Open position

Position Title: CKAN Contributor

Role: To proactively work on contributions which ensure the long term sustainability and innovation trajectory of the CKAN open source project. In doing so, you are to remain responsive to the direction of the CKAN tech team and be guided by the project’s technical roadmap.

With valued contributions being made on a regular basis, and due to the meritocratic nature of open source projects, the role will evolve alongside your growing capability to support the CKAN core. You will take on more leadership, more management tasks and more responsibility.

Reporting: As the role is funded via a donations to Open Knowledge Ethiopia, you will report to the organisation local organizer.

Skills and Experience:

We are seeking candidates who are familiar with the principles and values behind open source projects, particularly the values of participation, collaboration and openness. Demonstrated experience as a contributor to an open source project and involvement within open communities will be highly valued.

1. Python
 

 a. Ability to write clear code, experience with side-tools, like flake8, rope.

b.  Knowledge of architectural patterns

c.   Knowledge of any Python framework(django, flask, falcon, cherryPy, etc.)

d.    Knowledge of difference between Py2 and 3, understanding of iterators (and why there are so many iterators in Py3)

2. JavaScript

a.    jQuery, functional scopes

b.    DOM manipulations

c.     At least base knowledge of HTML/CSS.

3. SQL
 

 a. Understanding not only base commands, like `select` but also different kinds of joins, aggregation.

 b.  Experience with ORM library(i.e. DjangoORM or SQLAlchemy) 

4. GIT

   

  a. Understanding of workflow with forks, branches, pull(merge) requests

 b.  Knowledge of few other commands, aside from commit and merge. If you know what `git bisect` is, then that is great.

5. Understanding of command line(terminal) and ability to use it in some way 
6. Nice to have: Knowledge of NoSQL databases, full-text search and cache engines, maybe experience with bigData.

Language:

English required

Location:

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Application period: September 10 to September 25, 2018.

Application details: Please send your resume and application letter to solomon3m@gmail.com.

Ethiopia: OpenCon 2018 Addis Abeba

A notable event was held in celebration of Open Data Day 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Open Knowledge Ethiopia with the support of Addis Ababa University, Open Knowledge International and SPARC hosted OpenCon 2018 Addis Ababa (a satellite event of the global annual OpenCon meeting). The event brought together 25 participants including students, researchers, academics and Librarians. 

The Open Data Day event in Ethiopia was officially opened by Mr. Mesfin Gezahegn, University Librarian of Addis Ababa University (AAU). He stressed that AAU strongly supports open data initiatives and hosted various workshops and trainings in open data, open access and open science. He also promised that the University will continue supporting open data initiatives in the future. Following the opening, Mr. Solomon Mekonnen of AAU introduced participants to open science concepts with sharing international initiatives related to open science that can also be applied in Ethiopia. 

The next talk was about open research data by Dr. Melkamu Beyene, Assistant professor at AAU, focusing on the advantages of opening research data and issues to be considered when sharing data. The final presentation for the morning session was by Mr. Mesfin Gezahegn on the role of open data to fight 

corruption in Ethiopia.

Following the presentations, a panel discussion was conducted mainly focusing on open science and open research data. Major issues raised included licensing options when sharing research data, policy for open research data, creating awareness on open research data and open science and the role of open data communities in pushing forward the agenda of open science. 

In the afternoon session, several open science tools were demonstrated to the participants, including Zenodo, re3data, ORCID and the Open Science Framework (OSF). There was also a session for lighting talks which attracted two graduate students to talk about their research projects and get feedback from the participants. Postgraduate students Yemaneberhan Lemma and Olyad Fekede talked about their project on Linked data and Sentiment Analysis respectively connecting with open data. Mr. Michael Melese who is a PhD student at AAU also shared his experience on open science tools to the participants.

Finally the event was concluded by a discussion on future activities. It was agreed that the event successfully created awareness on open science and open research data, but it was stressed that there is a need for longer training on these topics to PhD students and early career researchers. It was also suggested that there should be monthly open knowledge Ethiopia community meetups to collaborate on open science issues that are raised in the workshop. The only challenge faced during the workshop, was power failure in the computer laboratory for some time in the middle of running the practical sessions but the participants use their personal laptop and smartphones to continue practicing on open science tools.