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 – a series of hands-on workshops, talks, hackathons, meetings and sprints organised by a wide range of open knowledge communities around the globe. OKFestival 2012 combines the themes of our annual Open Government Data Camp (OGDCamp) and Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) into a week of action and inspiration organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Finnish Institute in London, Aalto Media Factory along with hundreds of Guest Programme Planners. With over 400 tickets already reserved by participants from more than 40 nations, OKFestival is the one of the world’s largest open knowledge events to date – and we want you to join us.
DATES & ACCOMMODATION
OKFestival 2012 runs from Monday 17th to Saturday 22nd of September. We offer both day and week tickets, with week tickets covering all three of OKFestival’s action-packed Core Conference Days from Tuesday 18th September to Thursday 20th September. A variety of Satellite Events are also running before and after the event, with a summary and debrief day on Friday 21st September. From Couchsurfing with Finnish locals to hotels in downtown Helsinki, there are many affordable travel and accommodation options available to make your stay in Finland a great one.
FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING
The 2012 theme of OKFestival is Open Knowledge in Action, looking at the value that can be generated by opening up knowledge, the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from this, and the impacts that transparency can have in our societies.
This year’s schedule is diverse, with over 13 guest-planned Topic Streams from “Transparency and Accountability” to “Openness in Sustainability” including programming such as:
- A series of hackathons and coding jams including a Green Hackathon with CESC, a hackathon where the cultural heritage stream teams up with open science, and an introductory coding jam with RailsGirls Finland.
- A variety of participatory sessions from hands-on open hardware workshops in Finland’s first FABlab to the world’s first Art of Open Data Cooking workshop to sessions on the School of Data.
- A set of in-depth meetings on different topics related to openness, from developer meetups about Open Source software with Finland’s OpenMind conference, to sessions on the Open Government Partnership and a new EU Citizens’ Initiative, to a live broadcast between innovation hubs in Finland and Africa.
- An increasingly-imminent list of Featured Speakers from the Gapminder Foundation‘s Hans Rosling to Member of European Parliament Anneli Jäätteenmäki to the World Bank‘s Carlos Rossel to the Free Software Foundation‘s Karsten Gerloff to Climate Change Capital‘s James Cameron.
BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY
Tickets are available online – reserve yours now to join the largest open knowledge crowd of the year in Finland. Tickets are selling fast and our list of confirmed festival attendees continues to grow, with participants from Jyväskylä to Guyana.
GET IN TOUCH
Have questions for our Topic Stream planners or the Core Organising Team? Want to get involved by proposing a satellite or evening event? Feel free to contact our Guest Programme Planners via email and get involved on Twitter, on our Facebook group and on the public Flickr Pool. We look forward to meeting you in Helsinki this autumn!
