Datawijs, bridge between young people and open data

This post is by Lara Deraes and was crossposted from the Open Knowledge Belgium blog. Open data is gaining more importance these days. Yet, a lot of young people don’t know what open data is, or how they can benefit from it. That’s where Datawijs comes in. It’s an interactive video series, that introduces teenagers […]

Open: A Short Film about Open Government, Open Data and Open Source

This is a guest post from Richard Pietro the writer and director of Open. If you’re reading this, you’re likely familiar with the terms Open Government, Open Data, and Open Source. You probably understand how civic engagement is being radically transformed through these movements. Therein lays the challenge: How can we reach everyone else? The […]

Why Open Contracting Matters to the OGP Agenda in Africa

This is a guest post by Seember Nyager. Seember is an Open Knowledge/Code4Africa Open Government Fellow advocating for the adoption of open contracting data standards in Nigeria. To be honest, the state of public services across Africa shames us. Often, you find that public services do not meet the generally accepted standards of efficiency, regular […]

Meet the 2015 School of Data fellows!

This is a cross-post from the School of Data blog, written by their Community Manager Cédric Lombion. See the original. We’re delighted to announce that after much difficult deliberation, our Class of 2015 School of Data Fellows have now been decided! We ended up with nearly 600 applicants from 82 different countries – so it […]

Fantasy Frontbench – giving the public a way to compare politicians

This is a guest blog post by Matt Smith, who is a learning technologist at UCL. He is interested in how technology can be used to empower communities. Introduction Fantasy Frontbench is a not-for-profit and openly licensed project aimed at providing the public with an engaging and accessible platform for directly comparing politicians. A twist […]

Open Knowledge Russia: Experimenting with data expeditions

As part of Open Education Week #openeducationwk activities we are publishing a post on how Open Knowledge Russia have been experimenting with data expeditions. This a follow up post to one that appeared on the Open Education Working Group Website which gave an overview of Open Education projects in Russia. The authors of this post […]

India Open Data Summit 2015

This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Knowledge India blog and the Open Steps blog. It is written by Open Knowledge Ambassador Subhajit Ganguly, who is a physicist and an active member of various open data, open science and Open Access movements. Open Knowledge India, with support from the National Council of Education Bengal […]

#openbelgium15, the Open Data Discussion after Open Data Day

This is a guest blog post by Pieter-Jan Pauwels from Open Knowledge Belgium. This past weekend has been buzzing with activities around the world during #OpenDataDay. In Belgium however they saved their strength for this week in order to host the #openbelgium15 conference, featuring industry examples, community workshops and much more. Over 180 people are […]

Competition now open – enter your app and win 5,000 euro

This is a cross-post by Ivonne Jansen-Dings, originally published on the Apps4Europe blog, see the original here. With 10 Business Lounges happening throughout Europe this year, Apps for Europe is trying to find the best open data applications and startups that Europe has to offer. We invite all developers, startups and companies that use open […]

An unprecedented Public-Commons partnership for the French National Address Database

This is a guest post, originally published in French on the Open Knowledge Foundation France blog Nowadays, being able to place an address on a map is an essential information. In France, where addresses were still unavailable for reuse, the OpenStreetMap community decided to create its own National Address Database available as open data. The […]

France Prefers to Pay (twice) for Papers by Its Researchers

France may not have any money left for its universities but it does have money for academic publishers. While university presidents learn that their funding is to be reduced by EUR 400 million, the Ministry of Research has decided, under great secrecy, to pay EUR 172 million to the world leader in scientific publishing Elsevier […]

Call for action: Help improve the open knowledge directory

This is a guest blog post from Open Steps, an independent blog aggregating worldwide information around Open Cultures in form of articles, videos and other resources. Its aim is to document open knowledge (OK) related projects and keep track on the status of such initiatives worldwide. From organisations using Open Data, promoting Open Source technologies, […]

Open Access in Ireland: A case-study

Following last week’s Open Access Week blog series, we continue our celebration of community efforts in this field. Today we give the microphone to Dr. Salua Nassabay from Open Knowledge Ireland in a great account from Ireland, originally posted on the Open Knowledge Ireland blog. In Ireland, awareness of OA has increased within the research […]

Let’s imagine a creative format for Open Access

This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Celya Gruson-Daniel from Open Knowledge France and reports from “Open Access Xsprint”, a creative workshop held on October 20 in the biohackerspace La Paillasse in Paris – as announced […]

Nature-branded journal goes Open Access-only: Can we celebrate already?

This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Miguel Said from Open Knowledge Brazil and is a translated version of the original that can be found the Brazilian Open Science Working Group's blog. Nature Publishing Group reported […]

Open Access and the humanities: On our travels round the UK

This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Alma Swan, Director of Key Perspectives Ltd, Director of Advocacy forSPARC Europe, and Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship. Whither the humanities in a world moving inexorably to open values […]

Open Government countries ranking 2013 (based on OGP data)

This is a guest post by Alberto Abella, head of the Spanish Chapter of Open Knowledge, and originally appeared at gobernamos.com. Open Government (ogov) is possibly next democracy’s milestone. Should you care about open government? Possibly, because it guarantees transparency and accountability. But not only IMHO. In 2014 this passive role for the citizens is […]

Code for Germany launched!

This is a guest blog post by Fiona Krakenbürger, research associate at Open Knowledge Foundation DE and Community Manager at Code for Germany In July 2014, the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany launched its program “Code for Germany! Prior to the OK Festival in Berlin, we presented the project to the media, international partners, city representatives, […]

OpenCorporates invites you to join the launch of #FlashHacks

This is a guest blog post by OpenCorporates. OpenCorporates is now 3 years old. Looking back our first blog on the Open Knowledge (Foundation) blog about reaching 20 million companies, it is heartening to see that we have come a long way. We now have over 70 million companies in 80 jurisdictions worldwide making us […]

We are the Community: Join our OKFest community summit

This is a guest blog post by Kersti from Open Knowledge Netherlands and Rayna from Open Knowledge France/OpenMENA. Both are leading the organisation of the Open Knowledge Community Summit with the support of the Open Knowledge Central team. Less than two weeks to go until the global open community will meet in Berlin and at […]

Open Steps: Documenting open knowledge in South America

This is the fourth and (so far) final travel-guest blog post from Open Steps, an initiative by two young Berliners Alex (a software developer from Spain) and Margo (a graduate in European politics from France) who decided to leave their daily lives and travel around the world for one year to meet people and organizations […]

Brazil’s Development Bank – The Elephant in the Stadium

This is a guest blog post by Andrew Simms analyst and campaigner at our StopSecretContracts.org coalition partner Global Witness. If you believe public contracts should be open contracts, sign our petition and let world leaders know. This article first appeared on Global Witness’s website. Symbolism doesn’t get much better than this – thousands of homeless […]

Energy Buildings Performance Scenarios as Linked Open Data

This is a blog post by Martin Kaltenböck & Anne-Claire Bellec, cross-posted from the Semantic Puzzle Blog. Anne-Claire Bellec is Communications Manager at the Global Buildings Performance Network (http://www.gbpn.org), located at GBPNs headquarters in Paris, France, and Martin Kaltenböck is the responsible for web-based data tools at Semantic Web Company, a Linked Open Data specialised […]

Let’s try something new: unFestival!

This is a guest blog post by the DATA (Datos Abiertos, Transparencia y Acceso a la información) Uruguay Team. This year’s OKFestival will play host to many new ideas, and this is one of them. We’ve created a space which allows “serendipity” to get to work, in contrast with the rest of the Festival; the […]

Opening Up EU Procurement Data

The following post is by Friedrich Lindenberg (and on Twitter), originally posted here. What is the next European dataset that investigative journalists should look at? Back in 2012 at the DataHarvest conference, Brigitte, investigative superstar from FarmSubsidy and co-host of the conference, had a clear answer: let’s open up TED (Tenders Electronic Daily). TED is […]

VozData – new Argentinean citizen platform for opening data

This is a guest blog post by Florencia Coelho from La Nation in Argentina. LA NACIÓN recently launched VozData, a collaborative platform that allows users to transform public documents from PDFs into a comprehensible structured database. In its first project, the site allows users to check and classify more than 6500 renditions of Senate’s expenses […]

Open Knowledge Brazil is a finalist of the Google Impact Challenge | Brazil!

This is a guest post by Everton Zanella Alvarenga, Executive Director of Open Knowledge Brazil. We are proud to announce we are finalists at the Google Global Impact Challenge | Brazil. Please, vote in our project to help us transform Brazil! About the project The Open Knowledge Brazil team works for a world in which […]

Coding da Vinci – Open GLAM challenge in Germany

The following blog is by Helene Hahn, Open GLAM coordinator at Open Knowledge Germany. It is cross-posted from the Open GLAM blog More and more galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) are digitizing their collections to make them accessible online and to preserve our heritage for future generations. By January 2014, over 30 million objects […]

The 2013 Open Reader – Stories and articles inspired by OKCon2013

This is a guest post from Andreas Von Gunten, founder of the Creative Commons-based publishing house Buch & Netz and editor of the brand new “The 2013 Open Read – Stories and articles inspired by OKCon2013”. We all remember very well the fantastic OKCon / Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva last year. There were so […]

What does open data mean to you?

Guest blog post is cross-posted from the Publish What You Fund blog.       [View the story “What does open data mean to you?” on Storify]

Knowledge Creation to Diffusion: The Conflict in India

This is a guest post by Ranjit Goswami, Dean (Academics) and (Officiating) Director of Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Nagpur, India. Ranjit also volunteers as one of the Indian Country Editors for the Open Data Census. Developing nations, more so India, increasingly face a challenge in prioritizing its goals. One thing that increasingly becomes relevant […]

Two and a half months researching Open Data in (a part of) Asia

This is the third guest blog post from Open Steps, an initiative by two young Berliners Alex (a software developer from Spain) and Margo (a graduate in European politics from France) who decided to leave their daily lives and travel around the world for one year to meet people and organizations working actively in open […]

Building an archaeological project repository I: Open Science means Open Data

This is a guest post by Anthony Beck, Honorary fellow, and Dave Harrison, Research fellow, at the University of Leeds School of Computing. In 2010 we authored a series of blog posts for the Open Knowledge Foundation subtitled ‘How open approaches can empower archaeologists’. These discussed the DART project, which is on the cusp of […]

Gauging the needs and challenges of the global open data community

This is a guest blog post by Julia Keserü, International Policy Manager at the Sunlight Foundation, which partners alongside ao. the Open Knowledge Foundation in the Global Open Data Initiative. Originally featured on the blog of the initiative. A few months back, the Global Open Data Initiative (GODI) sought input from the transparency community to […]

Myanmar – Developing a Knowledge Society from Scratch

This is a guest post by Waltraut Ritter from Knowledge Dialogues and Opendata Hong Kong/Open Knowledge Foundation Hong Kong, who recently visited Myanmar as basis for this interesting account. She can be contacted on waltraut(a)opendatahk(dot)com. New cars, new mobiles – photo by Waltraut Ritter, CC BY-SA The Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index ranks Myanmar as second […]

Creative Commons 4.0 BY and BY-SA licenses approved conformant with the Open Definition

This post by Timothy Vollmer, Manager of Policy and Data at Creative Commons, originally appeared on the creativecommons.org website. In November we released version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite, and today the Open Definition Advisory Council approved the CC 4.0 Attribution (BY) and Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) International licenses as conformant with the Open Definition. […]

PDF Liberation Hackathon – January 18-19

This guest blog post has been written by Marc Joffe, of Public Sector Credit Solutions. Open government data is valuable only to the extent that it can be used cost-effectively. When governments provide “open data” in the form of voluminous PDFs they offer the appearance of openness without its benefits. In this situation, the open […]

Open Data Day 2014 is Coming Feb 22 – Time to Join the Fun!

This guest blog post has been written by David Eaves, public policy entrepreneur, open government activist and one of the initiators of Open Data Day. It was originally published on David’s blog. So, with much help from various community members (who reminded me that we need to get this rolling – looking at you Heather […]

Open Steps: 3 months documenting Open Knowledge in India

This is a guest blog post from Open Steps, an initiative by two young Berliners Alex (a software developer from Spain) and Margo (a graduate in European politics from France) who decided to leave their daily lives and travel around the world for one year to meet people and organizations working actively in open knowledge […]

Open Badges for OKF Scotland

The Following is a guest post by the Open Knowledge Foundation Community Member Graeme Arnott originally posted his blog here At the first meeting in Glasgow of Open Knowledge Foundation Scotland it was good to see some familiar faces from the ‘Open Badges in Scottish Education Group‘ (OBSEG). A little twitter conversation afterwards with Sheila […]

The DataTank 4.0

This post was written by Pieter Colpaert, a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium Chapter. The DataTank is open source software, just like CKAN, Drupal or Elastic Search, which you can use to transform a dataset into an HTTP API. Today (the 5th of December 2014), we are proud to launch the 4.0 version […]

Announcing Sunlight’s international lobbying disclosure guidelines

This is a cross-post by Julia Keserű, Lisa Rosenberg and Greg Brown from the Sunlight Foundation, originally published on the Sunlight Foundation blog. With more and more civil society organizations in the open government universe recognizing that “thorny issues” — such as political finance transparency or surveillance — need to be tackled somewhat more vehemently, […]

Creative Commons Version 4.0 Released

This is a guest blog post by Timothy Vollmer, Manager of Policy and Data at Creative Commons. Creative Commons has finally released Version 4.0 of the license suite. It’s been two years since we began the license update process, but now it’s done. The 4.0 licenses are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by […]

The Global Open Data Initiative Needs Your Input

This is a cross-post by Julia Keserü from the Sunlight Foundation, taken from both the Global Open Data Initiative blog and the Sunlight Foundation blog. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. As more governments and issue experts discover new potential in the public release of data, […]