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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As the 2012 Open Knowledge Festival‘s organising team released Early Bird Tickets a few weeks ago from sunny Finland, we witnessed something exciting. The many experimental threads that have, until now, existed only as a complex web of planning based on two public Calls for Proposals (and a great deal of Skype meetings!) have starting […]
We’re taking the Data Wrangling Handbook on the road! We’ll be in Portland, Oregon this Wednesday, July 18th from 3-7 pm at Collective Agency, 322 NW Sixth Ave (between Everett and Flanders), Suite 200. (Buzz “200″ when you arrive.) View Map Then, to keep the ball rolling, we’re following up with a virtual sprint on […]
Mythology held that the world rested on the back of four elephants. In the connected 21st century we think there’s a fifth: data. The Fifth Elephant is a community-powered two-day event around the Big Data ecosystem. We hope to enable inter-disciplinary learning between technology, analytics and design along with inter-domain learning between Technology, Media, Retail, […]
Last month we ran the Open Knowledge Foundation’s largest celebration of open bibliographic data to date. The main focus of the two-day event was to get some hacking done and use the tools the Open Knowledge Foundation has helped to build, or is currently building, for working with bibliographic data, such as BibServer, TEXTUS and […]
The Open Media Challenge (OMC) is a two-day event, laying the groundwork for improving data journalism in Eastern Europe. The aim is to write code for free software which will solve real-world media problems around data aggregation and visualization. It will be a collaborative effort focused on Eastern European information collection and dissemination, and will […]
At Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw last year, much discussion took place about academic research around Open Data. In response to these conversations, a specific ‘Open Data Academic Research’ session will be taking place at OKFest this year. The session will bring together a community of researchers from a variety of disciplines who are […]
While the newly elected French National Assembly gets ready to choose its president, the question of its modernisation keeps arising. From the academic research world to the hacktivist perspective, parliamentary monitoring and studies are flourishing in France and all over the world. Methods and techniques may differ, but all share one common need: larger transparency […]
The next OKFN Open Science hackday will be taking place in a few weeks on Saturday 7th July. It would be great to see plenty of open-science folk either in London or online, wherever you are in the world! When: Saturday 7 July 2012, 1000-1700 UTC+1 Where: Centre for Creative Collaboration, London OR OKFN IRC […]
As faces filled the Panton Arms last week, it was great to see a healthy mix of the familiar and the new. The third meet-up in the #OpenDataCBG series proved to be one of the most friendly and interactive yet. The Setting Last Monday was a day of sudden torrential downpours. Perhaps for fear of […]
Earlier this year, we announced plans to launch the School of Data. Thanks to the generous support of Open Society Foundations and the Shuttleworth Foundation, we’re now ready to go! We’re holding a kick-off sprint next week, and we invite you to get involved. What is the School of Data? The School of Data is […]
For those looking for yet another reason to join us for OKFestival in Helsinki this September, the OKFestival Core Organising Team is proud to announce the inspiring public outcomes of our unconventional First Call for Proposals – and to request your participation for our Second Call to share your ideas in Finland. As we’ve noted […]
Following the fun we had at March’s Meet-up ‘launch’, we will be having another gathering of people interested in open data next Wednesday 16th May. Hosted by the Wash Bar, Edinburgh, from 19.00, come and join us to discuss ideas, projects and plans in relation to openness. Lightning Talks will include Federico Sangati on crowdsourcing […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Biblio group, and Working Group on Open Data in Cultural Heritage, along with DevCSI, present BiblioHack: an open Hackathon to kick-start the summer months. From Wednesday 13th – Thursday 14th June, we’ll be meeting at Queen Mary, University of London, East London, and any budding hackers are welcome, along with […]
We are excited to announce a number of events in Berlin in the next two weeks! Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S0627-0300 / CC-BY-SA During the re:publica (Germanys biggest Internet-related conference, which is increasingly international) we will host three little Meetups. From May 2nd to 4th we will be waiting for you at the Wikimedia Tent at 6:15 […]
Next week Rio de Janeiro will invite local governments, companies and experts, to a global summit in service innovation for cities. The event will focus on green and clean development, urban systems and services, tourism and mobility, health and well-being as well as open government and accessibility. The Living Labs Global Award has nominated two […]
Brighton was buzzing with wise, whacky and innovative ideas for Open Data on Friday – even more than usual – as about 150 people converged on the city for the first Open Data Cities Conference. So passionate was the organiser, Greg Hadfield, about the potential of Open Data in cities that he gave up his […]
Following on from our Open GLAM workshop in London, in a few weeks we’re hosting a half day workshop in Berlin looking at how to overcome barriers to opening up data in the cultural heritage sector entitled Rechtliche Fragen beim Öffnen von (Meta-) Daten Gedächtnisinstitutionen (Legal Questions Regarding (Meta)data in Cultural Heritage Institutions). We […]
For those looking for a reason to come to Helsinki with us this fall, the OKFestival Call for Proposals is released today – and it has an experimental, innovative focus. The spin? For this year’s OKFestival (the first event of its kind, organised almost entirely through virtual conference calls, IRC chats and co-written documents by […]
THATCamps (The Humanities And Technology Camps) are a form of “unconference” focussed on the nascent discipline of the Digital Humanities that have risen rapidly in popularity since their invention by the folks over at George Mason University. I was lucky enough to be one of 50 participants at this year’s first THATCamp in Europe which […]
On Friday the 16th of March, the European Public Service Information (ePSI) Platform conference was held in Rotterdam. More than 300 guests from all over the world gathered for what turned out to be a very busy and interesting day. In 15 sessions 60 speakers gave an overview on a wide variety of open data […]
This article is cross posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net </p> The School of Data Journalism is a series of panel discussions and workshops on various aspects of data journalism organised by the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is hosted at the sixth edition of Italy's leading journalism event, the International Journalism Festival in […]
I am in Vienna, along with my colleague Ira, for a plenary meeting of the assorted partners of the LOD2 project. LOD2 is an EU-funded research project on Linked Open Data, the vision of an interlinked web of data known to many from Tim Berners-Lee’s TED talk. The meeting runs for 3 days, in which […]
Having come across the recent UNDP study on the role of social media for enhancing public transparency and accountability in Eastern Europe (download here), one cannot help feeling optimistic about the potential to raise the level of civic empowerment and to fight corruption in the post-Soviet countries. Looks like the Transparency Works event jointly organized […]
Open data in Austria enjoys support from various levels of the public administration, and as a result Austria is one step ahead of the Czech Republic. Last month, we held a seminar to learn from each other’s experiences. Austrian initiatives promoting greater openness of government data, such as the Open Knowledge Forum Österreich, have managed […]
Last night was the first OKFN Meet-Up in Scotland* at the Ghillie Dhu, Edinburgh, run in collaboration with DevCSI. 19 people attended from around the city and nearby, including Glasgow, and those visiting for the Open Biblio Sprint represented Cambridge, London, Wolverhampton and the Netherlands. The Auditorium was a beautiful venue, and there was a […]
Earlier this month, our Energy and Climate Hackday brought together about 50 people in London and online, joining from Berlin, Washington D.C., Amsterdam, Graz and Bogota. With participants working in the private sector, for NGOs, universities and the public sector, we had a good mix of people with different expertise and skills. Some people had […]
Two projects of the Open Knowledge Foundation have been nominated for the Living Labs Global Award 2012: OpenSpending.mobi – Participatory budgeting through augmented reality and CityData – Making Cities Smarter – A central entry point to all your city’s data. Out of nearly 700 submitted showcases, about 15% have been selected to submit an extended […]
Interested in Open Knowledge? Want to meet others who are? …Look no further! OKFN and DevCSI are arranging the first Meet-up here in Edinburgh, with the Open Biblio project team taking the helm. OKFN Meet-ups are friendly and informal evenings for people to get together and talk about open data. London and Cambridge have had […]
Austria is one of our incubating OKFN:LOCAL chapters in its last stage before full incorporation. Its core group of organisers in Vienna are planning an OGD BusinessDay2012 on March 22nd in Vienna and the OGD2012 Conference on June 26th in Linz, Austria. For updates and more information, go to http://gov.opendata.at/okfo/index.html. The OKFO – the Open […]
Join us in the Panton Arms in Cambridge for an evening of open data! The Open Knowledge Foundation’s #OpenDataCBG meet-up will take place this Monday 27th February in the Panton Arms. Sign-up on our meet-up page now, and tweet using the #OpenDataCBG hashtag! We will gather in the Panton Arms from 7pm, with lightning talks […]
In the run to the upcoming ePSI Conference 2012 on 16th March in Rotterdam, Netherlands, we are very excited to announce the ePSI Trailblazers 2012. What are the ePSI Trailblazers? What if, instead of handing out another award, we could offer you both recognition from your peers and help in improving your work? At the […]
The following post is by Kat Braybrooke, London-based Community Coordinator of the Open Knowledge Foundation (Regional Chapters and Groups) and a core organiser of OKFest. On September 17-22 this year, global communities will be descending on the shores of Helsinki for a week-long celebration called the Open Knowledge Festival – and you’re the first to […]
This post is by Liliana Bounegru, Project Coordinator at the European Journalism Centre, and Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is cross posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net Where can I find data and how can I request access to it? What tools are available to me? How can I find useful stories within […]
The following post is by Kat Braybrooke, a London-based Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Most Londoners agree that Monday night is usually the worst time of the week to hold an event. The workday is long, people are tired and public transit seems to be especially unpleasant. This past week, however, we witnessed […]
The following post is by Velichka Dimitrova coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group. It is great to see people coming together and doing something cool on a Saturday. The Open Economics Hackday gathered more than thirty people at the Barbican and online, crafting fancy visualisations, wrangling data and being creative together. The day was devoted […]
The following guest post is from Regards Citoyens, a French organisation that promotes open data. As part of The Law Factory project we are running an international conference for hacktivists and academics working on parliamentary monitoring and legislative studies. The conference will take place on the the 6th and 7th of July in Paris. The […]
This post is by Velichka Dimitrova, Coordinator for the Economics Working Group at the Open Knowledge Foundation. On Saturday 28th January we’re getting together for an Open Economics Hackday where we’ll be be wrangling data and building apps related to economics — all are welcome! Event home page: Sign up: on the MeetUp page When: […]
Editor’s Note: This blog post comes from Michaela Rybičková, one of the organisers of the OKFN’s newest regional group in the Czech Republic, #OpenDataCZ. You can find more information about our local groups and chapters here. Our first Prague open data meetup was held on the 14th of December in the Kulový blesk restaurant. Despite […]
The following post is by the organisers of the ePSIplatform Conference 2012 and is cross-posted from epsiplatform.eu. 16 March 2012, Rotterdam, Netherlands With the progress the open data movement has made in the past few years, and the announcement of the European Open Data Strategy by the European Commission, we are reaching a new maturity level […]
The following guest post is by Juan Carlos de Martin, from the the Politecnico of Torino, Italy, one of the organisers of the annual Public Domain Day of which the OKF is a proud supporter. Every January a growing number of people throughout the world gather to celebrate the new year. But not for the […]
The following guest post is by Ed Anderton from the Nominet Trust, who provide support to organisations to increase access to the internet, online safety and education. The Nominet Trust is providing funding for a set of 10 ‘data-days’ with a range of UK Charities – more details of our offer to Charities can be […]
The following guest post is from David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared on eaves.ca. So a number of things have started to really come together for this Saturday Dec 3rd. I’ve noticed a number of new cities […]
The following guest post is by Markus ‘fin’ Hametner, a coder and organizer with a main interest in journalism. He works on an ambitious web journalism project and co-organizes the collide:vienna event series. A few days ago, I realized that Vienna’s normally-quiet landscape of events in the open data and journalism spaces will be quite […]
This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Irina Bolychevsky, Product Owner for CKAN. On December 3, Open Data Day, for one day only we’ll have a crack-team of coders ready to break data out of its internet and load it into the Data Hub for you to use! […]
The following post is by Francois Grey and Rufus Pollock. Francois is a recent Shuttleworth Fellow, visiting professor at Tsinghua University working and coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre. Rufus is a co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. There are two exciting open data and open knowledge events in Cape Town South Africa taking place […]
The following post is by Kat Braybrooke, one of OKFN’s London-based Community Coordinators and the contact point for incubating Local OKFN Chapters around the world. Fresh from days (and late nights) full of discussing open web communities in Barcelona at the Free Culture Forum, exchanging code and starting sites about information freedom with hackers in […]
The following guest post is by David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared over on his blog. With the International Open Data Hackathon getting closer, I’m getting excited. There’s been a real expansion on the wiki of the […]
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