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OKFN meetups in Boston and San Francisco, 3rd October 2012
The Open Knowledge Foundation will be hosting some of its first meetups in the US next week. On Wednesday 3rd October you can join others interested in open data, open content and the public domain in Boston and San Francisco. The Boston meetup is focusing on “global annotation, web caching, and shared data initiatives” and […]
Read moreOpen data and access to information advocates unite!
Today is the tenth International Right to Know Day. Freedom of Information organisations and advocates around the world are marking the day with activities to celebrate and raise awareness of the right to information. FOIAnet has a good overview of things that are happening around the world. What does access to information have to do […]
Read moreStadt Land Code : An incubator for civic tools in Germany
Today is the launch of OKFN-De’s new project ‘Stadt Land <Code>’ (‘City State <Code>’), an incubator to create digital tools for Citizens. This project is aimed at getting developers to create and implement applications to make the life of citizens in Germany easier and better. Together, the plan is to create useful applications for civic […]
Read moreVisualising Europe’s Languages
Jonathan Van Parys of Where’s My Villo? fame got in touch to tell us about a nice little mini-project he’s just launched to coincide with the European Day of Languages, which is today: Launching on the 2012 European Day of Languages, languageknowledge.eu is a new website that visualizes language knowledge in Europe based on the […]
Read more“Demand carbon dioxide data” says Hans Rosling to open data advocates at OKFestival
Gapminder is one of the best known examples of a project which uses open data to improve public understanding of big global issues and trends. Yesterday Gapminder Founder Hans Rosling, who is also on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board, gave a spectacular keynote talk at OKFestival, for which he received a standing ovation. In […]
Read moreNew open source “publishing-house-in-a-box” makes it easier for scholars to publish open access monographs
Today the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) released a new piece of software called the Open Monograph Press. As it says in their press release: OMP is an open source software platform for managing the editorial workflow required to see monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions through internal and external review, editing, cataloguing, production, and publication. […]
Read more“Rest assured, the EU is behind you” says European Commissioner Neelie Kroes to OKFestival participants
If you have more than a passing interest in EU policies related to the internet, digital content and digital technologies then you’ve probably heard of Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Today Neelie gave a virtual address for participants at OKFestival, one of the largest open knowledge […]
Read moreOKFN India Trip – the Roundup
This is the final post in the Open Data in India series. Our visit to India wasn’t just about meetups… the following post deals with the individuals and organisations that Lucy and Laura met whilst in India, the questions they were asked and the projects they were introduced to. It is cross-posted on the OKFN […]
Read moreThe Revenge of the Yellow Milkmaid: Cultural Heritage Institutions open up dataset of 20m+ items
The following is a guest blog post by Harry Verwayen, Business Development Director at Europeana, Europe’s largest cultural heritage data repository. Last week, on September 12 to be exact, we were proud to announce that Europeana released metadata for more than 20 million cultural heritage objects under a Creative Commons Zero Universal Public Domain […]
Read moreRecycle public sector data with the Big Clean on November 3rd 2012 in Prague
Public sector data lives a short life. Its life spans the life of applications that are hidden deep inside of public bodies. Tied to application-specific data formats, the data dies with the application that hosts it. During its lifetime the data stays within the public sector, serving a few predetermined purposes, while the ability to […]
Read moreCall for Participation: First Open Economics International Workshop
supported by The Open Economics Working Group is inviting PhD students and academics with relevant experience and research focus to participate in the first Open Economics Workshop, which would take place on December 17-18, 2012 in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop is to build an understanding of the value of open data and […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July – August 2012
This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and celebrate […]
Read more#OpenDataEDB 3
Amidst the kerfuffle and cacophony of the Fringe Festival packing up for another year, the Edinburgh contingent came together again to meet, greet, present and argue all aspects of Open Data and Knowledge. OKFN Meet-ups are friendly and informal evenings for people to get together to share and debate all areas of openness. Depending on […]
Read moreUK Departmental Government Spending – Improving the Quality of Reporting
Continuing in their mission to make spending data more accessible and comprehensible, the Spending Stories team and the team of Data.Gov.Uk are releasing a reporting tool today that will help journalists and analysts to pick the freshest and best departmental spending data to work with when exploring the UK central government expenditure. Spending data is […]
Read moreOpen Data, Technology and Government 2.0 – What Should We, And Should We Not Expect
This is second of two pieces about “managing expectations” (the first is here). Open data has come a long way in the last few years and so have expectations. There’s a growing risk that open data will be seen as a panacea that will magically solve climate change or eliminate corruption or “fix” democracy. This […]
Read moreNew open access recommendations ten years on from Budapest Open Access Initiative
The notion of open access – or making research freely usable by all, without cost or legal barriers – has been in the news quite a bit this year. It received significant media coverage on the back on the so-called Academic Spring, and subsequent high profile activities and announcements in the UK, the US and […]
Read moreOpen Street Map has officially switched to ODbL – and celebrates with a picnic
Open Street Map is probably the best example of a successful, community driven open data project. The project was started by Steve Coast in 2004 in response to his frustration with the Ordnance Survey’s restrictive licensing conditions. Steve presented on some of his early ‘mapping parties’ – where a small handful of friends would walk […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July-August 2012
This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and […]
Read moreIgnite Cleanweb
Ignite Event in London This Thursday in London, Cleanweb UK invites you to their first Ignite evening, hosted by Forward Technology. Come along and see a great lineup of lightning talks, all about what’s happening with sustainability and the web in the UK. From clean clouds, to home energy, to climate visualisation, there will plenty […]
Read moreNew Members of the Open Knowledge Foundation Board: Jane Silber and Gavin Starks
We’re delighted two new members to the Open Knowledge Foundation Board: Jane Silber and Gavin Starks. Jane is currently CEO of Canonical the company behind Ubuntu, while Gavin is Founder and Chairman of AMEE, the provider of Environmental Intelligence using Open Data. At the same time we can also announce that long-time Board member Jordan […]
Read moreOKFestival Green Hackathon
When: 19th-20th of September Where: Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Hämeentie 135 C Helsinki (Hack workshop 3) Welcome to two days of hacking for openness and sustainability at the OKFestival in Helsinki. This is an opportunity to meet great developers and sustainability experts and to help out our planet with some innovative […]
Read moreOpenstreetmap Conference 2012 October 19th-20th Edinburgh
This guest post was submitted by Bob Kerr of Openstreetmap.org. Openstreetmap.org has just had its 8th Birthday. For those new to the name, Openstreetmap is the wikipedia of maps or rather a single map, the map of our world. Initially born because the cost of licensing Ordnance Survey data was £5000 for a single use, […]
Read moreBuilding a data portal with CKAN
A while ago, Augusto Hermann wrote on this blog about a unique civic engagement project: the participatory process of building a government data portal in Brazil. The site, dados.gov.br, is still going strong, and Augusto has now written over on the CKAN blog about the process of building and deploying it using CKAN, the Open […]
Read more2 Weeks Left Until OKFestival! Online Schedule, Calls for Participation, Evening Events and Free Hackathons
A Special Gift for Festival Participants… For the 600+ brave souls already registered for the world’s first-ever Open Knowledge Festival, here’s our first-ever participant bulletin! The gems and secrets below have been built from the weekly-curated, community-written summaries we’ve been sharing behind the scenes with our teams of Guest Programme Planners around the globe – and with less than two weeks left until […]
Read moreOpenDataMx: Opening Up the Government, one Bit at a Time
On August 24-25, another edition of OpenDataMx took place: a 36-hour public data hackathon for the development of creative technological solutions to questions raised by the civil society. This time the event was hosted by the University of Communication in Mexico City. The popularity of the event has grown: a total of 63 participants including […]
Read moreHackday for News Apps at OK Fest
GOAL: You have six hours to make a working news app. There are three of you, a coder, a graphic designer and a journalist. Is it possible? Yes. Five times in the last two years the biggest Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, has invited people to do just this, at HS Open hack days, which I […]
Read moreDevelopment Data Challenge
Over the weekend of 25th and 26th August, the second event in a series of ‘Development Data Challenges’ took place at the Guardian’s offices in London. What is a ‘Development Data Challenge’? Development Data Challenges are an interesting concept. They draw together a disparate group of people (we had development experts, coders, designers, data wranglers, […]
Read moreIntroducing the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness
This guest post is by Scott Hubli and Andrew G. Mandelbaum from the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI is partering with the Sunlight Foundation and the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency to enhance networking among parliamentary monitoring organizations on issues of parliamentary openness and democratic reform, with the support of the Omidyar Network, the […]
Read moreOpen Data – Delhi
This is post 4 of 5 in the Open Data India series, following Lucy and Laura’s visit to India to learn about the challenges and opportunities for open data. Read previous posts from Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. Our final stop in India was Delhi. Several people had told us that Delhi was the ‘policy capital’ […]
Read moreOpen Data – Mumbai
This is post 3 of 5 of the Open Data India series, following Lucy and Laura’s visit to learn about the challenges and opportunities for open data. Read previous posts from Bangalore and Chennai on the main blog. After joining forces with the DataMeet group in Bangalore and Transparent Chennai’s open data workshop, we were […]
Read moreUpdate to Open Knowledge Foundation Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
We’re posting this announce to let people know we’ve updated the Open Knowledge Foundation’s general privacy policy and terms of use. Updates to the privacy policy are fairly limited and largely around making the setup around email more explicit. The terms of use is somewhat new in that it consolidates in one place terms of […]
Read moreEnding Secrecy – Why Global Transparency Rules Matter
Earlier this week, the SEC voted on the final rules of Section 1504 of the Dodd Frank Act. Global Witness teamed up with the Open Knowledge Foundation to explain what these rules are about, and why they matter. View the infographic ‘Ending Secrecy – Why Global Transparency Rules Matter’ On August 22nd 2012, the U.S. […]
Read moreJISC Open Biblio 2 project – final report
This is cross-posted from openbiblio.net. Following on from the success of the first JISC Open Bibliography project we have now completed a further year of development and advocacy as part of the JISC Discovery programme. Our stated aims at the beginning of the second year of development were to show our community (namely all those […]
Read moreOpen Culture and Science Hackday at OKFestival
At the OKFestival in Helsinki next month, the Open Heritage and Open Science streams will be kicking off their three days of activities with a joint hackday dedicated to working with and building things with open cultural and scientific data. The day will involve a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, a digital humanities coding sprint working with tools […]
Read moreOpen Data – Chennai
This is part 2 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. You can read the first post ‘Open Data – Bangalore’ on the OKFN blog. Chennai, formerly Madras, is only a short train ride away from Bangalore. Laura and I hadn’t been intending on travelling to Chennai on this trip, but a mail from […]
Read moreOpenDataMx: Open Data Hackathon in Mexico City
This weekend Mexico City will host OpenDataMx, a Hackathon of public open data lasting 36 hours, during which participants will develop creative technical solutions to solve various civil society problems. Programmers, designers, members of civil society organizations (CSOs) and government officials are invited to participate in OpenDataMx and collaborate in web and mobile solutions […]
Read moreDevelopment Data Challenge – London, August 25-26
Where Do Development Questions Meet Development Data? Where: The Guardian (Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2AP) When: Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26 2012 This weekend in London, coders, designers, development experts, data wranglers and interested citizens and invited for the Development Data Challenge in London. Join us at the Guardian for a weekend […]
Read moreOpen Data – Bangalore
Laura and Lucy from the OKFN team recently travelled to India to learn where the challenges and opportunities for open data in India lay. This is part 1 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. The Bangalore data scene is huge. A bustling IT and data mining industry means that you are never far […]
Read moreA Brief Summary of the World’s First Open Knowledge Festival
With only 4 weeks left until the OKFestival week starts in Helsinki, here is our latest rundown of everything you need to know about the event. We’re very excited about what’s in store for participants this year! OVERVIEW New to OKFestival? We are delighted to invite you to this year’s event in Helsinki, Finland – […]
Read moreOpenData Edinburgh meets again – August 30th at the Informatics Forum
As the comedians, acrobats and miscellaneous thespians prepare to leave the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for another year, it’s time for the open data crew to reclaim the city! Following on from the two successful meet-ups which took place in March and May this year, #OpenDataEDB will be returning for its third event of 2012. For […]
Read moreThe very first Open Data and Democracy Initiative Hackathon, South Africa
If knowledge is power then data are the individual watts; one by itself is aesthetically pleasing, but functionally useless. It’s only when we add all the watts together that we produce enough power to move forward. Constitutionally we own this power, but the trickle of information provided to the public is practically useless – and […]
Read moreElva – Texting for Security
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia has upturned the lives of thousands of citizens in the Georgian region of Shida Kartli. Four years after the intense five-day war, which saw Russia gain control over the neighbouring territory of South Ossetia, many inhabitants of Shida Kartli now find their villages lined by military checkpoints, […]
Read moreCC license version 4.0: Helping meet the needs of open data publishers and users
Over the last few months, Creative Commons has been working on the next version of its license suite, version 4.0. The goals of version 4.0 are wide-ranging, but the overall objective is clear: update the licenses so they are considerably more robust, yet easy to understand and use, for both existing communities and new types […]
Read moreCall for research proposals: open data in developing countries
The Web Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are looking to fund case study research on the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries. Open data policies are spreading across the world: but how does open data play out on the ground in different settings? What is needed for the potential transparency […]
Read moreScotland focus
Following Edinburgh-based Meet-ups earlier this year, a small group of people interested in promoting openness recently met together to link-up ideas and projects, and explore possible areas of collaboration. The attendees were: Ewan Klein, University of Edinburgh Sally Kerr, City of Edinburgh Council Sam Leon, Open Knowledge Foundation Naomi Lillie, Open Knowledge Foundation Jilly Mathews, […]
Read moreOKFestival Updates: Early Bird Ticket Extension, Developer Travel Bursaries and Open Data Cooking!
For those just arriving back to daily life after the summer holidays (and the Mars Curiosity landing!), we have some good news regarding OKFestival – our Early Bird ticket deadline has been extended to this Wednesday, August 8th, 2012. This will give you more time to get those tickets reserved well in advance so you […]
Read moreOKFN Energy Lab: Call for Partners
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 […]
Read moreManaging Expectations
We’re big on promoting open information: be that sonnets, statistics, genes or geodata. We’re big on it because we think it has the potential to improve the welfare of peoples around the world in a variety of ways, from making governments more accountable to improving research on cancer. At the same time I think it […]
Read moreOpen Science Hackday – with donuts, the Queen, and a whole lot of rain…
This is a post by Jenny Molloy, coordinator of the OKFN Open Science Working Group, and Laura Newman, community coordinator. The blog post is also featured on the Open Science blog. It was a day of ‘firsts’ for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Science working group at their summer hackday on Saturday: the first hackday […]
Read moreScience, data and the public
Earlier this week the European Commission released a package of documents related to their nascent policies on access to scientific information. What will these mean for science and for public engagement with science? New open access policies have been in the headlines quite a bit recently, as politicians and policy makers respond to the wave […]
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