OKCast at OKFestival: Explore, Connect & Inspire

Posted on July 9, 2014July 9, 2014 by Katelyn Rogers

The OKCast, hosted by Alex Fink, is a weekly blog and podcast exploring the many facets of open knowledge. Through interviews, stories and project spotlights, the podcast seeks to connect and inspire involvement in open knowledge projects around the world.

In the lead up to OKFestival, the OKCast will be conducting a series of mini-interviews with OKFestival session facilitators! In fact, they have already started! You can follow the interviews series here or check out past interviews with Shannon Dosemagen, Kristina Alexanderson and Nancy Schwartzman. These are short spotlights on the sessions and the people behind them – a perfect teaser for what what you can expect from our action packed festival lineup! There are more interviews to come so make sure you follow along!

The OKCast will also be at OKFestival interviewing our inspiring keynote speakers and meeting all of you! Do you have questions that you are dying to ask Patrick Alley, Neelie Kroes, Ory Okolloh, Beatriz Busaniche, or Eric Hysen? The OKCast will be posting hashtags to follow so make sure that you send in your questions and tune in to hear them answered live!

Finally, the OKCast wants to meet you! The goal of these podcasts is to explore, connect and inspire open knowledge projects from around the world and Open Knowledge Festival is the best opportunity, as the largest open knowledge event in the world, to meet the people behind the projects face to face. Please approach Alex or tweet him @theokcast and introduce yourself.

OKFestival Keynote Spotlight: Eric Hysen

Posted on June 20, 2014July 8, 2014 by Katelyn Rogers

The last in our series of OKFestival keynote spotlights introduces Eric Hysen, who heads up Google's elections and civic engagement products and programmes. Google’s work in this sphere has generated huge strides forwards at a global scale; with the help of his team, Eric has developed various tools which have helped people in over 30 countries both engage and vote in their respective political processes. Google’s team does this by organising and opening up information related to the electoral process, with Eric’s team working to improve access to the information citizens need in order to truly shape their own democratic processes.

In his keynote Eric will outline the overdue rise and impact of civic technologies in the last few years, but more importantly, he will open our eyes to the problem which all civic technologies are currently facing. As things currently stand, civic tech has reached that point common to all new technology; it requires the creation of a common infrastructure in order for it's impact to become scaleable. Without scale, real change remains a distant hope. While individual civic engagement apps have helped citizens vote, made governments more accountable and been effective in engaging people in the political process, we have reached the point where we need to come together to build our public data infrastructure. Only at this point can we expect to see continuous and global progress.

In his talk, Eric will shed light on current research and discuss the three tenets of civic technology which he believes can help take us towards a common framework. To find out what these critical elements in taking the next steps are, and how your involvement is critical to global progress, come and join Eric and many others from governments, corporations and academics to funders, civic hackers and citizens as we all come work to develop this framework together, starting at Open Knowledge Festival 2014 where we will help civic technology take the first steps towards generating a truly participatory, informed and democratic relationship between governments and citizens.

Though selling quickly, there are still some tickets left; buy one now and join Eric Hysen, Beatriz Busaniche, Patric Alley, Neelie Kroes and hundreds of other members of the global open knowledge community at OKFestival from July 15th to July 17th to share experiences, learn from peers and collectively build a stronger open knowledge movement.

Don't miss out, buy your OKFestival tickets today.

OKFestival Keynote Spotlight: Beatriz Busaniche

Posted on June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 by Katelyn Rogers

The Open Knowledge Festival team is thrilled to announce that Beatriz Busaniche will be joining us as a keynote speaker in Berlin this year. Beatriz Busaniche is a free software and culture expert and advocate, a board member of the Vía Libre Foundation in Argentina, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, a core team member at Creative Commons Argentina and a founding member of Wikimedia Argentina

Beatriz Busaniche's “Freedom has Never Been Cheap – A Call to Action for Freedom and the Public Domain” will draw on the wealth of experience she has in fighting to keep the internet open and free. This talk will do more than simply explain how the public domain is at risk; Beatriz will call on all OKFestival participants to lead the way for the entire global open knowledge community.

Because ‘free' as in ‘freedom’ has never come cheap, she will ask that we go beyond passive learning by joining forces and putting ourselves on the front line in the fight for a free public domain. To help us take those first steps, Beatriz will offer examples of and learnings from her own experiences as an activist fighting for the freedom of the public domain and, in doing so, her keynote will aim to truly address and impact the challenges which we are currently facing in the intellectual property debate.

Here is a sneak peak (in Spanish) of Beatriz speaking at TEDxCordoba, and as you may be able to see, we have a lot to look forward to!

Beatriz Busaniche's Keynote will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by Creative Commons Board member and href=”https://webwewant.org/”>Wed We Want, Renata Avila. We will open up the discussion to questions from the audience as we begin to develop long term strategies for engaging the entire open knowledge movement in the defence of the public domain!

There are still tickets left, join Beatriz Busaniche and hundreds of other members of the global open knowledge community at OKFestival from July 15th to July 17th to share experiences, learn from peers and collectively build a stronger open knowledge movement. Don't miss out, buy your OKFestival tickets today.

OKFestival Keynote Spotlight: Patrick Alley

Posted on June 18, 2014June 19, 2014 by Katelyn Rogers

This year, we have the great honour of welcoming Patrick Alley, co-founder and director of Global Witness, to the Open Knowledge Festival stage.

Patrick Alley took part in the organisation’s first investigations into the Thai-Khmer Rouge timber trade in 1995 and has since participated in over fifty field investigations in South East Asia, Africa and Europe. His focus has primarily been on natural resource governance issues in resource-rich countries.

Patrick’s talk will draw on over two decades of experience in obtaining and using hard evidence in order to expose corruption related to natural resources, funding of conflict and the looting of entire states. He will talk us through how we can best highlight the human, environmental and economic consequences of illegal, immoral or unethical practices – and by doing so, how we can deepen and broaden our impact – in an effort to ultimately achieve long-lasting global change. If you want to learn from a true change-maker, then there is no better person or place than Patrick speaking at Open Knowledge festival 2014.

Can't wait for July? Here is sneak peak of Patrick Alley describing a perfect crime – industrial logging – at TEDxExeter.

There are still tickets left; buy yours now to join Patrick Alley, Neelie Kroes and hundreds of other members of the global open knowledge community to share experiences, learn from peers and collectively build a stronger open knowledge movement.

Don't miss out, buy your OKFestival tickets today.

OKFestival Keynote Spotlight: Neelie Kroes

Posted on June 17, 2014June 17, 2014 by Katelyn Rogers

We are pleased to announce that Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission and a staunch supporter of open data, open government and open access, will join us in Berlin this year as a keynote speaker.

Neelie Kroes is responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, one of seven flagship initiatives of Europe 2020, the European Union's strategy for inclusive and sustainable growth. The Digital Agenda for Europe recognises that the digital economy is growing seven times faster than the rest of the economy and lays out seven priority areas that must be addressed in order to ensure that European citizens are truly able to take advantage of and receive the full benefits of digital technologies.

Opening up public sector information is a key part of the Digital Agenda for Europe and progress on open data in Europe has benefited significantly from the strong and unwavering support from Neelie Kroes. In a recent interview with OpenSource.com, Mrs. Kroes stated,

“Data is at the heart of the knowledge economy. All our decision-making is becoming ever more determined by data as a basis, not only inside companies, but also in our capacity as ordinary citizens. The products of the future are information-based products that will make our lives easier. Opening up data for use and reuse has therefore an enormous potential to change the way we live and make choices. A better use of data will thus contribute to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, the creation of jobs and the promotion of web-entrepreneurship and start-ups throughout the EU.”

We couldn't agree more. We are honoured that Mrs. Kroes will take part in this year’s Open Knowledge Festival and look forward to engaging her in a fruitful discussion about how we can better harness the power and potential of open data for the benefit of society.

There are still tickets left, join Neelie Kroes and hundreds of other members of the global open knowledge community to share experiences, learn from peers and collectively build a stronger open knowledge movement. Don't miss out, buy your OKFestival tickets today.