[okfn-announce] Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No.16, Sept - Dec 2010

Fri Feb 25 12:39:05 UTC 2011

Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No.16 Sept - Dec 2010

Welcome to the sixteenth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter!

Contents:

  * Open Government Data Camp 2010
  * Launch of publicdata.eu
  * Europe's Energy
  * CKAN keeps on growing - new releases, and launch of NosDonnees.fr
  * Open Bibliographic Data: Workshop, Principles, and 3 million new records
from the British Library
  * The Big Clean, Spring 2011
  * Introducing... Our New Project Coordinator!
  * OKF is recruiting! WLTM Python Web Experts
  * Keeping up with the OKF board
  * News in Brief
  * Other News in Brief
  * Thanks to our volunteers!
  * Support the Open Knowledge Foundation
  * Further Information

###############################
The Open Knowledge Foundation is a community-driven not-for-profit
organisation, and volunteers are behing everything we do. All our services
are provided openly and for free: your support can help ensure we can
continue and expand our work. To find out more about supporting OKF, visit
http://www.okfn.org/support
###############################

OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA CAMP 2010
===============================

The first ever international Open Government Data Camp in November was a
great success!
Hundreds  of people interested in open government data from around the world
got  together in London for two days of workshops, talks, planning, and
coding. You can find all the post-event material, including videos,  notes,
musings and pictures, here:

  * http://opengovernmentdata.org/camp2010/after/

We  were delighted that the UK government took the occassion to release a
massive new tranche of government spending data, which we've started to
crunch over at WhereDoesMyMoneyGo? Find out what you can do with it all
here:

* http://blog.okfn.org/2010/11/19

Thanks  so much to all the participants, who made it a hugely productive
and  exciting couple of days. We're looking forward to Open Government Data
Camp 2011, to be organised by our friends over at the Open Data Network  in
Germany!

LAUNCH OF PUBLICDATA.EU
======================

We're really excited about the recent launch of publicdata.eu, the project
to create an EU-wide open government data registry. The last 18 months has
seen a huge surge in interest in opening up official data for public reuse,
but at the moment it is  scattered across different data catalogues, portals
and websites, in different languages and formats. Publicdata.eu will provide
a single point of access to this data, as well as offering visualisation
tools and basic data analysis to enable non-technical users to get the most
out of the data available:

  http://publicdata.eu
  http://lod2.okfn.org

  EUROPE'S ENERGY
=================
One of the exciting new projects that LOD2 has made possible is this
hot-off-the-press mini-app, analysing and visualising energy production and
consumption across Europe:

  * http://energy.publicdata.eu/ee/

It was born out of work started at our Eurostat Hackday in December (see
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/12/16 for more info), and is based largely on the
Eurostat datasets which you can access through the CKAN portal. Thanks to
all who took part in that exciting and productive day, and if you've got
ideas for other projects in this area we'd love to hear from you!

CKAN KEEPS ON GROWING!
=======================
It's unstoppable! Our CKAN open data registry software keeps on spreading,
supporting new open data registries accross the world. PublicData.eu will be
based on CKAN, and work is also being done towards integrating the growing
number of national CKAN instances so that users will be able to find
comparative global results. We're excited to announce the launch of
NosDonnees.fr, a new community-driven open data portal in France, powered by
CKAN and developed from ideas shared at the Open Government Data Camp.

  * http://blog.okfn.org/2010/12/03

We've also brought out a major new release of CKAN, v1.2, with some really
significant improvements and extension work. Check it out at
http://ckan.org/ - and as ever, if you're interested in setting up an
instance of CKAN in your own country, we'd love to help! Get in touch, on
the CKAN discuss list:

  * http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/ckan-discuss

OPEN BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA
======================

It's been a busy few months in the world of open bibliographic data! In
October, we held a workshop in Berlin, which brought together the movers and
shakers from the fields of bibliographic data and public domain work.

  * http://blog.okfn.org/2010/10/11/

You can get the notes at http://okfnpad.org/pdobd

Then in November a major milestone was passed, with the British Library
opening up 3 million new records, in collaboration with the OpenBib project
of which OKF is a partner. Find out more at http://blog.okfn.org/2010/11/23

You can get the data as a CKAN package, or search it via our Bibliographica
portal:

  * http://bibliographica.org/

With all this activity, it seemed about time for the formulation of some
principles for Open Bibliographic Data. After six months of discussion and
planning, our Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data has formulated a set
of principles to help producers of data publish in a truly open way.You can
read the principles in English and in German here:

  * http://openbiblio.net/principles
  * http://openbiblio.net/principles/de/

Help spread the word! We'd especially love to hear from people interested in
translating the principles into other languages - drop a line to the list to
get involved:

  * http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-bibliography

THE BIG CLEAN, SPRING 2010
=======================
We're excited to announce that we’re helping to organise an international
series of events to  convert not-very-useful, unstructured,
non-machine-readable sources of public information into nice clean
structured data. We'd love to have your help! If you're interested in
organising an event in your area, add your name and location to the wiki:

  * http://wiki.okfn.org/TheBigClean

And you can join in with the discussion and preparations on our Open
Government Data list!

  * http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-governme<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government>
nt <http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government>

INTRODUCING... OUR NEW PROJECT COORDINATOR!
============================================
We'd like to say a warm welcome to Jason Kitcat, who's just joined us here
at the Open Knowledge Foundation in the new role of Project Coordinator!
He'll be overseeing all our live projects, as well as doing some direct
project management. Find out more about him in his own words, at
http://blog.okfn.org/2011/1/21/

THE OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION IS RECRUITING!
=============================================
Would YOU like to join the OKF team? We're currently looking for brilliant
python coders who'd like to join a small and dynamic team working on CKAN
and on our WhereDoesMyMoneyGo? project. To find out more, see:

  * http://blog.okfn.org/2011/01/25/python-web-expert-jobs/

KEEPING UP WITH THE OKF BOARD
==============================

You can now find out all about the inner workings of the Open Knowledge
Foundation board from our minutes, which have just been published online
going back to May 2009:

  * http://okfn.org/board/meetings/

In the spirit of openness, we hope this will help strengthen the OKF
community and encourage as much dialogue as possible over the way the
organisation is run. This year we'll be focussing on how to get the
community more involved with strategic decision-making - we'll keep you
posted!

NEWS IN BRIEF
=============

- Congratulations to everyone who helped organise and took part in the
International
Hackathon on 4th December 2010. Check out some of the new datasets and
projects at http://www.opendataday.org/wiki/Opendata_Day_Projects. We can't
wait for the next Open Data Day, coming up in May!

- We were proud to be joint organisers of the first Design Meets Data event,
in Berlin on 29th November 2010, as we announced on the blog:
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/10/27/. We're really excited about seeing more of
these days for "visualization junkies" to get together and build things!

- We're chuffed to learn that our proposal, Spending Stories, has made
itinto the "Full
Proposal" stage of the Knight News Challenge. Connected with our Where Does
My Money Go? project, the idea is to use datasets and visualisations to
contextualise news stories about public spending. We posted the full
explanation on the blog (http://blog.okfn.org/2011/1/18), and if you'd like
to get involved, get in touch at
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wdmmg-discuss!

- One of our favourite mini-projects from the past few months has been
Where are
the cuts?, which is mapping what the government's cuts mean at street-level.
Since there's no central list of what's being axed, we need your help to
build up the picture! Add info for your area at http://wherearethecuts.org/

- If you've ever wondered what our Public Domain projects are all about, or
if you've ever tried to explain it all to someone else, try our new
microshort film on Public Domain calculators, at http://vimeo.com/15678944.
We're hoping to make a whole series of films like this, exploring and
explaining all the different projects here at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

- We're really excited by the launch of the new OpenCorporates website,
first announced at our Open Government Data Camp in November. The aim is to
catalogue the URL for every single company in the world, and match it up
with the government data for all the jurisdictions in which that company
operates. Read more from its makers on our blog:
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/12/20/. It's simple, but massive, and they'd love
to have your help! Check it out at http://opencorporates.com/

- The pace is picking up south of the alps, with the Italian instance of
CKAN blossoming, and recent events including the Turin Cloud Camp and an
Open Data Conference hosted by the TOP-IX internet exchange. Two new Public
Sector Information projects, LAPSI and EVPSI, are being led from Italy, and
we're looking forward to their continued growth. Find out more at
https://www.lapsi-project.eu/ and http://www.evpsi.org/

OTHER NEWS IN BRIEF
==================

- We've heard of loads of exciting developments from our friends at Pro Bono
Publico in Spain, including ongoing consultation on developing PSI reuse
(you can read Pro Bono's contributions here: http://bit.ly/gJhG3f ), and the
Data Driven Journalism Barcamp, on Febrary 15th in Madrid, which they've
coorganised with Access Info Europe! Get the details at
https://probp.jottit.com/sesi%C3%B3n_de_data_driven_journalism

- Over at OpenlyLocal, they've been collecting up all the newly released
Local Spending Data, standardising it to match companies and charities, and
they've got over £7billion worth of payments ready to download as a single
open data dump! Check it out at http://openlylocal.com/councils/spending

- The CityCamp network has just celebrated its first birthday, and had a
fantastic year bringing together local stakeholders to share ideas and plans
for making their cities and communities more open: <
http://citycamp.govfresh.com/>. The most recent addition to the fold came in
December, with the CityCamp Colorado unconference:
http://citycampco.govfresh.com/ - we're sure the new year will see many more
such initiatives!

- The 2010 Open Data Masterclass Series, organised by a coalition of groups
including universities around the country and data.gov.uk, gave hundreds of
people around the country the chance to get a better understanding of the
opportunities around open data:
http://data.gov.uk/blog/the-open-data-master-class-series-guest-post. We
look forward to ODMS 2011, starting in March!

- We were pleased to note that the US National Science Foundation, in its
guidance on fulfilling its new "data access and management requirements,"
has linked to Open Context, the online research publication service which
works to secure openness in research data, including technical and legal
interoperability (see http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/bcs/arch/archaeom.jsp, and
http://opencontext.org/ for more details). We hope this move will encourahe
many researchers to start publishing more openly!

THANKS TO OKF VOLUNTEERS!
==========================

As usual, a big thank you to our volunteers and to our extended virtual
community for all of their valuable input! We'd like to give special thanks
to the new Working Group on Open Economics for their work on the YourTopia
project: http://blog.okfn.org/2011/01/31/

SUPPORT THE OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION
=========================================

A donation to the Open Knowledge Foundation would greatly help us with our
overhead costs, including hosting and project development. To find out more
about supporting our work, please visit:

  http://www.okfn.org/support

FURTHER INFORMATION
====================

If you would like to know more about what we are up to, please take a look
at our active projects page.

  http://www.okfn.org/projects/

If you are interested in participating in any of the OKF's projects, please
see our participate page, or join the OKF discuss list.

  http://www.okfn.org/participate/
  http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss

For further news and comments, see our blog:

  http://blog.okfn.org

You can follow us on Identi.ca or Twitter at:

  http://identi.ca/okfn
  http://twitter.com/okfn

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization. It is
incorporated
in the United Kingdom as a company limited by guarantee with company number
5133759. The registered office is 37 Panton Street, Cambridge, CB2 1HL, UK.

Compiled by Theodora Middleton, Newsletter Editor. Contact
theodora.middleton[at]okfn.org
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