Activities

Introduction

The Open Knowledge Foundation engages in a number of specific activities in support of its core mission. Below we list some of the main areas of Foundation work along with a short summary and a pointer to further information. The reader may also wish to read the Annual Report which discusses specific work done over the last year.

All of these activites relate to the Foundation's three main objectives of promoting the idea of open knowledge; campaigning against restrictions, both legal and non-legal, on open knowledge; developing, supporting and promoting projects, communities and tools that foster and facilitate open knowledge creation, access and dissemination. While some of the work that the Foundation does fits neatly into just one of these categories much of what we do is relevant across all three.

The Open Knowledge Definition

Please see the Open Knowledge Definition home page

Information Provision and Public Engagement

A prime objective of the Foundation is the promotion of awareness of the idea and value of open knowledge. The 'open knowledge trail' has been developed as a simple yet reasonably in-depth introduction to open knowledge issues. Produced primarily under the direction of Peter Lockley these pages form part of an ongoing project to provide a beginnner's guide to these vitally important issues.

This work on informational resources is complemented by outreach work in the organization and giving of public talks. These are primarily aimed at students either at school or at University and form a complement to the Open Knowledge Forums (see below).

Open Knowledge Forums

The aim of the Forums is to promote open knowledge, be that getting it, using it, or sharing it. They are a series of informal gatherings and while centred on the subject of open information/data they are flexible in form and content. They aim to bring together those producing and those campaigning, and to cover everything from software to the law. More information may be found at the project's home page.

Policy Work

A core mission of the organization is to protect open knowledge from legal and non-legal restrictions. To this end the representatives have:

  • Regularly attended meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva as well as
  • Participated in the development of treaties regarding access to knowledge and access to medicines.

However much of the work of the Foundation in this area tends to take place indirectly through the support or participation in other organizations, or through the activities of OKF projects such as open geodata.

The Network of Projects

Another core area of the Foundation's work is the development of self-sustaining communities focused on the development and promotion of open knowledge. The Foundation's major work in this area focuses on its own set of projects.

KnowledgeForge

KnowledgeForge is one of the Foundation's flagship projects. For those unfamiliar with it an overview is available but in short its aim is to create a digital-based open knowledge community that can provide a fully-featured and stable home to projects which develop, support or disseminate open knowledge.