/ Announcement/ Community

Updates on Organizational Changes: Looking Forward to the New Year

We announced organizational changes at Dat and Code for Science & Society (CSS) last week. Since that announcement, we have heard from many colleagues, community members, collaborators. We love your emails and tweets of support. Thank you to everyone for your kind words over the last week. We have started to outline our organizational priorities for the new year. And, importantly, Danielle and Joe took Naomi’s advice and set aside time for much-needed self-care and rest.

Though this situation presented many challenges, we continue to be inspired by support from the Dat and wider open source/science/scholarship/data communities. We can’t wait to build amazing things together in 2018! We are committed to transparently sharing throughout this process. Here’s what we have been working on this week:

  • Drafting and fielding feedback on the new Dat draft Code of Conduct. We aims to showcase our values and community vision - are we hitting the mark? Please open an issue if something isn’t sounding right to you.
  • Identifying and communicating with candidate board members to build out the CSS board. (This sounds boring, but it’ll be quite exciting - stay tuned!)
  • Setting up individual @datproject.org email addresses! (Very professional. Enjoying the small wins.)
  • Working to expand funding opportunities for Dat and CSS. We’ll have an OpenCollective page up in the new year! This will enable us to easily accept smaller donations and enable you to see how we are spending money. (In the meantime, if you’re looking to make a tax deductible end of year contribution, consider donating!)
  • Discussing the development of a roadmap (v0.1) for organizations facing similar challenges. How can we help others navigate these issues long term? We’re discussing this idea with community stakeholders and look forward to opportunities for sharing our experiences through the last few weeks.

As we move into 2018, we are confident that this incredible and supportive community will continue to grow amazing things. As we push for long term sustainability for Dat, we want to share the public community response with our funders (who have invested much in Dat over the years). If you messaged us personally, we will reach out to ask permission to share your message. If you have additional feedback please email us at community@datproject.org (and please tell us if you’re okay sharing your feedback).

If you're at CCC in Leipzig, say hi to Mathias ! Happy New Year - we can’t wait to work together in 2018.

Thanks,
Danielle + Joe
(community@datproject.org)