Tell us how you think we can better support Open Data Day

This year has been such an eventful year for all of us. As 2020 nears its end, here at Open Knowledge Foundation we are starting to think about Open Data Day 2021. I checked my calendar this morning – and it’s only 4 months away ! Open Data Day is such a great opportunity for […]

DataStories Symposium

At the DataStories Symposium 2020 we will explore how people engage with data to create stories. Data is represented in different ways to allow us to understand and make use of it: in numbers, in text, in visualisations, in interactive stories and other forms. Data stories are relevant to many areas of our life – […]

Mapping street names in Belgium by gender: Open Data Day 2020 report

On Saturday 7th March 2020, the tenth Open Data Day took place with people around the world organising over 300 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. Thanks to generous support from key funders, the Open Knowledge Foundation was able to support the running of more than 60 of these events […]

2017: A Year to Remember for OK Nepal

This blog has been cross-posted from the OK Nepal blog as part of our blog series of Open Knowledge Network updates. Best wishes for 2018 from OK Nepal to all of the Open Knowledge family and friends!! The year 2017 was one of the best years for Open Knowledge Nepal. We started our journey by […]

An update from Open Burkina

Energy is fundamental to any development. The National Electricity Company of Burkina Faso (SONABEL) whose task is the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in the Burkinabè population, works hard to enable citizens to benefit from this as an important resource. However, it is clear that SONABEL hardly fulfills this mission: hardly a day goes by […]

Fostering open, inclusive, and respectful participation

At Open Knowledge International we have been involved with various projects with other civil society organisations aiming for the release of public interest data, so that anyone can use it for any purpose. More importantly, we focus on putting this data to use, to help it fulfil its potential of working towards fairer and more […]

Why MyData 2017?

This is a guest post explaining the focus of the MyData conference in Tallinn and Helsinki later this month. By a famous writing tip, you should always start texts with ‘why?’. Here we are taking that tip, and we actually find many ways to answer the big Why. So, Why MyData 2017? Did you get […]

New Open Knowledge Network chapter in Nepal

We are happy to announce that this month a new Chapter at the Open Knowledge Network is being launched officially: welcome Open Knowledge Nepal in this new stage! Since February 2013, Open Knowledge Nepal has been involved in research, advocacy, training, organizing meetups and hackathons, and developing tools related to Open Data, Open Government Data, […]

Civic Lab Brussels launched!

Open Knowledge Belgium in collaboration with Wikimedia Belgium has launched Civic Lab Brussels – a biweekly action-oriented gathering of open enthusiasts with different backgrounds and skills who work together on civic projects. This post was first published on Open Knowledge Belgium’s website. How did we come up with this idea? It all started during a fruitful discussion […]

Open Belgium 2017 in the eyes of a Russian open data enthusiast

When you belong to a worldwide community such as the Open Knowledge Network, travelling to other countries means you can meet like-minded people by just knocking on the door of a local branch. That is exactly what I did last year when I lived in Brussels. I signed up as a volunteer for the Open […]

Season Greetings from OK Ireland and 2016 in review

This blog post is part of our on-going Community series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Ireland and edited by Flora Fleischer and Siobhan Denham. Our warm season greetings to all friends of Open Knowledge As we approach the final days of this year, we would […]

Gearing up for the launch of the Global Open Data Index survey

The Global Open Data Index (GODI) is one of our core projects at Open Knowledge International. The index measures and benchmarks the openness of government data around the world, and presents this information in a way that is easy to understand and easy to use. It’s been a couple months since we updated the community […]

Making data social, now in the Open Data Handbook

The most important thing for the Network team at Open Knowledge International is the community we build around data. The tools we build to achieve this are crucial as well since they allow people to make even more and better plans and projects. To continue doing this, we are restructuring a bunch of technological tools […]

Open Government: Participate, Propose and Be Heard! – The Process in Greece

The involvement and collaboration of governmental bodies, citizens and other stakeholders in order to promote open data and open government initiatives were one of the main achievements of the event “Open Government: Participate, Propose and Be Heard! Conformation of the Third National Action Plan 2016-2018.” The event was co-organized by the Ministry of Interior and Administrative […]

Introducing: MyData

this post was written by the OK Finland team What is MyData? MyData is both an alternative vision and guiding technical principles for how we, as individuals, can have more control over the data trails we leave behind us in our everyday actions. The core idea is that we, you and I, should have an […]

Diplohack in Brussels – The first hack in the Council of the European Union

For the first time in history, we can hack from inside the Council of the European Union building! Join us at #Diplohack in Brussels in the Council of the European Union on the 29-30 of April. We invite everyone to take part, whether you’re a diplomat, developer, designer, citizen, student, journalist or activist. We will connect different […]

New Network Guidelines – Tell Us What You Think!

A month ago, we updated you about our plans for the Open Knowledge Network in 2016. One of the firsts steps this year will be to update our network guidelines. For us, guidelines are important because they help us to define our mutual causes and help us strive to achieve our goal. It also help […]

Open Knowledge Network and Community updates – First steps of 2016

2015 was a great year for Open Knowledge, full of opportunities and challenges. We started many exciting new projects such as Open Trials, Budgets EU and the Route to PA, we had personnel changes (and a new CEO, Pavel Richter), and also we’ve refined our name to Open Knowledge International. In addition, we developed a […]

Onwards to AbreLatAm 2015: what we learned last year

This post was co-written by Mor Rubinstein and Neal Bastek. It is cross-posted and available in Spanish at the AbreLatAm blog. AbreLatAm, for us “gringos”, is magical. Even in the age where everyone is glued to a screen, face to face connection is still the strongest connection humans can have; it fosters the trust that […]

Announcing the new open data handbook

We are thrilled to announce that the Open Data Handbook, the premier guide for open data newcomers and veterans alike, has received a much needed update! The Open Data Handbook, originally published in 2012, has become the go to resource for the open data community. It was written by expert members of the open data […]

Honouring the memory of leading Open Knowledge community member Subhajit Ganguly

It is with great sadness that we have learned that Mr. Subhajit Ganguly, an Open Knowledge Ambassador in India and a leading community member in the entire region, has suddenly and tragically passed away. Following a short period of illness Subhajit Ganguly, who was only 30 years old, passed away on the morning of April […]

Document Freedom Day in Kathmandu, Nepal

On 2015’s Document Freedom Day, Open Knowledge Nepal organized a seminar on Open Standards at CLASS Nepal at Maitighar, Kathmandu. We intended to pitch openness to a new audience in Nepal and help them learn documentation skills. As we could not hope to teach documentation and spreadsheets in less than a day, we utilized the […]

Community building through the DM2E project

During the past three years, Open Knowledge has been leading the community building work in the Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E) project, a European research project in the area of Digital Humanities led by Humboldt University. Open Knowledge activities included the organisation of a series of events such as Open Data in Cultural Heritage workshops, running two rounds of the Open Humanities […]

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 […]

Global Community Stories: January 2015

As some might remember, last year we ran a very popular blog post series called Global Community Stories, which highlighted activities in the ever-broadening Local Groups global community. Towards the latter half of the year lots of other projects demanded time and the series came to an unintended halt. With the turn of the year, […]

A round-up of Open Knowledge Community events around the world!

One of the best opportunities that being part of a community offers is the chance to collaborate and make things happen together – and when we want this to happen in sync, what’s better than convening an (in person or online) event? Just before the end of the year, let’s collect a few highlights from […]

Open Knowledge Festival 2014 report: out now!

Today we are delighted to publish our report on OKFestival 2014! This is packed with stories, statistics and outcomes from the event, highlighting the amazing facilitators, sessions, speakers and participants who made it an event to inspire. Explore the pictures, podcasts, etherpads and videos which reflect the different aspects of the event, and uncover some […]

Building Community Action at Mozilla Festival 2014

Often Community is thought of as a soft topic. In reality, being part of a community (or more!) is admirable, a wonderful effort, both very fun but also sometimes tough and building and mobilising community action requires expertise and understanding of both tools and crowds – all relationships between stakeholders involved need to be planned […]

This Index is yours!

How is your country doing with open data? You can make a difference in 5 easy steps to track 10 different datasets. Or, you can help us spread the word on how to contribute to the Open Data Index. This includes the very important translation of some key items into your local language. We’ll keep […]

Streamlining the Local Groups network structure

We are now a little over a year into the Local Groups scheme that was launched in early 2013. Since then we have been receiving hundreds of applications from great community members wanting to start Local Groups in their countries and become Ambassadors and community leaders. From this great body of amazing talent, Local Groups […]

Connect and Help Build the Global Open Data Index

Earlier this week we announced that October is the Global Open Data Index. Already people have added details about open data in Argentina, Colombia, and Chile! You can see all the collaborative work here in our change tracker. Each of you can make a difference to hold governments accountable for open data commitments plus create […]

Join the Global Open Data Index 2014 Sprint

In 2012 the Open Knowledge launched the Global Open Data Index to help track the state of open data around the world. We’re now in the process of collecting submissions for the 2014 Open Data Index and we want your help! How can you contribute? The main thing you can do is become a Contributor […]

Join our first Regional Community Mentoring and Skill-share Gathering

We are glad to announce our first official Community Mentoring and Skillshare Gathering to be held in Mexico City on October 3, 2014 in connection with the ConDatos and AbraLatam conferences. The event will kick off a series of similar regional events on other continents later this year and into next and will serve to […]

Matchmakers in Action – Help Wanted

Do you have a skill to share? Want to host an online discussion/debate about an Open Knowledge-like topic? Have an idea for a skillshare or discussion, but need help making it happen? Some of you hosted or attended sessions at OKFest. Why not host one online? At OKFestival, we had an Open Matchmaker wall to […]

OKFestival 2014: we made it! A write-up & Thank You note

Open Knowledge Festival 2014! We built it, made it and ran it – it was a blast, thank you! 1056 participants from 60 countries 215 facilitators and moderators 17 Programme Team members 70 volunteers made it all happen. Who says that numbers are dry? Just by writing them down, our hearts are melting. Group work! […]

September Community Summit On Air

We’re hosting a September Community Call. Join us to discuss a number of community programming ideas and help make a plan. All welcome. (Amazing drawing by Artepilpilean) What: September Community Summit On Air Date: Wednesday, September 10th Your Local time: 8:00 – 9:00 EDT, 13:00 – 14:00 BST, 14:00 – 15:00 CEST (Also see worldtimebuddy.com) […]

25 Countries in the Same Room: The OKFestival Community Summit

Photo by Heather Leson, CC-BY-SA Two weeks back, over 1,000 people gathered in Berlin to co-create the future of the open knowledge movement. Even before OKFestival had officially kicked off, over 50 people from over 25 countries piled into a crowded, hot room on a glorious Berlin afternoon, to work through the pressing issues, opportunities […]