Our Festival Programme

July 15 – The Open Knowledge Fair

OKFestival 2014 will kick off at 18:00 on Tuesday 15th July with the Open Knowledge Fair; an opening extravaganza to set the scene for the following two days. This dynamic start to the 3 days of the festival will be comprised of demo stands, performances, interactive hands-on things to do and make, and the opportunity to enjoy music and drinks. Don’t miss out – buy your tickets now and explore the Fair by browsing through our Programme.

July 16 and 17 – The Core Festival Days

Each day will kick off with two inspiring, engaging plenary sessions to fuel the activities for the day ahead. We have some truly incredible keynote speakers joining us – stay tuned to discover more about them soon. After the plenaries, there will be community-led sessions from 11:00 to 18:30 each day – you can find the full list by checking out our full Programme. There will also be breakout spaces available throughout the entire festival and another space where you'll be able to pitch and run lightning sessions on the fly.

About OKFestival 2014’s Streams

This year, we have removed the traditional focus on narrow topic streams in an attempt to erase knowledge silos and facilitate the cross-exchange of ideas. OKFestival will aim to create learning and collaboration opportunities because we know that change is challenging, but we also believe that the open movement will be stronger if we work together better – and all the topics streams are still included of course, as you'll see below.

We believe that Knowledge, Tools and Society act as the levers of change. OKFestival 2014 will be based around these three narrative streams; each encompasses a broad range of open topics that the community is passionate about, and by building a programme around three main streams, instead of by topic, OKFestival allows for greater collaboration between attendees and shared progress across the entire open movement.

We fully encourage you to collaborate across streams to find new ways of working, to forge new partnerships and to generate new impact, and have set up a specific mailing list where you can find collaborators and do just that.

Knowledge informs change.

At OKFestival we'll discuss ways of unlocking, expanding and sharing knowledge. How can we do this more effectively? How can these groups interact?

You'll find topics such as open access, open research data, open educational resources, open science, data journalism and campaigning, data visualisation and literacy here.

Tools enable change. 

We'll be discussing how to facilitate the flow of knowledge through tools, as well as building them together during the festival. How does open tech work? Where is it headed? How can we work together to improve tools, or to create brand new ones?

You'll find topics such as nonprofit technology, open source software, open hardware, arts, design, architecture and urban planning here.

Society effects change.

How can openness have an impact on our society? How can citizens challenge inequality and hold governments and companies to account? How can societal institutions use open in more constructive, efficient ways?

You'll find topics such as designing institutions, building communities, protecting environments, powering economies through open government, transparency, security, privacy, open tech businesses, open development, open education, open culture, open sustainability and open economics here.

Fringe Events

We encourage people to plan and run fringe events which will complement the Festival, both before and after the official programming. If you are organising a Fringe Event, please let us know so we can help publicise it for you. If you want to know more about Fringe Events already in the pipeline, check out this page.

We hope you're as excited as we are by this year’s Programme, and that you’ll agree that this year’s Festival is going to be an amazing place full of possibility, learning and action!

If you haven’t already bought your ticket, make sure you don't miss out – we’re looking forward to seeing you in Berlin!