[okfn-announce] The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter 18.5 - April-August 2011

Wed Sep 14 13:01:10 UTC 2011

The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter 18.5 - April-August 2011

Welcome to the (a bit more than) eighteenth Open Knowledge Foundation
newsletter!

Contents:

 * Open Government Data Camp 2011!
 * OKCon 2011 - Berlin Calling
 * The Open Data Challenge
 * Spend, Spend, Spend! - stories from Open Spending
 * We Win!
 * Pushing the frontiers: the OKF expands
 * What's going on with us...

OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA CAMP 2011
===============================

Open Government Data Camp is the world’s biggest open data event. It
brings together civil servants, developers, NGOs and others for two
days of talks, workshops and project sprints.

The camp has 4 key objectives:

 * Build consensus – around core open data principles and values
 * Build community – expand and strengthen international open data community
 * Share ideas – on the future of open data and how we can do things better
 * Make things – from starting projects, to making plans, to writing code

When? Main event: 20-21st October 2011; Satellite Events 17th-26th October 2011
Where? Warsaw, Poland.
Website: <http://ogdcamp.org/>
Register: <http://ogdcamp.org/register/>
Call for Participation:
<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/02/call-for-participation-open-government-data-camp-2011/>

We would like Open Government Data Camp to help to build irreversible
global momentum for open data, and to encourage more organisations and
institutions to adopt open data principles as part of their
organisational DNA. EU, US and international travel bursaries are
available: <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/02/international-travel-bursaries-for-open-government-data-camp-announced/>

OKCON 2011 - BERLIN CALLING
=========================

We had a fantastic time in Berlin this summer, for OKCon 2011. It was
an incredibly inspiring week, with the main conference on the 30th
June and 1st July, preceded by a couple of days of workshops,
hackspaces, and idea-sharing. It was brilliant to see so many of your
faces, from across the global OKF community. Everyone seemed to leave
with a broadened sense of the possible, and we're really excited about
what the coming year holds for the open data movement.

You'll be able to find all the post-event information, including
videos, slides, and details of the various workshops and presentations
that took place, at:

 * <http://okcon.org/2011/after>.

THE OPEN DATA CHALLENGE
========================

The Open Data Challenge, Europe's biggest ever open data competition
ran from early April until late June. With 430 entrants competing for
€20,000 worth of prizes, the all star cast of open data gurus on the
judging panel had a very hard time choosing the winners. From the
brilliant visualisations on the Bike Share Map (see:
<http://bikes.oobrien.com/>) to the ZNasichDani app (see:
<http://znasichdani.sk/l?l=en>) from Slovakia, which uncovers
influential people standing behind companies successful in securing
contract with the state, we were blown away by the standard of the
entries. To find out more about the entrants and winners see the Open
Data Challenge website:

 * <http://opendatachallenge.org/>

Since their success in the Open Data Challenge, the Fair Play Alliance
who built the ZNasichDani app have found themselves subject to an
injunction with regards to certain data used on the site. We wish them
the best of luck fighting this censorship. See our blog for more
details:

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/07/18/why-censoring-slovak-spending-app-means-bad-news-for-open-data/>

SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!
===================

If you haven't seen it yet, check out the new OpenSpending site (
<http://www.openspending.org/>). The team have been hard at work over
the past few months, securing and uploading a massive new release of
Italian spending data in April, getting all that data.gov.uk data for
government spending over £25k put in, and creating some fab
visualisations. It was really exciting to see the site go live in time
for OKCon 2011!

The long-term aim of the project is to track every government and
corporate financial  transaction across the world and present it in
useful and engaging forms for everyone from a schoolchild to a data
geek. So if your country, state, or city isn't yet involved, we'd love
your help getting that data input from all over the world! Head over
to the site for more info.

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/04/19/where-does-italys-money-go/>
 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/16/opening-up-government-data-gov-uk-publishes-uk-all-central-government-spending-data-over-25k/>
 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/29/new-visualisations-for-openspending/>

WE WIN!
=========================

Two different OKF projects have recently scooped up fantastic awards.

We were absolutely thrilled when Spending Stories was named a winner
in the Knight News Challenge! It aims to help the public contextualise
the numbers that get bandied about in news stories on government
finances, linking the public with the data. We've integrated the
project into OpenSpending, and you'll be hearing more about
developments very soon...

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/22/spending-stories-is-a-winner-of-the-knight-news-challenge/>

And YourTopia, the first project of our fledgling OpenEconomics
Working Group, grabbed third prize in the World Bank Apps contest!
Answer a short quiz about your priorities in terms of different
measures of development, and the app crunches WB data to tell you
which countries in the world are closest to your utopia. Your
anonymised answers will also contribute to constructing a measure of
social progress worldwide!

 * <http://www.yourtopia.net/>

PUSHING THE FRONTIERS: THE OKF ACROSS EUROPE
==============================================

The OKF community is expanding! We were really excited to welcome a
new OKF chapter in Austria, the Open Knowledge Forum Österreich
(<http://gov.opendata.at/okfo/>). For their first act, they brought us
the fantastically successful Open Government Data Konferenz 2011 - a
fully booked conference convening experts, practitioners and change
agents from Austria and abroad. They've now managed to secure the use
of CKAN and CC-BY licensing as nation-wide defaults for all government
data and software releases!

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/08/15/austria-adopts-ckan-and-cc-by-as-nation-wide-defaults/>

We were also thrilled with the launch of an OKF mailing list in the
Czech Republic, which followed on from the Big Clean event in Prague;
and to hear that following an Open Government Data Workshop in Sofia,
a new Bulgarian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) has
been made!

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/04/20/new-mailing-list-for-open-data-in-czech-republic/>
 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/04/08/notes-from-the-big-clean-in-prague/>
 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/07/open-data-workshop-and-opencamp-in-sofia-bulgaria-4-5-june/>
 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/21/bulgarian-translation-of-the-open-knowledge-definition-okd/>

And our German Chapter has been going from strength to strength, with
achievements including the launch of FragDenStaat
(<https://fragdenstaat.de/>) and exciting upcoming events including
their Apps für Deutschland (<http://www.apps4deutschland.de/>)
competition, and the Open Aid data and Conference hackday in Berlin
later this month! Keep up-to-date with all their goings-on on their
website, <http://okfn.de/>.

To find out more about establishing local groups and chapters in your
country or region, visit:

 * <http://okfn.org/chapters/>

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH US...
========================

With so much activity over the past few months, it was clear the OKF
core team were in need of a little assistance. Luckily we've been
rescued by the arrival of our two new amazing community coordinators -
Kat and Lucy! They'll be joining Jonathan in helping keep the
spiralling OKF community running smoothly: you can find out more about
both of them, and the rest of the team, on the OKF team page:

 * <http://okfn.org/about/team/>.

And to house our growing family, we've taken up a new residence in
London. Check out this cool video that Kat and Lucy put together of
our shiny new office at the Centre for Creative Collaboration!

 * <http://blog.okfn.org/2011/06/23/okfns-london-office-opens-at-the-centre-for-creative-collaboration/>

If you'd like to join the OKF, we're on the lookout for:

 * A new full-time community co-ordinator!
 * A part-time Foundation Administrator to get us all in order ;-)
 * A Desiger/Developer with UX Skills, as our first dedicated front
end designer / developer on our CKAN project.
 * Expert javascript and python coders. You don't have to be both, and
you can be based anywhere in the world!

You can find out more about all current vacancies on our Jobs page:

 * <http://okfn.org/jobs/>.

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! If you'd like to
find out about getting more involved with OKF's work, check out:

 * <http://okfn.org/community/get-involved/>

We want to help the community share their work with the world! If
you've got stories to share, email blog[at]okfn[dot]org.

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://okfn.org/community/get-involved/>
 * <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 -
theodora[dot]middleton[at]okfn[dot]org

-- 
Blog Editor
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org/