Open Data Day 2014 is February 22 – just two weeks away!

What: It’s a gathering of citizens in cities all around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data.
Why: To show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.
Where: All around the world, in person and online, in a timezone near you!

At the Open Knowledge Foundation, this is one of our favourite community initiatives of the year, and this time we had the honour to connect more globally than ever before, supporting and working with our fabulous Open Knowledge Foundation local and working groups and also connecting with other great groups active in the global open space.

We are hosting another G+ hangout for the whole Open Data Day community.

To join: Register for the “What are you doing Open Data Day?” G+ hangout.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014 – 12:00 EST / 5.00pm GMT

It will recorded for those unable to attend. See the last ODD video.

Some inspiring community Initiatives (among so many!)

A handpicked selection of inspiring community initiatives happening on Open Data Day 2014. Is yours missing? Tell us everything about it!

Spain

In Spain there will be six events on Open Data Day. In Madrid Open Knowledge Foundation Spain will be organizing the first OKFN Award for Open Knowledge, Open Data and Transparency to recognize extraordinary efforts in the public and private sector on those subjects. Submission process is now open – see more info at http://premio.okfn.es.
Additionally, there are events in Seville, Barcelona, Granada, Zaragoza and Vigo.

Canada

There are a number of Open Data Day events in Canada. The first ever Canada Open Data Summit will occur right before Open Data Day. Communities across the country are self-organizing events from Vancouver to Edmonton to Windsor to Sherbrooke. Heather Leson, OKF staffer, will participate in Toronto’s ODD in a roundtable discussion and OKF Ambassador, Diane Mercier, will be participating in Montreal’s Open Data Day hosted by Quebec Ouvert.

Argentina

In Argentina the Open Data Day event, organized by Buenos Aires Open Government Office, Ministry of Modernization, will focus on going out into the street to play with local data from the Buenos Aires data portal, and show neighbors some of the things that can be done with local data. For instance select street artists will join the team to process data and work on visualizations that will then afterwards be painted as street murals around Buenos Aires.
The idea is to do something of greater impact to include not only the data community, but also a bigger audience by mixing street art and data. Read more here.

Germany

In Germany Open Data Day will be celebrated in 5 cities. In Berlin, it will be hosted by Wikimedia and put a focus on health and social structure data that the city releases specifically for the event. They will also use this as a launch event for Code for Germany, their new network of local hack groups called OK Labs. Read more on the German Open Data Day website.

Kenya

Kenya passed a new constitution in 2010 that created devolved administrative units (counties) which have been operational since March last year. For Open Data Day in Kenya, organized among other by Open Institute, Angani and pawa254 they are aiming to engage communities in the three major cities, Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa to take advantage of the new system to organize themselves to build a demand driven open data ecosystem in their communities. Activities around this involve talking to the local governments and institutions to open up their data and/or scraping the data from their website. Find out more at the Open Data Day Kenya website.

Japan

In Japan a whopping 31 cities are participating in Open Data Day, which is being prepared in an impressive fashion. Last week the organizers — which include Code For Japan and Open Knowledge Foundation Japan — held an Open Data Day press conference to inform of the activities that were being planned; an event that was even covered in national media. Additionally, the group organized a pre-event a few days ago in which some of their fellow local organizers presented plans for Open Data Day activities in different areas (see some of the presentation slides: Open Street Map, ODD Chiba. You can keep track of everything on the Open Data Day Japan website.

After so much inspiration – time to roll up our sleeves!

Call to Action #1: Join Open Data Day!

• Looking for events already in the pipeline to join? Check out the #ODD14 Wiki and map.

• Looking for more resources about Open Data Day and hints on how to organise an event? Check out the Get Ready for Open Data Day Hangout with David Eaves, one of the initiators of Open Data Day (watch video recording and see etherpad notes) and join our upcoming Hangout on February 13, hosted by our very own Heather Leson and with an incredible line-up of special guests: Simeon Oriko (Open Institute – Kenya), Diane Mercier (OKF Canada Ambassador – Montreal), Johanna Picciano (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Hal Seki (Code for Japan)!

• Looking for an exciting project to work on on the day? Check out these Open Knowledge Foundation-powered projects we invite open data enthusiasts from all around the world to join and co-work on during #ODD14!

Call to Action #2: Share your stories!

• We’re collecting info about Open Data Day 2014 events all around the world, organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation community or by any other open community happy to connect with us (welcome! We’re so happy to connect with you!). Add info about your event here!

• We’ll then gather all the information and resources about your initiatives in a wrap-up blogpost on the OKF main blog and (in this case, only if you feel comfortable about being recognised as part of the OKF community) spread the word about your work also on our OKF Community Stories Tumblr!

Let’s get making and building with open data!