How Spending Stories Fact Checks Big Brother, the Wiretappers’ Ball

This piece was co-written with Eric King of Privacy International and comes as Privacy International launches a huge new data release about companies selling surveillance technologies. It is cross-posted on the MediaShift PBS IDEA LAB and the OpenSpending blog. Today, the global surveillance industry is estimated at around $5 billion a year. But which companies […]

Read more

Meet-up this Monday in Cambridge UK

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 […]

Read more

Energy and Climate Hackday, March 3rd

On Saturday 3rd March we’re getting together for the Energy and Climate Hackday to data-wrangle and build apps around energy and climate data. All skills and interest groups are welcome: developers, data journalists, economists, climate scientists, environmentalists and interested citizens. When? Saturday 3rd March, 11am GMT (12pm CET/6am EST) to ~7pm GMT (8pm CET/3pm EST) […]

Read more

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Funds Open Economics Working Group at the Open Knowledge Foundation

We are delighted to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation in partnership with the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge has received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the development of an Open Economics Working Group. The aim of the working group is to encourage more […]

Read more

Announcing the ePSI Trailblazers 2012

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 […]

Read more

Announcing the Open Data Handbook version 1.0

The Open Knowledge Foundation are proud to announce the launch of version 1.0 of the Open Data Handbook (formerly the Open Data Manual): Read the Open Data Handbook now! » The Handbook discusses the ‘why, what and how’ of open data – why to go open, what open is, how to make data open and […]

Read more

Finnish data journalism app contest

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading national paper, is organizing an article app contest to find data visualizations. For many journalists today, it’s not a lack of open data that’s the problem, but a lack of the skills and off-the-shelf visualizations needed to make that open data useful to them. A year ago, the Finnish government decided […]

Read more

Data Journalism Awards – Call for Entries!

Showcase your work and win a chance to €45,000 in prizes by applying for the first ever Data Journalism Awards In an age of overwhelming abundance of data, journalists and media organisations are learning to separate signal from noise in order to provide valuable insights to society. From the Guardian to the New York Times, […]

Read more

Announcing the Open Definition Licenses Service

We’re pleased to announce a simple new service from the Open Knowledge Foundation as part of the Open Definition Project: the (Open) Licenses Service. The service is ultra simple in purpose and function. It provides: Information on licenses for open data, open content, and open-source software in machine readable form (JSON) A simple web API […]

Read more

The Year in (Public Domain) Review

Last month, the glorious Public Domain Review celebrated its first birthday. The Public Domain Review aspires to become a bounteous gateway into the whopping plenitude that is the public domain, helping our readers to explore this rich terrain by surfacing unusual and obscure works, and offering fresh reflections and unfamiliar angles on material which is […]

Read more

Effectopedia – An Open Data Project for Collaborative Scientific Research, with the aim of reducing Animal Testing

The following post is by Velichka Dimitrova, Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group and Hristo Alajdov, Associate Professor at Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. One of the key problems in natural science research is the lack of effective collaboration. A lot of research is conducted by scientists from different disciplines, […]

Read more

Panton Fellowships – Apply by 24th February!

The following post is by Laura Newman, a Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation and Coordinator of the Panton Fellowships. Funding for scientists who promote open data. £8,000 over one year, plus a small discretionary budget for travel and related expenses. How would you promote open data in science? See the Panton Principles’ website […]

Read more

Open Biblio launches BibSoup in beta

BibSoup is here! And it’s going to revolutionise how you work with bibliographic metadata. The team has been coding and blogging and bugfixing for a while now on the BibServer software, and we’ve mentioned in passing that our own instance has been up and running under the name of BibSoup… Now we are officially launching […]

Read more

Translators needed!

Do you speak another language apart from English? Have you got a little bit of spare time over the next week? CKAN 1.6 is set to release in one week’s time and all the new features need translating. Can you help us complete it in time? If you can spend 15 minutes filling in the […]

Read more

Let’s Make OpenPhilosophy.org!

The following post is by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Jonathan Gray and is cross-posted from his personal blog. A little while ago I posted some ideas for a project called OpenPhilosophy.org, which would enable users to transcribe, translate, annotate and create collections of philosophical texts which have entered the public domain. As was announced last […]

Read more

Announcing the School of Data

The following post is by Rufus Pollock, Director and Co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Philip Schmidt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Peer 2 Peer University. Today, we’re announcing plans for a School of Data. The School will be a joint venture between the Open Knowledge Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). We […]

Read more

OGDCamp + OKCon = Open Knowledge Festival 2012 in Helsinki, Finland!

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 […]

Read more

The Data Journalism Handbook: Final call for contributions

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 […]

Read more

Join us on Monday 27th February for #OpenDataCBG!

The following post is by Laura Newman, a Cambridge based Community Co-ordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Interested in Open Data? Live in the Cambridge area? Join us for #OpenDataCBG! On Monday 27th February, the open data community will be gathering in the Panton Arms in Cambridge for the second #OpenDataCBG meet-up. The evening is […]

Read more

JISC to fund development of TEXTUS project

The following post is by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re delighted to announce that JISC will be funding the initial development of the TEXTUS platform as part of its Digital Infrastructure Programme. TEXTUS will be a lightweight, easy-to-use platform that will enable users to read, share and collaborate around public […]

Read more

COMMUNIA’s response to the proposed amendments to PSI Directive

The following guest post is by Timothy Vollmer, policy coordinator at Creative Commons. It has been adapted from his post on the same subject over on the COMMUNIA International Association blog. Creative Commons and the Open Knowledge Foundation are institutional members of COMMUNIA. The mission of COMMUNIA is to educate about, advocate for, offer expertise […]

Read more

Diving into Data: The School of Data Journalism at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia

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 and journalismfestival.com. In the past investigative reporters would suffer from a scarcity of information relating to questions they were trying to answer. While this is still […]

Read more

Annotators of the World Unite!

The following post is by Andrew Magliozzi founder of FinalsClub.org and one of the developers working on the Annotator javascript library and the AnnotateIt service. Scholars, bring us your ancient, worn, and insightful annotations.  We have the tools to help you collect and connect your knowledge of Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Eliot and others.  Together we can create […]

Read more

Wikimedia and New Collaborations at Third #OpenDataLDN Meetup in London

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 […]

Read more

Open Economics Hackday

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 […]

Read more

Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN Software to Power new European Commission Data Portal

The European Commission is to make its data publicly and openly available through a new data portal, along the lines of those already used by national governments such as http://data.gov.uk/. Like http://data.gov.uk/ the new site will be based on the open-source CKAN Data Portal Software developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Foundation will also be […]

Read more

Monmouth the Wiki Town

The following guest post is a guest post by John Cummings, Wikipedian and founder of the Monmouthpedia project. Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town. The project aims to cover every single notable place, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible. We will use […]

Read more

Linked Open Data and Low Carbon Development

The following guest post is by Denise Recheis from reegle, the clean energy info portal. Offering multiple explanations for a concept increases understanding and using LOD allows both humans and machines to semantically connect related content. This is a huge advantage in our increasingly complex world! Especially in the field of clean energy, the increasing […]

Read more

Wikipedians in Residence: Two Years of Open Culture

The following guest post is by Lori Byrd Phillips 2012 US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation. She was the second person to become a Wikipedian in Residence, and has served in that role at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for the past year and a half, where she is now also part time staff. […]

Read more

Open Legislative Data Conference, Paris, July 6th-7th

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 […]

Read more

Panton Fellowships – apply now!

The Open Knowledge Foundation are delighted to announce the launch of the Panton Fellowships! Funded by Open Society Foundations, Panton Fellowships will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science. Visit the Panton Fellowships home page for more information including details of how to apply Further Details We firmly believe that “open […]

Read more

A Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online

The following is a post by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator for The Public Domain Review and other Open Knowledge Foundation projects. It is cross-posted from the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Public Domain Working Group Blog. At The Public Domain Review we’re always scouring the internet for public domain gems. It’s simply incredible how much of our […]

Read more

Dreams of a Unified Text

The following is a blog post by Rufus Pollock co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. I have a dream, one which I’ve had for a while. In this dream I’m able to explore, seamlessly, online, every text ever written. With the click of a button I can go from Pynchon to Proust, from Musil to […]

Read more

Open Economics Hack Day Saturday January 28th 2012

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: […]

Read more

Civil Society and Spending Data: Who is mapping the money?

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator on the OpenSpending project at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re excited to announce that, thanks to the generous support of the Open Society Foundations, OKFN’s activities around financial transparency will expand to include a second pillar: next to the OpenSpending platform, we have just started a 6 […]

Read more

Public Domain Review Posters

The following guest post is by Adam Green, editor of The Public Domain Review. It’s been a year since the launch of The Public Domain Review and we’ve now featured over 30 articles from prominent artists and scholars and displayed hundreds of curious, freely downloadable public domain delights. We’ve had contributions from the historian and […]

Read more

Czech Republic’s First #OpenDataCZ Meetup is a Success

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 […]

Read more

ePSIplatform Conference 2012

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 […]

Read more

Season’s Greetings from the Open Knowledge Foundation

‘Tis the season to be jolly. This year when preparing your Christmas feast why not take some inspiration from Mrs Beeton and her legendary 1861 Book of Household Management…   Words of wisdom from Mrs Beeton… “In December, the principal household duty lies in preparing for the creature comforts of those near and dear to […]

Read more

“Yes We Scan”

Take a look at the campaign being run by Carl Malamud and John Podesta called “Yes We Scan”. It’s an effort to encourage the US government to make plans to digitize the contents of all national libraries including the Library of Congress. In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, John Podesta and Carl Malamud […]

Read more

We’re hiring!

As we head into 2012, there’s lots going on at the OKFN and we’re looking for some more people to come help us build and scale the open data ecosystem. In particular, we’re looking for a great project manager to deliver a portfolio of CKAN-related projects, and also an awesome front end web developer who […]

Read more

TEXTUS: an open source platform for working with collections of texts and metadata

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is cross-posted from jonathangray.org. Since finally blogging about OpenPhilosophy.org last month I’ve been thinking about how one could make a generic open source platform that could be used to power it, and other things like it. Enter ‘TEXTUS’: TEXTUS is […]

Read more

Ideas for OpenPhilosophy.org

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is cross-posted from jonathangray.org. For several years I’ve been meaning to start OpenPhilosophy.org, which would be a collection of open resources related to philosophy for use in teaching and research. There would be a focus on the history of philosophy, […]

Read more

LODLAM-NZ Round Up

The following guest post is by Jon Voss, whose projects include History Pin and Civil War Data 150. I recently traveled to Wellington, New Zealand to take part in the National Digital Forum of New Zealand (#ndf2011), which was held at the national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa. Following the conference, the amazing team […]

Read more

Open Humanities Working Group Update

The following update is from the Open Humanities Working Group, courtesy of James Harriman-Smith. To help you keep up with everything that’s going on across the OKF, we are publishing weekly updates from different Working Groups. Salvete. Ahem. The latest and most important news from the Open Humanities Working Group is that we now have […]

Read more

Opening up Domesday Book

The following guest post is by Anna Powell-Smith from the Open Domesday project. Anna is a member of our brand new Working Group on Open Humanities. Domesday Book might be one of the most famous government datasets ever created. Which makes it all the stranger that it’s not freely available online – at the National […]

Read more

Opening Government Data in Bulgaria

The following guest post is by Boyan Yurukov, blogger and open government data activist. In the beginning of 2011 some open data was released by the Bulgarian government on www.parliament.bg. Visitors could export information of bills and members of parliament as XML or CSV. They could also download the votes of individual MPs or parliamentary […]

Read more

SNCF launches a debate on open transport data in France

The following guest post is by Pieter Colpaert from iRail npo and Pierre Chrzanowski, and was reviewed by Regards Citoyens. Pieter and Pierre are both members of our brand new Working Group on Open Transport – watch this space for a full announcement of the working group’s activities and details on how to get involved!” […]

Read more

Open Data – Destination Hackney

The following guest post is by Duncan Ray, from Destination Hackney. In Summer 2012, the borough of Hackney in London will be opening its doors to millions of visitors flocking to the Olympic games. It’s an exciting time for this part of London, and through the Race for Apps competition it’s a fantastic opportunity for […]

Read more

Update from the Open Science Working Group

This week’s Working Group update comes from our Open Science group – thanks to Jenny Molloy for the post and for her great work coordinating the group! This follows on the recent updates from the Archaeology and EU Data groups – and next week we’ll have another… The open data in science working group have […]

Read more