<font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><font>[Forwarding from the Open Knowledge Foundation. --Peter Suber.]<br></font><br></font><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><b><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><u><br>
</u></font></b></div><div><b><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><u>The Open Knowledge Foundation Bulletin January 2012</u></font></b></div><div><b><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><u><br></u></font></b></div>
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Happy New Year one and all!</font></div><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">2012 is set to be an exciting time in the open data space and the Open Knowledge Foundation is readying itself for its busiest year yet as an increasing number of governments, citizens and businesses around the world take note of the power that open knowledge has to make a more transparent and prosperous society.</font></div>
<div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">We're incredibly proud of the work that our global network of volunteers and staff did last year. Of course this could not have been achieved without the generous help of our institutional and individual supporters. Everything that was donated went into building tools and projects that promote the value of open knowledge. We need your help more than ever this year, so please consider giving a donation via our <a href="http://okfn.org/support/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Supporter's page</a>.</font></div>
<div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Some highlights of last year:<br></font><ul><li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">We ran the world's biggest open data event - the <b><a href="http://ogdcamp.org/after/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Government Data Camp</a></b> - for which all post-event material is now available including <a href="http://ogdcamp.org/after/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">videos, slides and photos</a>;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Our first national chapter beyond UK shores was incorporated in the form of <b><a href="http://okfn.de/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">The Open Knowledge Foundation Germany</a></b>;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The <b><a href="http://ckan.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">CKAN</a></b> team - who manage our open-source data portal software that lies behind more that 40 data hubs globally - announced the launch of CKAN v1.5, which marks a major step forward for the project. Find out more on the <a href="http://ckan.org/blog/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">CKAN blog</a>;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The <b><a href="http://openspending.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Spending</a></b> team made steps towards realising their grand vision of <i>"mapping every government and corporate financial transaction across the world and present it in useful and engaging forms"</i>. They released a new and improved <a href="http://openspending.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">website</a> and launched their <a href="http://blog.openspending.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">blog</a>.</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><a href="http://publicdomainreview.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">The Public Domain Review</a> - a free online journal that surfaces beautiful rarities for which copyright has expired - was founded and featured contributions from leading scholars on an array of public domain works.</font></li>
</ul></div><div><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">In the year ahead we will continue in the same vein, building on and expanding successful projects, running events that bring people from all sectors together in the name of open data and starting up new initiatives to promote open knowledge around the word:</font></div>
<div><ul><li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Our incubating <a href="http://okfn.org/chapters/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">local chapters</a> in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Brazil will continue to grow with numerous meet-ups and hackdays planned in the coming months;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Building on the massive success last year of <b>Open Government Data Camp</b> and <b>OKCon</b> we plan to run a five day festival in Finland called <b>OKFest</b> in the autumn that will bring these two events together. Watch this space!</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Our first <b><a href="http://pantonprinciples.org/panton-fellowships/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Panton Fellowships</a> </b>will get underway to support scientists who actively promote open data. We're currently taking applications for the Fellowships, see the <a href="http://pantonprinciples.org/panton-fellowships/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">website</a><font color="#222222"> for more details;</font></font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">We will begin work <b>TEXTUS</b>, an open source platform for reading, transcribing and collaboratively annotating public domain texts;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The <b><a href="http://openspending.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Spending</a></b> team is working on setting up an enormous registry of open spending data sets on <a href="http://thedatahub.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">The Data Hub</a>, as well as working closely with a huge number of civil society organisations to find out what their technology needs for accessing spending information are.</font></li>
</ul><div><b><u><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Some Thoughts on Open Knowledge</font></u></b></div><div><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><div><br></div><div>Just in case you missed any of them, here's a little selection of some of the musings of our community on our blog from the last couple of months:</div>
<div><ul><li style="margin-left:15px">Matt Rosenberg wrote a piece on <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/31/making-the-open-government-partnership-work/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Making the Open Government Partnership Work</a>, looking at what it will take for the efforts of the recently formed Open Government Partnership to succeed. He takes in initiatives from across the globe, addressing their context-specific challenges and potentials;</li>
<li style="margin-left:15px">Here's a related post from Chris Taggart on the <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/17/the-cost-of-closed-data-the-economics-of-open-data/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Cost of Closed Data and the Economics of Open Data</a>, looking at the difficulties of estimating the true economic value of openness;</li>
<li style="margin-left:15px">Our very own Rufus Pollock, in his piece <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-a-means-to-an-end-not-an-end-in-itself/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Data: a means to an end, not an end in itself</a>, looked at what we are trying to achieve with all this openness.</li>
</ul></div></font></div><div style="text-align:left"><p><b><u><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Open Knowledge Around the World</font></u></b></p><p><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The Open Data movement is going from strength to strength, and we love getting in your stories from all the cool projects that you're doing across the globe. We're starting to <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/14/what-open-data-catalogs-are-there-in-your-country/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">compile a global registry of data catalogues</a>, through our new <a href="http://datacatalogs.org/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">datacatalogs.org</a>, so do get in touch if you'd like to contribute from wherever you are!</font></p>
<p><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Here are some of the great stories from the last couple of months:</font></p><p></p><p></p><ul><li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">Introducing <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/09/share-your-african-knowledge/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Share your African Knowledge</a>, the project to broaden the representation of African knowledge online;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The awakening of <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/01/open-data-italy-has-awoken/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">open data in Italy</a>, with a week jam-packed with developments;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">A report on all the <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-in-portugal/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">hard work on OGD over in Portugal</a>;</font></li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">
OKFN's Germany chapter launched an <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/08/apps-4-germany-contest-launched/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Apps4Germany contest</a>;</font></li><li style="margin-left:15px">
<font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">And very cool city-level intiatives from <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/11/10/the-state-of-open-data-philly/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Data Philly</a> in the USA, and <a href="http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/30/open-commons-region-linz/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Open Commons Region Linz</a>!</font></li>
</ul><p></p><p></p><ul style="line-height:21px;background-color:rgb(250,250,250)"></ul></div><div><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><b><u>Dates for the Diary</u></b></font></div><div><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><b><u><br>
</u></b></font></div><div><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">The following is a list of hackdays, meet-ups and Skype calls run by Open Knowledge Foundation projects and working groups and that are open to anyone who is interested. Remember, if you can't make any of these events there are a huge number of other ways you get involved with our activities. Check out our <a href="http://okfn.org/community/get-involved/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Get Involved page</a> to find out more.</font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><span style="text-align:left"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><span style="text-align:left">26th January 2012 - </span><a href="http://www.communia-association.org/2012/01/17/public-domain-day-in-paris-france-26-january-2012/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);text-align:left" target="_blank">Public Domain Day in Paris</a></font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><span style="text-align:left">28th January 2012 - </span><a href="http://openeconomics.net/hackday-january-2011/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);text-align:left" target="_blank">Open Economics Hackday</a></font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><span style="text-align:left">30th January 2012 - O</span><a href="http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/London-GB/472892/?a=bd6_l1" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);text-align:left" target="_blank">pen Data London Meet-up</a></font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><span style="text-align:left">2nd February 2012 - </span><a href="http://wiki.openspending.org/Meetups" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);text-align:left" target="_blank">Open Spending Community Skype Call</a></font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><span style="text-align:left">15th February 2012 - </span><a href="http://humanities.okfn.org/calendar/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);text-align:left" target="_blank">Open Humanities Working Group Community Skype Call</a></font></div>
<div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="text-align:center"><font face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">---</font></div><div><font color="#222222" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br>
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