Introduction and plans for moving this group forward

Hi,


My name is Leigh Dodds and I’m an associate at the Open Data Institute. As
you are no doubt aware, the ODI has partnered with Sport England to work
towards making physical activity and sporting opportunity data more open
[1]. This week the open active website [2] was re-launched with more
information on the partnership and plans.

One strand of this work will involve the creation of new data
specifications to help standardise how data is published and shared in the
sector. We are intending to use this existing community group as the means
to coordinate that activity and provide an opportunity for the whole sector
to get involved.

We’d like to invite all of you to be a part of this work. We’re committed
to making this an open, collaborative process that will produce useful
standards for everyone. I encourage you to extend that invite to your
colleagues and others in your professional network.

I want to introduce myself as the ODI point of contact for the project and
as a new co-chair for this community group. My background is as a software
engineer, a contributor to various open standards and consultant on open
data projects at the ODI and elsewhere.


I’ll plan to share a draft charter, proposed roadmap and the results of
some of the research we've been doing at the ODI. It would be great to have
contributions and comments from you all on those.


I’m also hoping to arrange a community google hangout in a few weeks time
to give us chance to meet as a community and discuss our roadmap. I'll
circulate a Doodle poll for that shortly.


In the meantime, it would be great to hear from all of you and learn about
your background, interests and any relevant projects you're working on.

Cheers,

L.

[1].
https://theodi.org/news/odi-and-sport-england-join-forces-to-get-us-all-more-active-with-data
[2]. https://www.openactive.io/

-- 
Leigh Dodds, Senior Consultant, theODI.org
@ldodds
The ODI, 65 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4JE