The University of Pittsburgh and datHere are collaborating to strengthen the CKAN ecosystem with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s POSE program. The team is conducting interviews with different members of the ecosystem and has created a list of questions to answer. Check out how you can get involved in the ecosystem discovery work.
As many of you know, a team from the University of Pittsburgh and datHere have been working to develop a plan to strengthen the CKAN ecosystem thanks to support from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program. For more context, read our previous article about Towards a Robust, Open-Source Civic Data Ecosystem.
The team has collaborated with members of the ecosystem to co-create a list of questions it is working to answer through its ecosystem discovery activities and has started to conduct interviews with people that play different roles in the ecosystem, including stewards, maintainers of the code base, code and documentation contributors, and people that install or manage CKAN implementations.
There are two ways to be involved in the ecosystem discovery work:
Once the ecosystem discovery phase is complete in late spring, the project team will invite members of the ecosystem to participate in sense-making activities that will help the team interpret what was learned through the ecosystem discovery process. Activities this summer will also capture your ideas for strengthening the ecosystem, which can be included in a Phase II proposal to the NSF (due on September 7).
CKAN turns 20. Explore how an open-source experiment became global data infrastructure, powering governments, research, and public-interest data worldwide.
A recap of CKAN Monthly Live #39 covering POSE Phase II updates, the two upcoming storytelling workshops, a preview of the CKAN Ecosystem Catalog, and how the community can plug into CKAN@20 anniversary activities in 2026.