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Growing open technologies together
This was shortlisted by three of us initially but saw some further interest in the light of the discussion.
Key were two elements: the idea of something growing, and the reference to open technologies. The idea of using the word ’together' also resonated, with Samvera meaning ‘togetherness’ in Icelandic. The phrasing is also nice and snappy.
A question raised about reference to open technologies was whether this might be too broad. Samvera is creating precisely this, albeit in a quite focused field.
Collaboratively powering the future of knowledge sharing
This was shortlisted by four of us, and again generated some further interest from discussion.
The different components each resonated: we are collaborative, we are powering each other to achieve our goals, and we are concerned with the future of knowledge sharing and enabling that. So there is a certain ‘it does what says on the tin’ aspect to this.
It was also agreed that it is quite long for a motto and doesn’t easily slip off the tongue in the way a motto needs to. [CA - afterthought: might it be a tag line for the website instead]
Growing open knowledge together
This was also shortlisted by four of us on the call, though discussion seemed to lessen this a bit as we digested what it might be saying.
It generated some comments on the spreadsheet (not repeated here) that highlighted that the attraction of this motto is that it encapsulates why we are working with repositories, to enable the growth of knowledge and making that available. It also captured the ‘growing’ and ‘together’ themes of the first one above, and has the same snappiness, whilst focusing on the knowledge rather than the technology
The discussion considered two aspects: not all the knowledge in Samvera repositories is open, so we may be setting ourselves up for critique on that; and there is no mention of technologies.
Repositories with roots/Repositories with community roots
This was the most popular of those shortlisted by those on the call, selected by five of us. This was for ‘Repositories with roots’ and the alternative adding the word ‘community’ was arrived at on on the call.
This motto it was felt was closest to home with its reference to repositories, and also has the very nice link to the Samvera logo through use of ‘roots’. Whilst something with roots implies community, the addition of community was to emphasise this further. Considered to the snappiest of the suggestions.
The use of roots could be interpreted as fixed in the ground, and therefore maybe not innovative.
Overall, the sense was that there were some good contributions here, and each of those brought something really positive to what we’d like to say about ourselves. Taking this forward, we need to agree on whether we wish to focus on the community aspect of Samvera (which the current motto sort of does currently) or the technologies (in some way, whether broad or specific) or the purpose of curating knowledge which is why we work with repositories, or some mixture of these.
[Postscript, on reflection from writing up the notes - Empowering the future of knowledge sharing together]
Thoughts:
What sits alongside “If you want to go far, go together” vs. replacing it?
What helps invite new audiences to the Community?
We’ve evaluated what does a bit of branding along with community goals
The one that hits the invitation mark, would get new audiences engaged, may be “Collaboratively powering the future of knowledge sharing,” with the hook of looking to the future
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