Events have a significant role for the Open Knowledge Foundation. They focus attention on the key issues of the day, gather interested individuals and organisations around specific topics, and represent the public face of the open knowledge community and its many and various projects. They also provide occasions for open data enthusiasts to meet face-to-face, […]
View the French version of this post here It is estimated that around 900 million people are able to communicate in French in the world. All those people do not necessarily speak English, and a lot of them use French as their Lingua Franca. After a suggestion from the French local group, the Open Knowledge […]
For your delectation, we bring you the third installment of Global Community Stories – a round up of the fantastic projects and activities of our Local Groups across the world, including a Wikipedia Editathon for girls in Nepal, a multitude of events in Belgium, Big Data Week across Spain, a Swiss Government pilot […]
It’s with great excitement that we can announce that OKFN Greece, after 1.5 years as a Local Group in our global network, have established themselves as an official Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. This means that our Greek friends are now through their own legal entity a more integral part of the organization. The last […]
Cape Town City Hall, Felix Gottwald It seems somewhat absurd to me that publicly funded institutions in South Africa should be allowed to copyright data produced using public funds. Of course, it is reasonable to expect that physical assets such as buildings, vehicles or machinery should appear on their balance sheets and be reserved for […]
We continue our new monthly digest showcasing initiatives from our local communities across the globe, this time proudly featuring Brazil, Spain, Czech Republic, Nepal, Iceland and Belgium. The Open Knowledge Foundation’s many (30+!) Local Group communities stand behind a myriad of different activities every month. As you may also have read in our first edition of […]
I’m happy to announce version 3 release of Froide, the Open Source, Python-based platform for running Freedom of Information portals. Froide has been in development for nearly two years. It has powered the FOI portal in Germany for over a year and a half and has recently been used to launch an Austrian FoI site. […]
A new monthly digest showcasing initiatives from local communities across the globe As you may have seen, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s many (30+!) Local Group communities have been hard at work over the last month, launching several exciting new initiatives, opening up data and engaging regional communities in interesting ways. Given these new developments, we […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s world-wide community of local groups has been growing rapidly over the last year, and every month we’ve seen new people from more and more countries join the movement. To accommodate this development and add a flexible and versatile structure to the rapid growth we now add a new dimension to the […]
2013 is a very important year for Denmark as it has conquered two milestones in its Open Data agenda and this spring, the entire story will come together at the first conference addressing open data since the big release. Here’s the event info in brief: What?: Open Data track at Open Source Days Where?: Copenhagen […]
On the recent Open Data Day we ran the Open Data Census Challenge. The challenge enlisted the help of participants around the world in digging up information on open data in their city and region and contributing it to the newly launched city section of the Open Data Census. The results have been impressive with […]
One of the cool projects that OKF France were hacking away on during Open Data Day last weekend was Open Food Facts. It’s a free, open collaborative database of food facts from around the world, which aims to help consumers make better choices about what they put in their body, as well as motivating industry […]
This post is a translation of Il nostro contributo per salvare gli #OpenData originally published by Ernesto Belisario on Agorà Digitale. Most links point to documents and websites in Italian. In the past few weeks I have been very involved with transparency (and therefore, open data) together with the friends of Agorà Digitale. Right when […]
Great News! Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission, has sent her personal best wishes to the OKF team in Greece who launched their brand new open data portal last week! She said: “Open data is a very powerful lever for both a better economy and society. Open data is fuel for innovation, […]
The following post is by Maria Schröder and Christian Heise from the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. It is cross-posted (and slightly shortened) from the Open Government Partnership blog. Germany’s official policy on transparency and accountability is lacking commitment and leadership. Disappointed by the political elites, the community is continuously trying to make the case for […]
Opening up public sector data is becoming a top priority for governments throughout Europe and North America. We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Greek open data hub, developed and hosted by OKFN Greece. The data hub integrates the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open source data cataloging software CKAN, which is also the […]
Belgium has been quiet for a while, but that doesn’t mean less busy. In fact, we’ve been so busy that from time to time we forgot to communicate! We hope to solve this with this winter update. ##Open Transport We love transport data. Our Open Transport Working Group, iRail, has just netted a front-end engineering […]
The Edinburgh Open Data community started the year in fine style with a meet-up hosted by the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge. The turn-out was excellent, with a wide range of participants. As usual, we had a number of lightening talks. The meet-up started with a welcome from Darryl Mead, Deputy National […]
At the Open Knowledge Foundation we work to cultivate a global commons of digital material that everyone is free to use and enjoy. This digital commons includes everything from open data about carbon emissions or spending from governments around the world; to open access research in the sciences, the humanities, and many other disciplines; to […]
Last week the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) concluded two new agreements with private companies to digitze over 70.000 old books, 200.000 sound recordings and other documents belonging (either partially or as a whole) to the public domain. While these public private partnerships enable the digitization of these works they also contain 10-year exclusive agreements […]
The following post was written by Simon Chignard, author of L’Open data: Comprendre l’ouverture des données publiques. The post was originally posted on Simon’s blog following the launch of the Open Knowlege Foundation French national group, and has been translated by Samuel Goëta from OKFN France. ##Open data and the commons: an old story? There […]
The following post was written by OKFN France edited by Pierre Chrzanowski and translated by Peter Schiøler. It was with great excitement that we greeted 60+ participants for the first OKFN meetup in Paris on the evening of 12/12/12. The meetup had a double objective; first to introduce the Open Knowledge Foundation in France […]
Living in Australia? Local Group organisers in the region are organising an all-day hackathon on Saturday, January 5th 2013 from 10 am onwards to create an OpenStreetMap-based bicycle map of Melbourne, and they want you to get involved. The OKFN Australia Local Group will need data geeks, cartographers, programmers, graphic designers, sysadmins and most importantly […]
The following guest post was co-authored by Samuel Goëta, Primavera De Filippi, Peter T Schiøler, Kat Borlongan, and Pierre Chrzanowski. Following the first ever Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki earlier this year, we, a group of Open Knowledge enthusiasts in France, have decided to start a national chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN). France […]
Sharing governmental information in open, accessible and structured formats could substantially increase transparency and accountability in public policy design and implementation. Furthermore, it enables broad social engagement in the process. Hence, opening data and acknowledging the demands of the population that arise from this is key to promoting social equality and effective public administration. Based […]
Here’s Julia Kloiber from OKFN-DE’s Stadt-Land-Code project, talking at the OKFest about the need for more citizen apps in Germany, the need for greater openness, and how to persuade companies to open up.
The Open Knowledge Foundation will be hosting some of its first meetups in the US next week. On Wednesday 3rd October you can join others interested in open data, open content and the public domain in Boston and San Francisco. The Boston meetup is focusing on “global annotation, web caching, and shared data initiatives” and […]
Today is the launch of OKFN-De’s new project ‘Stadt Land <Code>’ (‘City State <Code>’), an incubator to create digital tools for Citizens. This project is aimed at getting developers to create and implement applications to make the life of citizens in Germany easier and better. Together, the plan is to create useful applications for civic […]
This is the final post in the Open Data in India series. Our visit to India wasn’t just about meetups… the following post deals with the individuals and organisations that Lucy and Laura met whilst in India, the questions they were asked and the projects they were introduced to. It is cross-posted on the OKFN […]
Public sector data lives a short life. Its life spans the life of applications that are hidden deep inside of public bodies. Tied to application-specific data formats, the data dies with the application that hosts it. During its lifetime the data stays within the public sector, serving a few predetermined purposes, while the ability to […]
Amidst the kerfuffle and cacophony of the Fringe Festival packing up for another year, the Edinburgh contingent came together again to meet, greet, present and argue all aspects of Open Data and Knowledge. OKFN Meet-ups are friendly and informal evenings for people to get together to share and debate all areas of openness. Depending on […]
This guest post was submitted by Bob Kerr of Openstreetmap.org. Openstreetmap.org has just had its 8th Birthday. For those new to the name, Openstreetmap is the wikipedia of maps or rather a single map, the map of our world. Initially born because the cost of licensing Ordnance Survey data was £5000 for a single use, […]
A Special Gift for Festival Participants… For the 600+ brave souls already registered for the world’s first-ever Open Knowledge Festival, here’s our first-ever participant bulletin! The gems and secrets below have been built from the weekly-curated, community-written summaries we’ve been sharing behind the scenes with our teams of Guest Programme Planners around the globe – and with less than two weeks left until […]
On August 24-25, another edition of OpenDataMx took place: a 36-hour public data hackathon for the development of creative technological solutions to questions raised by the civil society. This time the event was hosted by the University of Communication in Mexico City. The popularity of the event has grown: a total of 63 participants including […]
This is post 4 of 5 in the Open Data India series, following Lucy and Laura’s visit to India to learn about the challenges and opportunities for open data. Read previous posts from Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. Our final stop in India was Delhi. Several people had told us that Delhi was the ‘policy capital’ […]
This is post 3 of 5 of the Open Data India series, following Lucy and Laura’s visit to learn about the challenges and opportunities for open data. Read previous posts from Bangalore and Chennai on the main blog. After joining forces with the DataMeet group in Bangalore and Transparent Chennai’s open data workshop, we were […]
This is part 2 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. You can read the first post ‘Open Data – Bangalore’ on the OKFN blog. Chennai, formerly Madras, is only a short train ride away from Bangalore. Laura and I hadn’t been intending on travelling to Chennai on this trip, but a mail from […]
Laura and Lucy from the OKFN team recently travelled to India to learn where the challenges and opportunities for open data in India lay. This is part 1 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. The Bangalore data scene is huge. A bustling IT and data mining industry means that you are never far […]
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 – […]
As the comedians, acrobats and miscellaneous thespians prepare to leave the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for another year, it’s time for the open data crew to reclaim the city! Following on from the two successful meet-ups which took place in March and May this year, #OpenDataEDB will be returning for its third event of 2012. For […]
Following Edinburgh-based Meet-ups earlier this year, a small group of people interested in promoting openness recently met together to link-up ideas and projects, and explore possible areas of collaboration. The attendees were: Ewan Klein, University of Edinburgh Sally Kerr, City of Edinburgh Council Sam Leon, Open Knowledge Foundation Naomi Lillie, Open Knowledge Foundation Jilly Mathews, […]
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 […]
Thessaloniki is a vibrant, sun-drenched beachfront city in Northern Greece. It is famous for its impressive historical lineage, its frappé coffee culture and its diverse population augmented by academics and students from the largest university in the Balkans. A few weeks ago, I learned something else unexpected: the city is also a veritable mecca for […]
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 […]
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 […]
A more detailed version of this post can be found on the Finnish Institute blog. The Finnish Institute in London has recently completed a five-month research project on the British open data policies. The report looks at how the open data ecosystem has emerged in the UK and what lessons can be drawn from the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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