Looking back on 2024 and looking ahead to 2025 with the Open Knowledge Network

This year has been a journey of innovation, resilience, and collaboration, demonstrating the power of openness in fostering global change. We cannot imagine doing any of this without collaborating with the Network of course. The power of collaboration is a cornerstone of our vision, and we stand by our motto: better together than alone.

Towards a knowledge society through the technologies we want

CEO Reflection Ahead of 2025 – We will continue to fight for a knowledge society rather than a surveillance society, one that benefits the many rather than the few and is built on the principles of collaboration rather than control, empowerment rather than exploitation, and sharing rather than monopoly.

Our impressions after a huge Open America event

The event was a great success, with hundreds of people attending, and we dare say there were representatives from every state in the Americas. We have learned some lessons from Open America.

Open Data Editor user testing: feedback from the ACIJ team

As part of releasing the first stable version of the Open Data Editor, we publish the feedback from the team at ACIJ, an Argentine non-profit working to promote a more just and inclusive society, free from poverty and discrimination.

Panel: We are Making the Tech We Want

With the skills that the panellists have, it would be easier to work for the mainstream tech industry and just go with the flow. But they’ve all chosen a different path: making software that makes sense. In this conversation, we’ll share the trajectories of some open, free/libre, and alternative technologies, and discuss how to tip the scales in our favour amidst a solutionist discourse in an ultra-specialised industry.

Panel: The Tech We Want is Sustainable for People and the Planet

Eco, green, or simply sustainable technologies have several implicit meanings: long life, affordable maintenance, skilled people, resource-friendly, economical to use, renewable, regenerative, etc. In this panel, thinkers, practitioners and promoters of different aspects of software sustainability will discuss if and how it is possible to achieve a development model for people and the planet. Is there a way out of the disaster versus greenwashing narratives?

Panel: The Tech We Want is Political

Since the Snowden revelations, citizen efforts have been focused in patching a broken system of surveillance, extractivism of people and the planet and rights erosion. This conversation will discuss the current state of the things and the viability of uniting technical and political efforts to move in a different direction.

Data Package version 2.0 is out!

Thanks to the generous support of NLnet, now Data Package includes features that were often requested throughout the years and improves extensibility for domain-specific implementations.

Open Data Editor: 5 tips for building data products that work for people

As announced in January, this year the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) team is working to develop a stable version of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application. Thanks to financial support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we will be able to create a no-code tool for data manipulation and publishing that is accessible to everyone, […]

Announcement of strategic funding for the Open Data Editor

We are pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation has been selected as a grantee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, marking a significant milestone for the development of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application, a tool that will unlock the power of data for key groups, including scientists, journalists and data activists.

Frictionless specs update

Originally published on: https://frictionlessdata.io/blog/2023/11/15/frictionless-specs-update/ We are very pleased to announce that thanks to the generous support of NLnet we have kickstarted the Frictionless specifications update. After a first discussion with the community in the last call, we are setting up a working group to help us with the v2 release. Taking into account the group’s concerns about the […]

The Tech We Want to Open Governments

On September 4th, Open Knowledge Foundation, together with Open Knowledge Estonia and Open Knowledge Finland, held a parallel event to the Global Open Government Partnership Summit in Tallinn to talk about the tech we want (and need) to open governments.