[okfn-announce] The Open Knowledge Foundation Bulletin January 2012

Tue Jan 24 09:49:35 UTC 2012

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*The Open Knowledge Foundation Bulletin January 2012*
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Happy New Year one and all!

2012 is set to be an exciting time in the open data space and the Open
Knowledge Foundation is readying itself for its busiest year yet as an
increasing number of governments, citizens and businesses around the world
take note of the power that open knowledge has to make a more transparent
and prosperous society.

We're incredibly proud of the work that our global network of volunteers
and staff did last year. Of course this could not have been achieved
without the generous help of our institutional and individual supporters.
Everything that was donated went into building tools and projects that
promote the value of open knowledge. We need your help more than ever this
year, so please consider giving a donation via our Supporter's
page<http://okfn.org/support/>
.

Some highlights of last year:

   - We ran the world's biggest open data event - the *Open Government Data
   Camp <http://ogdcamp.org/after/>* - for which all post-event material is
   now available including videos, slides and photos<http://ogdcamp.org/after/>
   ;
   - Our first national chapter beyond UK shores was incorporated in the
   form of *The Open Knowledge Foundation Germany <http://okfn.de/>*;
   - The *CKAN <http://ckan.org/>* team - who manage our open-source data
   portal software that lies behind more that 40 data hubs globally
   - announced the launch of CKAN v1.5, which marks a major step forward for
   the project. Find out more on the CKAN blog <http://ckan.org/blog/>;
   - The *Open Spending <http://openspending.org/>* team made steps towards
   realising their grand vision of *"mapping every government and corporate
   financial transaction across the world and present it in useful and
   engaging forms"*. They released a new and improved
website<http://openspending.org/> and
   launched their blog <http://blog.openspending.org/>.
   - The Public Domain Review <http://publicdomainreview.org/> - a free
   online journal that surfaces beautiful rarities for which copyright has
   expired - was founded and featured contributions from leading scholars on
   an array of public domain works.

In the year ahead we will continue in the same vein, building on and
expanding successful projects, running events that bring people from all
sectors together in the name of open data and starting up new initiatives
to promote open knowledge around the word:

   - Our incubating local chapters <http://okfn.org/chapters/> in Belgium,
   Finland, the Netherlands and Brazil will continue to grow with numerous
   meet-ups and hackdays planned in the coming months;
   - Building on the massive success last year of *Open Government Data Camp
   * and *OKCon* we plan to run a five day festival in Finland called *
   OKFest* in the autumn that will bring these two events together. Watch
   this space!
   - Our first *Panton
Fellowships<http://pantonprinciples.org/panton-fellowships/>
    *will get underway to support scientists who actively promote open
   data. We're currently taking applications for the Fellowships, see the
   website <http://pantonprinciples.org/panton-fellowships/> for more
   details;
   - We will begin work *TEXTUS*, an open source platform for reading,
   transcribing and collaboratively annotating public domain texts;
   - The *Open Spending <http://openspending.org/>* team is working on
   setting up an enormous registry of open spending data sets on The Data
   Hub <http://thedatahub.org/>, as well as working closely with a huge
   number of civil society organisations to find out what their technology
   needs for accessing spending information are.

*Some Thoughts on Open Knowledge*

Just in case you missed any of them, here's a little selection of some of
the musings of our community on our blog from the last couple of months:

   - Matt Rosenberg wrote a piece on Making the Open Government Partnership
   Work<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/31/making-the-open-government-partnership-work/>,
   looking at what it will take for the efforts of the recently formed Open
   Government Partnership to succeed. He takes in initiatives from across the
   globe, addressing their context-specific challenges and potentials;
   - Here's a related post from Chris Taggart on the Cost of Closed Data
   and the Economics of Open
Data<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/17/the-cost-of-closed-data-the-economics-of-open-data/>,
   looking at the difficulties of estimating the true economic value of
   openness;
   - Our very own Rufus Pollock, in his piece Open Data: a means to an end,
   not an end in
itself<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-a-means-to-an-end-not-an-end-in-itself/>,
   looked at what we are trying to achieve with all this openness.

*Open Knowledge Around the World*

The Open Data movement is going from strength to strength, and we love
getting in your stories from all the cool projects that you're doing across
the globe. We're starting to compile a global registry of data
catalogues<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/14/what-open-data-catalogs-are-there-in-your-country/>,
through our new datacatalogs.org, so do get in touch if you'd like to
contribute from wherever you are!

Here are some of the great stories from the last couple of months:

   - Introducing Share your African
Knowledge<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/09/share-your-african-knowledge/>,
   the project to broaden the representation of African knowledge online;
   - The awakening of open data in
Italy<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/01/open-data-italy-has-awoken/>,
   with a week jam-packed with developments;
   - A report on all the hard work on OGD over in
Portugal<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-in-portugal/>
   ;
   - OKFN's Germany chapter launched an Apps4Germany
contest<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/08/apps-4-germany-contest-launched/>
   ;
   - And very cool city-level intiatives from Open Data
Philly<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/10/the-state-of-open-data-philly/>
in
   the USA, and Open Commons Region
Linz<http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/30/open-commons-region-linz/>
   !

*Dates for the Diary*
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The following is a list of hackdays, meet-ups and Skype calls run by Open
Knowledge Foundation projects and working groups and that are open to
anyone who is interested. Remember, if you can't make any of these events
there are a huge number of other ways you get involved with our activities.
Check out our Get Involved page <http://okfn.org/community/get-involved/> to
find out more.

26th January 2012 - Public Domain Day in
Paris<http://www.communia-association.org/2012/01/17/public-domain-day-in-paris-france-26-january-2012/>
28th January 2012 - Open Economics
Hackday<http://openeconomics.net/hackday-january-2011/>
30th January 2012 - Open Data London
Meet-up<http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/London-GB/472892/?a=bd6_l1>
2nd February 2012 - Open Spending Community Skype
Call<http://wiki.openspending.org/Meetups>
15th February 2012 - Open Humanities Working Group Community Skype
Call<http://humanities.okfn.org/calendar/>

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