Re: Third sector services extension?

Hi Jen,

A few comments on your questions:

   - For guidance on working with current vocabulary and extensions,  how
   you would define extensions and some of the decisions you need to make I
   would recommend my “Schema.org in Practice” blog post series part 1
   <http://dataliberate.com/2016/02/10/evolving-schema-org-in-practice-pt1-the-bits-and-pieces/>,
   2
   <http://dataliberate.com/2016/02/25/evolving-schema-org-in-practice-pt2-working-within-the-vocabulary/>,
   and 3
   <http://dataliberate.com/2016/03/01/evolving-schema-org-in-practice-pt3-choosing-where-to-extend/>
   .

   - For an overview of how the community works and the vocabulary evolves,
   I would recommend the “How We Work” page
   <http://schema.org/docs/howwework.html> of the documentation.

   - As to groups, my experience is that an open group, with members that
   do not have to be members of a particular other group, work well.
See Schema
   Bib Extend <https://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/>, Automotive
   Ontology Group <https://www.w3.org/community/gao/>, and Schema Course
   Extension <https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/> as
   examples.  It does not have to be a W3C Community Group as all these are,
   but these work well and reflect the cross-sector nature of such discussions.

   - Commercial / non-commercial is not really a major factor, it is about
   an engaged group of people making well thought through proposals that not
   only reflect the needs of their community but also how they interact with
   other sectors, and build on what is already established.

   Accompanying such proposals with real world use cases (current sites
   that would benefit) and examples that are spread across the web, preferably
   plus offers from site owners willing to apply what is proposed, all help
   towards a recognition of need, and benefit from the rest of the Schema.org
   community when considering the details of a proposal.

Hope that helps.

~Richard.

Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @rjw

On 23 August 2016 at 09:32, Jen Williams <jen@networkedplanet.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the info, good to know any history. I see there's an issue on
> github concerning types of organisation (https://github.com/schemaorg/
> schemaorg/issues/425) though my focus is on describing types of services
> offered by organisations (regardless of whether they are NGOs, Government
> or community groups)
>
> There's also an interesting project called Open VCS, but again this is to
> describe VCS organisation details (http://openvcs.github.io/).
>
> What would be the best way to proceed in researching how to come up with a
> viable extension for schema.org? Is there a formal submission process and
> guidelines?
>
> We have a small group gathering but I've not yet started a real push for
> numbers as I wanted to know the best way to proceed first. I'm sure that
> commercially driven extensions will always gain more traction than
> non-commercial, but the benefits of higher quality search results to people
> who need to find services offered by Not For Profits could really make a
> difference.
>
>
>
> On 22 August 2016 at 19:46, Vicki Tardif Holland <vtardif@google.com>
> wrote:
>
>> A few years ago, we added http://schema.org/GovernmentService. We hoped
>> to eventually cover NGO's as well, but the original schema never got much
>> traction, so it fell by the wayside.
>>
>> - Vicki
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Jen Williams <jen@networkedplanet.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi schema.org community,
>>>
>>> Recently at Barcamp Nonprofits (http://barcampnonprofits.com/) we had a
>>> session on making services discoverable, which had grown out of previous
>>> discussions from the unconference scene in the UK (Open Data Camp and VCSS
>>> Camp). Obviously schema.org came up as part of that discussion.
>>>
>>> What we'd like to know is whether anyone is spearheading the creation of
>>> a schema.org extension for describing the services provided by third
>>> (voluntary) sector organisations. If no one is, what's the best way to get
>>> one started?
>>>
>>> It sounds like this might overlap with some of the work done by the Open
>>> Referral project over in the US (the Open Eligibility project certainly is
>>> a great taxonomy to use as a starting point) and our first step of course
>>> is to make sure that work isn't being duplicated while at the same time
>>> providing terms and descriptions for NFP services that go beyond the human
>>> services focused on in the Open Referral project (e.g. environmental and so
>>> on).
>>>
>>> Can anyone give more info on whether this has been or is being looked
>>> into by schema.org? If so, what's the history and progress? We'd like
>>> to lend our time and support to extending schema.org coverage of the
>>> voluntary sector.
>>>
>>> Many thanks,
>>>
>>> Jen
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>> *Jen Williams*
>>> *Networked Planet Ltd*
>>> http://www.networkedplanet.com
>>> http://www.twitter.com/nwplanet
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> *Jen Williams*
> *Networked Planet Ltd*
> http://www.networkedplanet.com
> http://www.twitter.com/nwplanet
>
> Check out our animation: "The World of Linked Open Data" at
> https://youtu.be/EbpRofMqzF0
>