[ok-london-announce] My open data interests. OpenStreetMap and placr.co.uk

Tue Jul 26 10:47:27 UTC 2011

I had a good time at the London OKFN meet-up last night. I can see lots of positive buzz on twitter too (http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23opendataLDN ) 

What things do we want to do as a follow up?  My feeling is, I didn't get chance to meet many people, so I thought I'd introduce myself here:

I'm interested in this stuff for two reasons:

 Firstly I want to build bridges with the OpenStreetMap community. This is the largest open data project to come out of the UK, but it doesn't always get the recognition it deserves. I think this is because it's entirely volunteer-driven, with a small not-for-profit organisation at its core, and no full-time employees, and so we haven't always managed to be very coordinated and organised with promotion. I've found myself in charge of running London OpenStreetMap events (@OSMLondon on twitter)  Perhaps OpenStreetMap can work with the Open Knowledge Foundation very directly in some way, but I'm sure we can also benefit from wider awareness and adoption by the open data community.
Secondly I work for placr.co.uk  
and we're passionate about open data. Jonathan Raper does a lot of 
campaigning, particularly within government, and has recently blogged 
with an overview of the UK's open data landscape, and how companies like placr can fit into it: http://placr.co.uk/blog/2011/07/the-growth-case-for-open-data/ As well as offering consulting services around using and releasing of open data, we're working with transport datasets to create a range of 
product offerings. Someof these are available to have a play with. See here: http://placr.co.uk/gallery/ 

So my work and my hobby are both very open data oriented. I'm also a bit of a wikipedia fan. Basically I'm a bit open-obsessed. Feel free to drop me an email if you're interested in those things, but perhaps we can get some conversations going on this mailing list too. 

Harry Wood
http://harrywood.co.uk
@harry_wood on twitter
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