OKFN Labs is launching Labs Sprints, a new initiative to create data-driven applications around a specific topic within a very short timeframe – a single week. As we start this, we’re looking for partners to help us frame the questions that our apps will aim to explore. To create such high-impact apps which can serve policy-making, our team needs a partner from the topic area who understands the background and the issue in question and can help us guide in the creations of a meaningful product.
Energy Data is theme for the first OKF Lab, taking place in Berlin 1-8 October, 2012, and bringing together a small team of coders, designers, data wranglers, technologists and policy experts. The theme is structured broadly to incorporate a wide range of sub-topics e.g. renewable energy resources and energy efficiency, fossil fuels and traditional energy structures, electricity demand and supply, government spending around energy policies as well as emissions from energy use in transport, industry, etc.
Open energy data is increasingly recognised by governments as “a powerful input to innovation” that can empower citizens, create jobs, encourage entrepreneurship and foster societal transformations. Access to energy data is also a citizen’s right: publicly-owned machine readable energy information and data should be made available and accessible to all sectors of society.
Creative energy data apps could assist users in forecasting future consumption based on previous usage data, mapping daily electricity consumption peaks and lows, providing web-based tools for emissions data-collection, comparing the efficiency and cost of alternative energy investments or presenting data in an easy-to-understand, interactive and engaging way.
Organisations that are working in this area are invited to partner with OKFN Labs on presenting a challenge for our team. The partners are expected to provide some support in the process of framing the Energy Lab and present an input in the form of a presentation about current research, policy and technological gaps.
Please contact us with a short e-mail, outlining the challenge in answering the following questions.
- What is the problem you would like to solve?
- Which are the groups and relevant audiences?
- What kind of data would you like to use?
Contact e-mail: sprints [at] okfn.org
Velichka is Project Coordinator of Open Economics at the Open Knowledge Foundation. She is based in London, a graduate of economics (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) and environmental policy (University of Cambridge) and a fellow of the Heinrich Böll Foundation @vndimitrova
