[okfn-za] HacksHackers Event: Open Corporates

Thu Oct 18 08:53:00 UTC 2012

Hi All

In case you're interested - HacksHackers Cape Town (and JHB) are holding
meet-ups next week focusing on opening up corporate information. Chris
Taggart of OpenCorporates is coming to speak about the project . The
catering is generally pretty good and there are great networking
opportunities with techies, journalists and activists and other groups.

The full invitation can be found here:
http://hackshackers.co.za/pages/hh-meetup-open-corporates-invite.html.
Below is an excerpt. If you're thinking of coming - please register here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEFUWmNlUEpBZkpndnZoYk1uRUFiMVE6MA-
entrance is free.

---- snip ---

The “open data” movement is transforming governments’ accountability to
citizens. But what about companies?

 Highly interconnected global companies have exploded in complexity and
power, and increasingly affect our lives for good and bad. Yet in tandem
with this growth, corporate governance has weakened. The opacity and
complexity of this corporate world is a key enabler of corruption, tax
avoidance and organised crime.

Until now painstaking manual investigation has been required to track even
the most basic facts about a company, such as whether it exists, and who
owns it. Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates.com
<http://opencorporates.com/> believes
it’s time to change that. Chris is building an open access database with
basic information on every corporate entity in the world (including 32,000
South African companies and counting), which can then be remixed and
combined with other data, such as government contracts.

We invite all those with an interest in issues of corruption and
transparency to a hands-on practical session to learn about Chris’s
techniques and how you can put them to work for you.

-- 
Adi Eyal
Data Specialist
phone: +27 78 014 2469
skype: adieyalcas
linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal
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