[pdb-discuss] Open Knowledge 1.0: London, Saturday March 17th 2007

[Rufus Pollock]

For those on the list who don't already know about it I just wanted to 
let everyone know about Open Knowledge 1.0 which is taking place 
Saturday week. Full announce follows below.

I have also proposed a 'Public Domain Works Database' session for the 
open space (see http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/) at this event. This would 
just be a quick 5 - 10 minute lightning talk presenting what we are up 
to and what we plan to do.

Who would be up for doing this presentation? I'm always willing but it 
would be nice if someone else wanted to talk about the project  -- 
particularly as I'm one of the conference organizers so may be quite busy ;)

~rufus

                     Open Knowledge 1.0
             Saturday 17th March 2007, 1100-1830
                     Limehouse Town Hall
                 http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
           Organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation

   * Programme: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme/
   * Registration: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/
   * Wiki: http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/

On the 17th March 2007 the first all-day Open Knowledge event is taking
place in London. This event will bring together individuals and groups
from across the open knowledge spectrum and includes panels on open
media, open geodata and open scientific and civic information.

The event is open to all but we encourage you to register because space
is limited. A small entrance fee of £10 is planned to help pay for costs
but concessions are available.

## Speakers

### Open Scientific and Civic Data

   * Tim Hubbard, leader of the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger
     Institute
   * Peter Murray-Rust, Professor in the Unilever Centre for Molecular
     Science Informatics at Cambridge University
   * John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the Office of Public Sector
     Information

### Geodata and Civic Information

   * Ed Parsons, until recently CTO of the Ordnance Survey
   * Steve Coast, founder of Open Street Map
   * Charles Arthur, freeourdata.org.uk and Technology Editor of the
     Guardian

### Open Media

   * Paula Ledieu, formerly Director of the BBC's Creative Archive
     project and now Managing Director and Director of Open Media for
     Magic Lantern Productions
   * Susana Noguero and Olivier Schulbaum of Platoniq
   * Zoe Young of http://www.transmission.cc/

## Open Space

Lightning talks and mini-presentations. See:

   http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/

## Theme: Atomisation and Commercial Opportunity

Discussions of 'Open Knowledge' often end with licensing wars: legal
arguments, technicalities, and ethics. While those debates rage on, Open
Knowledge 1.0 will concentrate on two pragmatic and often-overlooked
aspects of Open Knowledge: atomisation and commercial possibility.

Atomisation on a large scale (such as in the Debian 'apt' packaging
system) has allowed large software projects to employ an amazing degree
of decentralised, collaborative and incremental development. But what
other kinds of knowledge can be atomised? What are the opportunities and
problems of this approach for forms of knowledge other than Software?

Atomisation also holds a key to commercial opportunity: unrestricted
access to an ever-changing, atomised landscape of knowledge creates
commercial opportunities that are not available with proprietary
approaches. What examples are there of commercial systems that function
with Open Knowledge, and how can those systems be shared?

Bringing together open threads from Science, Geodata, Civic Information
and Media, Open Knowledge 1.0 is an opportunity for people and projects
to meet, talk and plan things.