At this year’s festival we were helped by a fantastic team of volunteers, some of whom contributed to sharing updates about the event on social media. As well as tweeting and taking photos and video, each day they compiled a Storify of some of the top tweets. Below is the Storify for Day 1 of the festival which included the opening evening Open Knowledge Fair.
Fair
OKFestival Programme Tasters: The Open Knowledge Fair
As part of our series of blog posts explaining what you can expect from the OKFestival programme, we’re excited to tell you a little more about the opening evening event on Tuesday 15th July.
For those who have already arrived in Berlin – whether you’re here early to take part in some of the fringe events earlier in the week, or because you've been doing some sightseeing – we invite you to join us from 6 – 9pm on Tuesday 15th July. We’ll be hosting an Open Knowledge Fair at the Kulturbrauerei, the venue where the entire festival will be taking place.
Come and get a taster of what's to come over the following few days of the festival; meet other attendees, try snacks from the food trucks (meet the bright yellow BunsMobile!), sample beer from local breweries and wander among the exhibitors who’ll be keen to show and tell you about their projects. Try your hand at 3D printing, get a demo of new software, enjoy the interactive artworks and performances by artists around the venue, and explore all the other cool projects being showcased.
Activities at the Open Knowledge Fair include: Public Domain GIF Jam, Politaoke, Let’s make food from data, Open Data Manifesto ballot box, Open Source Beehives, csv soundsystem live, Open Steps, and Science Hackday Berlin – you can check out the full list on the Sched page. You might also want to browse some of the other blog posts about activities at the Fair.
Admission to this action-packed event is included as part of the festival ticket, and you'll be able to register and collect your name badges on the evening – a great chance to get set for the following day! Don’t forget to bring along some euros to sample the food and drink; we’ve got your taste buds covered with some super cool, uber-Berlin food trucks providing a range of options from local beers to pretzels and sausages, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options too.
Got your ticket yet!?
Send in your animated GIFS to be shown on the opening night!
This is a guest blog post by Adam Green, editor of The Public Domain Review. He will be co-facilitating the GIF Animation Session LIVE on Tuesday evening during the Open Knowledge Festival Fair.
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As part of the opening night’s festivities there shall be a little workshop dedicated to that wondrous darling of the internet, the animated GIF! Of course, it being a festival dedicated to the world of open, the workshop shall focus on GIFs exclusively made from public domain material. On the night itself there shall be a chance to join us in making your own, but we’d also like to invite you to make and send in your creations beforehand. You can do so via a Tumblr blog we’ve set up – Open GIFs – where you will find instructions (for the uninitiated) and also some inspiration for the wonderful things that can be done with the medium. We’ll project your animated GIFs on the night to give inspiration for others at the workshop, and for some visual delight to accompany the beer and mingling. We’ll also be putting a selection of the GIFS made (those submitted beforehand and at the workshop) on The Public Domain Review.
So, no time to lose! You can send us in your animated GIFs via the submit form on the blog. We look forward to seeing your creations! Deadline is July 13th.
Open Steps – a journey around the world discovering and showcasing open knowledge projects
Open Steps is an initiative from two Berliners; Alex Corbi (Spanish, software developer) and Margo Thierry (French, European politics) who spent a year travelling around the world discovering and documenting Open Knowledge projects. Now, they are coming back home to Berlin and are excited like to share their global experiences with the Open Knowledge Community at the OKFest14.
During this journey that took them through Europe, India, Asia and South America, they have covered numerous and exciting projects in the fields of Open Knowledge, Open Data, Open Government, Open Source but also Data Journalism on their blog. Through regularly published articles, their Directory (a list of the individuals and organisations they met) and more than 20 Open Data Visualisation workshops they organised along the way, Open Steps has managed to get an overview of what is going on across all 24 countries they visited.
If you’re curious about what they’ve discovered, explored and seen, then visit their stand at the Open Knowledge Festival Opening Fair on Tuesday the 15th July and collaborate with them to help improve and extend the ongoing Open Steps Directory, adding your ideas to this incredibly worthwhile and important global project.
Through Open Steps’ participation in OKFestival 2014, both a project and a journey come to an end. However, they have some exciting plans for the future so don’t miss their appearance at OKFestival – use it as a chance to explore their journey and get involved with the next stage!