Threats, hopes and tales from the Open Knowledge Network gathering in Katowice, Poland – Open Knowledge Foundation blog

"We all agreed on the fact that large segments of people are still lacking the skills to build, use, or understand open data and open technologies, and are therefore excluded from benefiting from open resources, exacerbating existing inequalities and hindering the potential for widespread knowledge sharing. Limited access to quality education and digital literacy creates significant barriers to engaging with open knowledge. We have known this for a while, this is why the School of Data actually started more than a decade ago, but the gap is still there. We have discussed this during one of our last 100+ conversations. Can we do more? 

Of course we all know there’s only so much we can do without funding. We acknowledged that open knowledge initiatives often struggle with insufficient funding, which limits our ability to develop, maintain, and scale sustainable projects. Without adequate resources, many open projects fail to reach their potential, leaving ground to well-funded proprietary solutions that prioritise control over accessibility.

The problem with funding is also linked to the fact that the funders’ agenda is often dominated by trends set by Big Tech, so we sometimes end up doing things because of those trends, instead of other things that we would be more willing to do, but halas don’t attract money. This is something we extensively talked about during a digital commons gathering in Berlin last year, if you are interested you can read the report Problematizing Strategic Tension Lines in the Digital Commons...."