2022: A Year of Highlights

:: Intro

This year, we focused on creating favorable conditions to drive the CKAN project toward an awesome 3.0 release. The project has now a Product Owner who leads the process and inspects a wide range of areas around CKAN.

One of the great news this year is that funding has been secured for strengthening the CKAN ecosystem. A team composed of University of Pittsburgh faculty and staff and datHere were awarded a planning grant to develop a plan to strengthen the CKAN ecosystem as part of the POSE funding program.

We welcomed two team members to the CKAN Tech Team who have been involved in the maintenance of CKAN for a long time. We announced that we have changed our supported version policy and will now only support two minor versions of CKAN at a time. We also announced that work on CKAN 2.10 is progressing for a January 2023 release.

CKAN Monthly Live is now 14 meetups old - we've hosted 14 community meetups so far, and every time has been a success. And the big news: the co-stewards are now looking to establish the first permanent development role for CKAN!

Highlights:

• CKAN 3.0 Product Strategy kicked off and is in ongoing development
• CKAN project with a new PO
• Funding provided for strengthening CKAN ecosystem
• New additions to the CKAN Tech team
• Work on 2.10 progressed for Jan 2023 release
• New supported versions policy
• CKAN Monthly Live
• What’s next: we’re looking for a python developer
• Acknowledgments

:: CKAN 3.0

In April 2022 CKAN’s co-stewards, Datopian and Link Digital, kicked off an engagement to steer the CKAN project toward an awesome 3.0 release. CKAN 3.0 will build on the success of CKAN 2.x and continue to improve, promising to be even more awesome, with new features and improvements that will make it easier for all kinds of organizations to publish and share their data online.

The whole process is designed to be inclusive - involving as many stakeholders as possible and relying on input from many fronts: contributors, publishers, users, and vendors. We’ve been having constant initiatives and discussions and we’ve been inspecting a wide range of areas surrounding CKAN. If you want to know more, you can check out our blog and you can also watch some of our CKAN Monthly Live sessions:

• The Future of CKAN - watch it to learn more about the initiative (you can also check out Getting to CKAN 3.0 presentation)
• CKAN Pathways to 3.0: post-research analysis - watch it to learn about the practical implications of CKAN 3.0 Product Strategy

:: New Product Owner

Work on the CKAN 3.0 Product Strategy, which is ongoing, is led by Alex Gostev - who joined CKAN project as a Product Owner. Through frequent interactions with stakeholders in various online formats, Alex has become an active contributor to the CKAN project. He is a jack of all trades and a real go-getter – even though he recently joined the CKAN project, he shows аn infinite atomic warhead of enthusiasm and passion about CKAN! Alex, we’re super happy to have you on our team!

:: Funding provided through POSE Program

CKAN has evolved both as a product and through its governance structure over the past 16 years. It was kicked off by Rufus Pollock (founder of Open Knowledge Foundation - OKFN, currently President at Datopian) as part of his work there, and is now managed by two co-stewards - Datopian and Link Digital, with the assets held in trust by OKFN. Over the years, a great ecosystem of stewards, consultants, developers, adopting organizations, and data users has formed around the product. It is essential that this CKAN ecosystem remains robust.

Earlier this year, the U.S. National Science Foundation launched its Pathways to Enable Open Source Ecosystems (POSE) funding program to support open-source technologies that provide solutions to problems of national and societal importance. A team composed of faculty and staff at the University of Pittsburgh and datHere were awarded a planning grant to develop a plan to strengthen the CKAN ecosystem. This is some really great news! Shout-out to Joel Natividad, without whom this would not have happened! Joel, it's people like you that keep the project moving forward! Learn more about the project in this article: Towards a Robust, Open-Source Civic Data Ecosystem.

:: CKAN Tech Team

This year the CKAN Tech Team welcomed two new members: Brett Jones (@kowh-ai) and Patricio del Boca (@pdelboca). They have both been involved in the maintenance of CKAN for a long time and have made valuable contributions across different areas. We truly appreciate your dedication! Read more here.

:: CKAN 2.10 release

The upcoming CKAN 2.10 release is the culmination of almost two years of work by the Tech Team and dozens of contributors! It is currently in its final phase of stabilization and testing and is expected to be released in January 2023. This release is focused on making CKAN more robust from a security point of view (read more in Upcoming authentication changes in CKAN 2.10) as well as providing a better developer experience with type hints, configuration declaration, support for signals, and more. As a community-led project, CKAN relies on help from different contributors. See how you can help move the release forward here.

:: Supported versions policy

At the beginning of the year, CKAN Tech team decided to support two CKAN minor versions at one time. The currently supported version is CKAN 2.9. Security and bug fixes are also provided for CKAN 2.8. Earlier versions are no longer supported. Once CKAN 2.10 is out, support for CKAN 2.8 will be dropped as well, in accordance with the new policy.

Note: Support for Python 2 in CKAN 2.9 will be dropped at the end of December 2022. We strongly encourage you to upgrade to Python 3.

:: CKAN Monthly Live

We have to admit, we're pretty impressed with how far we've come since the launch of CKAN Monthly Live in 2020. It was Rufus Pollock who really pushed hard in order for these to happen. We've hosted 14 community meetups so far, and every time has been a success. The event has averaged 50+ attendees every time and has helped create a space for users to share their insights, experiences, and ideas. We'd like to thank each and every one of you who has attended these events and participated in the discussions - your passion and dedication are invaluable. Thank you for making this journey possible.

We will continue organizing these events next year so stay tuned! If you want to watch our previous meetups, check out our Playlist of past meetups. Each one is a fantastic source of CKAN-related insights! If you want to stay up to date with our events and get notifications - subscribe to our CKAN Monthly Live guest list.

:: What’s next: We are looking for a Python developer!

The co-stewards are now seeking to establish the first permanent development role for CKAN! If you’re passionate about data and open-source and you want to be part of building the next generation of open-source tooling for open data management systems, we’d love to hear from you! Please see how you can apply here.

:: Acknowledgments

The CKAN Community is one of the biggest assets of the CKAN Project. We are grateful to Adrià Mercader whose insightful leadership, knowledge, and management skills benefit the whole project immensely. Thank you, Adria, for your continuous support and presence whenever needed!

We are also grateful to the rest of the CKAN Tech Team: Ian Ward, Sergey Motornyuk, Jari Voutilainen, Konstantin Sivakov, Brett Jones, and Patricio del Boca. Folks, you are all rock stars!

Big-up to Joel Natividad, Alex Gostev, Anuar Ustayev, Eric Soroos and many others for their passion, enthusiasm, and trust in the project!

A special shout-out goes to co-stewards Steven De Costa and Rufus Pollock! It is impossible to overstate the importance of these two men - their sparkles light up the whole sky. Their leadership inspires and motivates us to do what we do, and we are grateful for their guidance, support and encouragement.

Thanks to everyone who is involved in the project directly or indirectly. The CKAN Project would not have been possible without the contribution of so many people from so many countries! As CKAN co-steward Steven De Costa says: “Building together is the way CKAN has come so far already. With so many people behind it, it can only build stronger and farther”.

Now you know what a year it has been. And to think, we’re not even halfway done with our plans! If you want to get involved yourself, we'd love to hear from you! There are many ways to get involved in the CKAN Community. Have a look at how to connect with us here!

We hope you'll join us in making CKAN even better!