[ogdcamp] intro and idea for OGD Camp

Tue Jul 12 00:22:53 UTC 2011

Hi all,

First of all my apologies for not being in the telco - days insist in having 24 hours ...

And a short introduction :-)

My name is Esteve Almirall, I am Associate Professor at Esade Business School working in the Institute for Innovation and Knowledge - http://www.esade.edu/research-webs/eng/iik 

In the IIK we are proud to have with us professors like Henry Chesbrough or Max Boissot. The main focus of the Institute is Innovation and particularly Open Innovation. This happens also to be my main area, although I come from Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence).

Anybody who is interested in knowing more about me, please look at linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/ealmirall

Regarding Smart Cities, I am the coordinator of Open Cities http://opencities.net/, an EU project and involved in many others and possibly a new one. 

Our focus in these projects is Open Innovation in the Public Sector and the concept of gov as a platform manager.

Together with Laura Castellucci from Esade, we'll do our best to make Wasaw a big success.

All the best,

Esteve Almirall
esteve.almirall at esade.edu

On Monday, July 11, 2011 at 7:54 PM, Ton Zijlstra wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> With this e-mail I'd like to shortly introduce myself to this list, in the run-up to the OGD Camp in Warsaw this fall.
> 
> My name is Ton, and I've been active in open government data initiatives in the past years from various angles. I've done grass roots events, like co-starting the 'Hack the Government' series in the Netherlands, together with Jonathan Gray started the EU open data working group and mailing list, and worked e.g. for the Dutch Ministry f t Interior, on the plans for the Dutch national data catalogue that was launched early this year in beta. Also worked with my local city government to get an open data motion adopted. 
> 
> Currently I am the community steward for the epsiplatform.eu (http://epsiplatform.eu). That is the website through which the European Commission seeks to promote the re-use of information and data held by public bodies. It serves as a one stop shop for info regarding open data and data re-use. At the platform you'll find most of what's ever been written on opening up government data in the past 6 years or so. 
> 
> The epsiplatform team is actively supporting community activities around Europe. I see the OGD Camp as something that can grow into the yearly main community event that connects local open data communities from around Europe (the OGD movement's Christmas so to speak, the yearly big get-together). 
> 
> One of the things I'd like to do at OGD Camp is having a sort of 'meet and greet' session for central- and eastern European people/organisations active around OGD and connect better to them. Currently for us at epsiplatform it's the area of Europe where we'd sure like to have much better connections to community activities, as well as would like to support any budding initiatives around OGD. 
> 
> Another thought, more out of personal interest is to do some work in Warsaw this fall towards making the case how OGD is useful to gov departments in executing their own tasks. In working with local government I notice two things that to me make that an interesting question. 
> 
> 1) Gov depts often say they want to involve their citizens more, also in more operational aspects. But often there's a lack of ideas on how to do that. I think making the relevant data to a topic available to citizens can serve as an object of sociality here, to at least start the interaction, and at best to have people base their decision on how and where to participate effectively. An example would be the maintenance of green patches and parks in our town. The money usually runs out somewhere in September, and they'd like to involve citizens in maintaining green patches in their own street. Having the data available where, when and what needs to be done in terms of maintenance, how much time they plan for it usually, and what it saves the city if I do it voluntarily in place of them doing it during office hours, would be a huge help for me to judge if and how to participate. 
> 
> 2) Gov depts (at least their civil servants, at least here in NL) often also say they want to be more '2.0', want to work 'differently'. But when I look at e.g. proposed budget cuts nothing in there is about changing the way gov works, and when you ask around what that 'different' should be again there's often not a whole lot practical ideas to try and do that. I have a feeling that if you want to work differently it also means using different tools. Releasing OGD is one of those different tools. 
> 
> In short, I'd love to work towards more 'open data as a policy instrument' and 'open data as a operational tool for gov tasks'. I also think this is the most practical way of 'making the business case' for reluctant departments to start releasing their data. 
> 
> Hmm, I seem to have failed in making this a short intro. Looking forward to working with you all in the coming months, towards making OGD camp a success.
> 
> best,
> Ton
> 
> -------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
> 
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu (mailto:ton at tonzijlstra.eu)
> +31-6-34489360 (tel:%2B31-6-34489360)
> 
> http://zylstra.org/blog
>  -------------------------------------------
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