[euopendata] Welcome to Iceland and Norway!

Wed Jan 13 09:26:38 UTC 2010

Thanks Jonathan,

Hello everybody.

Just a quick introduction at this point. I'm the founder and CEO of a
start-up company called DataMarket (http://datamarket.net/), located
in Iceland. We are developing data services such as "The Icelandic
Economy Data Market" (see:
http://datamarket.net/request_data/icelandic_economy/). We also
provide professional services in data aggregation, visualization and
software development.

I've been a vocal advocate for Open Data access in Iceland for more
than two years now. I've been educating the media, government agencies
and politicians about work such as OKFN, data.co.uk, data.gov, The
Sunlight Foundation etc. As you may imagine, Iceland's spectacular
economic crash has resulted in a wide-spread call for more
transparency and less secrecy on all levels.

Together with a small group of other Open Data nerds, I run a
wiki-site called opingogn.net ("opin gögn" means "open data"), where
we have translated the Open Definition, and are pulling together
resources. Mainly links to various data sets and government agencies
with commentary on their data access policies, whom to contact, etc.

Some of my thoughts on Open Data can be found on my company's English
language blog (http://blog.datamarket.net/). I think some of you might
find my post on "brutal transparency" of particular interest:
http://blog.datamarket.net/2009/08/26/iceland-restoring-trust-through-open-data-and-brutal-transparency/

Unfortunately a lot of our work is in Icelandic only. This will change
quite a lot in 2010, as we are trying to work a little more
internationally.

I look forward to participating in EU Open Data. Please don't hesitate
to contact me if you have any further questions about Open Data in
Iceland, DataMarket, the Icelandic Economy or the Northern Lights :)

Best,
Hjalmar Gislason
Founder & CEO
DataMarket
M: +354 860 3800
www.datamarket.net
http://twitter.com/datamarket/

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> A big welcome to two new open data advocates: Hjalmar Gislason from
> Iceland and Svein-Magnus Sørensen from Norway. Great to have you on
> board guys!
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://www.okfn.org
>
> Twitter/Identica: jwyg
>