mission? Well, for those of us who have participated in Aspiration Tech events, we are in the “sticky way“. I like to call us Gunnerites. We are the converted who use this methodology to help each other move forward.

Gunner is a friend and mentor. I’ve had the awesome honour to participate and learn in his events for over 4 years. Each time I glean another strategy or technique to add to my toolkit. When I think about the rooms I’ve been in from Mark Surman’s house to the World Bank to a Fort on the coast of Lamu (Kenya), I reflect on how Gunner helped large and small rooms of people get to the heart of conversations and ideas. He does it modestly and with such adept skill that you often don’t realize the hand of excellent execution. The results truly highlight the value of participatory sharing for learning and events.

Yesterday I had the honour of participating in an idea charrette at Stanford University. My role as a Board Member of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap was to provide insight into real world data ethics challenges that Crisismappers face. We used this methodology to help a very diverse room get cracking on great ideas. Thanks Lucy and Gunner.

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Aspiration Tech and the engine room are hosting a Responsible Data Forum. You should go if you are in the SF area. And, if you are looking to join a great team of folks who make a huge difference in many non-profits, do apply for a Communications role at Aspiration.

(Photos from events: Ushahidi team meeting, Lamu (Kenya) (January 2013) and Data Charrette, Stanford University (January 2014))

21Jan

Every interaction is a gift

When I think of value in Tech 4 good communities or any other community / network, the core value I rest my mind on is: every interaction is a gift. This means every map edit on OpenStreetMap, every commit on github repo, every edit to translation set, every event organized/attended and every voice on a community hangout or mailing list. As community and programme managers, we aim to help people get involved. This is a one by one – very personal connection. This is especially true for those of in the Digital Humanitarian Network (umbrella of communities) or Crisismappers Network and more. These communities exist by the hub and spoke model. Each of us believes (to some degree) that we are incrementally changing the pace of humanitarian aid by connecting and sharing.

A few years ago (way before I changed up my career and volunteer paths to Tech 4 Good), I became an avid reader of Chris Brogan and his frequent co-writer, Julien Smith. At first it was to learn better marketing skills for my tech job at Tucows Inc., but soon I realized that I had virtually met people who understood the qualities and growth paths of people like us. Trust Agents really highlighted this for me.

Anyone who has ever gotten a “here’s a link I thought you might like” or “I’d Like to introduce you to x” email from me knows that I live by Chris’s network simple formula:

Be helpful + meet helpful people + connect really helpful people = potential for future amazingness.

Chris has a weekly newsletter (selly sell: subscribe for it). It is my Sunday cup of coffee to really consider our craft. This week his post really resonated with me. With his permission, I am quoting the simple formula and some key guidelines. Happy building.

BUILD A HELPFUL NETWORK

(Chris Brogan)

1.) Be open to connecting with anyone. You never know.

2.) When introducing others, ask first privately if you can make the introduction (lots of times, people introduce me to others that I can’t much help, for instance).

3.) Upon meeting someone new, think of ways you can help them. I promise this is MUCH more useful than thinking of ways they can help you.

4.) Set calendar reminders or ANY other method to keep in touch with people on a semi regular basis. Cold networks don’t help.

5.) Connect great people in your network together. It’s always greater than the sum of the separate parts.

(Photo taken in Venice, Italy by moi)

Thanks for Sharing, Chris.

11Jan

Open Badges in a Crisis

Recruit, Track, Assign, and Give thanks. These are volunteer management steps in the digital age. Many organizations are looking at ways to train, incorporate and support digital skilled people in their workflows. The Crisismappers Community and the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) highlight the convergence of new technology/smart design like open badges, digital community networks and making. How do we get the next 10, 000 participants in a community? How do we manage the surge of new digital humanitarians and make it a valuable experience?

At Mozilla Drumbeat in 2010 (precursor to Mozfest), I joined the first ever Open Badges hackteam. We spent the weekend talking and building around the idea of credentials. Fast forward 4 years, I joined a Mozfest team in the Emergency Hack Lab. We brainstormed on a technical workflow for badging using the scenario of Hurricane Sandy.

Cracking crowdsource or brainsourcing has been a mighty task that many are working on. We as organizers know that anyone who wishes to get involved is a gift for community. We know that there are small asks and big tasks for engagement. Tackling digital knowledge skills with surge support can be a full-time job during an emergency. We all have networks and there are a number of strong community groups or NGOs that are building better methods to train and support digital humanitarians. Last year I lead a digital community mapping effort called Uchaguzi for the Kenya Elections. The Ushahidi designer, Jepchumba, created badges for all the participants to use. This was to build solidarity and give thanks. Crowdcrafting (micromappers) was used during the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). I wrote a bit about ‘hacking’ during the Typhoon response mainly due to the sheer volume of emails and conversations.

Building Use Cases

We could use Open Badges for UN OCHA/Noun Project icons (emergency standard) Digital Humanitarians and emergency wayfinding. Earlier this week I pitched it on our Emergency Hack Lab call, including our partners at Geeks without Bounds.

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap and Open Badges

Digital humanitarians need to build trust and get thanks. Open Badges across the various communities enables standards but also gives recognition and thanks. The DHN really helps digital volunteers join specific skillset groups. The ideal is that the volunteer engagement occurs via these individual organizations. DHN exists to connect people to real actionable tasks to solve real world problems.

Example:
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap had over 1600 mappers do over 3 million edits for the Typhoon Response. We are part of DHN. With the help of Imagery to the Crowd and many other partners, the community received imagery which was added to the Task Manager. The task manager organizes the imagery into tiles and helps digital mappers coordinate. They sign in with their OSM account.

How easy would it be to add an HOT OSM Badge into this process? There are two core goals with this concept: credentials and thanks. HOT participants could use these for their social media or linked in profiles. Or, Open Badges could be used on the Task Manager or OSM Wiki. As a HOT board member, I continue to think about how to help thank the virtual, global community. Open Badges allows us potentially solve a gap.

Learn more Haiyan response from my fellow HOT OSM Board member, Harry Wood. (podcast)

Murmur + Wayfinding:(SMS solutions)

Ever since Hurricane Sandy I have been thinking about the power of Wayfinding during an emergency and how to connect and map community responders. Jess Klein, Creative lead of Open Badges has been a big inspiration on this journey. As well, Daniel Latorre of Wise City worked with Occupy Sandy communities to design and sign.

It struck me that Murmur plus Wayfinding plus Open Badges might be a way to connect those amazing ‘first responders’. While they may not be associated with formal organizations or NGOs, there are some community responders who make a huge difference in the field. Jess has written about this importance in response to Hurricane Sandy.

[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people’s personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighborhoods that are important to them.

Around Toronto there are Murmur signs. You call the number on the sign and you get a poem or story about the space or area. It is sheer magic in community and public spaces. Well, if Wayfinding is amazing to help people design and coordinate and Open Badges assigns and gives thanks, why not add an SMS number to sign up to volunteer, get SMS tasks and plus, a Badge. This idea about SMS task management is not new, but is missing is the pieces of thanks with Open badges.

Example: A Wayfinding sign is designed using the UN OCHA/Noun Project Label, but also includes and SMS number. This SMS number ties to the volunteer management choice of the community plus Open Badges. The NGO could use any number of SMS apps to help manage the volunteers and link them to an Open Badge process. Some examples include Frontline SMS, Medic (sim apps), Swara (Interactive Voice Response tool) or many others. The goal here would be to recognize mobile plus open badges as the way forward, especially in the majority of the world.

This idea needs more work, but you get the picture. The power of Open Badges during a Crisis is full of thanks.

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There is much more thinking and hacking to happen, but it is an exciting journey.

Join the next Open Badges call

31Oct

Connecting the open dots

When I think of open, I think global. A number of us have the privilege of collaborating on large scale global open communities. We all see the potential of combined efforts and dissolved borders/barriers to all our common success. What have we learned and what are the next steps?

This week I’ve had the honour to participate in both the Mozilla Festival and the Open Government Partnership. The conversations have really distilled the question: what are we waiting for? OGP is a common language building forum for governments, business, civil society and the technical communities. Yes, we do have some different priorities and agendas. But let’s dream big then build it. Policy discussions should and must beget action. How can we get there for more open and very global communities? How can we better support each other? At heart, I am a maker. I need to see and be part of evidence and impact.

Here are some key actions and win suggestions:

1. Master search
There are open data portals and github repos. Yet, there is no master search of which open data and which code is available and remixable. This will help us build on The pain of duplication and vanity ware (creating software for the sake of “new” rather than sustainable, built-on efforts).

We need this to help anyone build on the open source ethos. We need common standards in creation. This is not to stifle great new ideas but to end the “reinvent the wheel” model that is causing us to stall. If people can find the existing work, irrespective of country, perhaps we can build faster. I realize that software and data really counts on local needs, knowledge and language, but have we asked what are the common needs that we can remix.

I ask: what are the top 10 software topics that we can focus on as open source communities and civil society communities collectively need or want? Can we use the power of agile software development to guide us?

2. Code of collaboration
Last year I spoke with someone who apologized to me: “I received funding for x and even though it is duplication of efforts on existing software, we need the funding and have to do what they funder wants.” This conversation made me realize that the funding model also needs a shift. If we are funding without building on existing work and existing knowledge, are we regressing? Are funders funding only new ideas and potentially shiny ideas? Are the funders sharing data? Believe me I want to eat and really respect how hard it is to find the bright spots and the right things to fund. I am really learning as I go, but am struck with this dilemma.

For those who lead in civil society and open source communities, including hackathons, are we encumbering the open growth? Leaders need to build on the open source methods, encourage good practices and encourage mission before branding. By means, fork the code/idea. Please. But, document and collaborate, be responsible and stop duplicating. Who are we serving and what is the real demand/citizen need? Sometimes we are not building priorities based on feedback and real people. And, sadly there are examples of chasing the shiny and quick without considering privacy and risk. Really, this is new ground and we are all trying to figure out the way to get there.

The Crisismappers community created a community code of collaboration. What would a funder, civil society and open source community code look like for open government and open data?

I propose that we build a code of collaboration beyond the policy aspects.

3. Open community leader collaboration and census
Who is doing what where and how to collaborate? What can an open data hacker from Kenya teach someone in India? I’ve seen this power of global with Random Hacks of Kindness, International Space Apps Challenge, Mozilla, Ushahidi and more. We don’t see borders, we see and build on ideas and skills.

At Mozilla Festival my colleagues at Wikipedia, OKFN, Creative Commons and others hosted a session about Building an Open Community. A followup session was held at the Open Government Partnership Civil Society Unconference. How can we keep the momentum of this? We need to continue to learn and share these ideas. Are there other examples out there?

Often I am asked to do introductions to open community members around the world. What I would really like is an open community footprint of who is doing what where? Apparently, the legacy icommons.org served this need. We build our open networks and relationships. Great. If communities shared their networks, best practices and commons goals, we could move this ball forward.

Who is already working on this idea, especially in the tech for good and social good space? Can we collaborate? My goal is to start finding and connecting all these leaders. We are stronger together as we teach and share.

Thanks to my colleagues at Mozilla, OKFN, Wikipedia, Second Muse, Random Hacks of Kindness, Geeks without Bounds and Creative Commons. We’ve had a number of conversations in the past few weeks. In the spirit of open, some of you directly contributed to this text.

Moar is more.

(All photos are from events that I’ve attended or coordinated in the past year).

26Oct

I see “Dead” Data @ Mozfest

We are all teachers of the Open Web. The School of Data team from the Open Knowledge Foundation with 28 participants are Learning how to run at Data Expedition at Mozilla Festival.

Data and knowledge need to be activated. People are often intimated by data, so our goal is to teach a world of data makers. We’ve divided into 4 teams consisting of storytellers, analysts, engineers, scouts and designers are doing a fast-paced exercise in expeditions. We will take “Dead” data and activate it. The experience is to help others teach data expeditions.

Using Immigration Data to Learn about Data Expeditions

We’ve collected 3 different datasets about immigration data. The teams are reviewing it and determining stories and potentially activation methods. (eg. maps, diagrams) One team is analyzing datasets to determine the number of deaths of people attempting to migrate from Africa to Europe. Another team is using the data to show the true costs and benefits of immigration to the UK. Using cartographe, team 3 is building a map of countries that are difficult to travel. Comparing economic data and visa requirements is the mission of the fourth team.

About the data:

Outcomes /Learnings

Created by Berto

Leave the exercise raw. This opens us up to new ideas and potentially minimizes assumptions
Always save your projects (One team lost their work)
Build a clear problem analysis before going down the data or tool rabbit hole
Be aware of simplifying data and what context you might lose

Are you Data Curious? How would you activate this data?

Anyone can participate in this data expedition. The full details and collaboration space about the Mozfest data on Etherpad. Be a Data Expeditioner Too!

Anyone can be a data maker. How can we get to the next 100, 000 data makers teaching and sharing data stories?

Join us at School of Data

22Oct

Global Community: the road to learning

For the past 3 years, I have focused on building global community via maps, hacks and data. The journey has introduced me to a number of communities plus I’ve been fortunate to lead efforts in a few great spaces.

For the past month, I’ve been head down at Open Knowledge Foundation working on the Open Data Partnership for Development project as well as learning all about Open Knowledge Foundations’ communities and networks. We have the amazing opportunity to activate everything from open data to open government to open science to open glam (galleries, libraries, archives and museums.) Having library training background, I’ve always thought that the Internet opens up large borderless communities, much like the old Mechanics Institutes*. It gives us a chance to connect with fellow leaders and support the unusual suspects who want to use new technologies to disrupt and activate change.

(Stools by Ai WeiWei)

Some might consider it a tall order to involve citizens and technology to activate change. I see it as an art. What if we looked at it differently? Many of us are focusing on building stuff and showing the potential of opening data, creating apps and convening at hackathons/sprints. Others are focused on analyzing our methods. Great! We need to have real-time analysis/research in all our projects. Giving evidence and showing impact is mandatory as we move forward. ABC: Always be communicating/changing. Some folks make a career out of highlighting the faults in the old systems and faults in attempts to use new technology to see the world and the information overload in a new way. Also, great. The truth is: None of us are getting it right, yet. But, we are trying.

Meeting, Making and Showing

In the next month, I am going on a whirlwind of meeting, making and showing. Each of these spaces involve communities of folks trying to use policy, information, maps, hacks, data and more to open up our world. It is a huge privilege to participate and learn. I’ll try to post some ‘Dispatches’ as I have done at previous events:

1. Mozilla Festival – London, UK October 25-27, 2013.
MozFest is a home for me. I’ve attended each of the fests including its predecessor (Drumbeat). Imagine rooms full of brilliance in everything from Open Hardware to Open News to Open Internet. My brain and heart will burst with happiness in seeing old friends and digging into learning while making stuff. There are few events that are this interactive. The Open Knowledge Team will be hosting a few sessions (Building collaboration across the open space and a Data Expedition)

2. Open Government Partnership Summit – London, UK October 29 – November 1, 2013
The OGP summit connects governments and civil society communities to discuss policy and demonstrate the latest actions by country, topic and movement. The Open Data Partnership for Development is focused on helping connect governments and civil society folks. My goal will be to meet others on this journey and see how I can help support their efforts. As well, the Open Knowledge Foundation team will be supporting the Civil Society Day.

3. International Conference of Crisis Mappers – Nairobi, Kenya November 18 – 22, 2013
The Crisis Mappers community is one of the most amazing ones that I’ve encountered. Each of us from business to open source to government and academic want to learn the best ways to use data, mobiles, informatics and maps to aid crisis response. We will meet for a week of training, ignite talks and collaboration/simulation. The opportunity to do this in Kenya is amazing. My heart remains in East Africa. Ushahidi was born there and has inspired so many of us to consider how citizens can and should be involved in the conversation. I’ll be running a full day training session with 4 tracks: Maps, data, mobile and knowledge. There are many community leaders helping out, including my colleague Michael Bauer of the School of Data.

I am really look forward to involving more people in each of these communities.

Here’s to amazing building and making. I am more than certain that the next weeks will shape the coming year and far beyond!

*On Mechanic’s Institutes: I had a membership at the Atwater Mechanic’s Institute in Montreal, Canada. I loved that I could use a library and get training. It is the way forward: we need to train a digital network of new leaders to use the power of technical skills to tell stories and use data/software to activate new ideas/change in their communities.