Infrastructuring the Lab

How does the Public Data Lab operate? How does it engage with various actors, groups and publics? What kinds of infrastructures does it need in place in order to support its activities? How can the lab collectively remember and learn across different activities?

This project involves supporting and taking care of the means through which the Public Data Lab and its projects and collaborations are materially organised, including its tools, servers, websites, channels and materials.

At the moment we’re focusing on things like:

• updating and developing our website, blog and social media accounts
• sharing activities through our online channels and a newsletter
• supporting, documenting and archiving projects and their associated materials
• organising events and spaces for learning, exchange and regathering across projects
• articulating shared ways of working
• caring for the lab’s tools, servers, channels, archives and other shared infrastructures
• exploring lightweight, accessible, experimental and sustainable approaches to publishing and digital infrastructure
• creating and sharing logos, memes, stickers and visual materials
• raising funds to support our work with OpenCollective

These are some of the areas of work we are currently thinking about. We welcome contributions from people interested in documentation, design, accessibility, archives, publishing, facilitation, governance, communications, digital infrastructure and other forms of collective care.

We especially welcome input from those with publishing, infrastructuring and facilitation experience from activist, community organising and civil society contexts.