Hello, open knowledge community.
What a March!
This past month we successfully and joyfully celebrated a peak moment of the year for us: Open Data Day. There were almost 300 events in 60 countries, organised by an ever-growing community: the month ended with 1,120 people behind the biggest and most diverse celebration of open data. You can read these and many other details below.
Today's newsletter also features two publications from our 100+ Conversations series, both with powerful women leading communities in the open movement: Rebecca Firth (HOT) and Angela Oduor Lungati (Ushahidi). Don't miss out. It was one of the ways we celebrated International Women's Day (IWD).
We've also been working on the Frictionless Standards update thanks to the generous support of NLnet, collaborating with D4D on the 2nd Edition of the State of Open Data report, and engaging (in person, in Malaysia) with partners from the Global Digital Justice Forum.
Plus, as always, find out what's new on the Open Knowledge Network.
That's a lot! Enjoy your reading.
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A heartfelt thanks to everyone in the open data community 💙
This year’s Open Data Day (ODD) was a huge success. Almost 300 events registered worldwide, with 60 countries participating in 15+ languages, which in practice means an increase of 56% for the event as a whole. We’ve put togehter a report with the main figures and data on the 2024 edition, like the one you can see above.
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Some lessons learned from this year’s data:
- Open Data Day goes far beyond the days of the event. Our community continues to promote open data beyond the official dates.
- Communities and countries in the Global South have shown a great appetite for open data and a growing mobilisation for open data for development.
- Our community members prioritise face-to-face real interactions at both hyperlocal and global events.
- The global open data community is growing: +55.9% events in 2024 and +9.4% members compared to last year.
- Open Data Day is a truly diverse initiative in terms of gender, power, levels of knowledge and geography.
There are thousands of stories and photos all over social media. Search using the official hashtags #ODD24 #OpenDataDay #OpenDataForSDGs and get inspired to join the community.
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The voices of the communities. The grassroots impact of Open Data Day.
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"Wikidata Loves SDGs demonstrated the power of community collaboration in enriching the global data repository for the greater good."
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Webinar: Open Data as infrastructure for economic development
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Open Knowledge Foundation also co-organised an Open Data Day event, in partnership with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), featuring renowned speakers including CABEI's Executive President, Gisela Sánchez, and our CEO, Renata Ávila. This activity represented an effort to understand how open data can drive innovation, promote transparency and foster citizen participation in the digital age.
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How openness can accelerate and strengthen the struggles against the complex challenges of our time? This is the key question behind conversations like the ones you can read below.
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Latest news on the Frictionless Standards update
The Frictionless Standards update is getting closer to a first draft release of the v2, and we are very excited about it! We discussed the last pending issues with the working group last week. The only outstanding issue in the draft release will be versioning, which was widely discussed with the working group during our monthly call in February. In the coming month we will work on a detailed proposal for versioning, probably to be applied from v2 on. This will be included in the v2 final release. If you want to know more about it, you can read the blog summary of the call. We want to acknowledge that this very exciting piece of work is only possible thanks to the generous and insightful contribution of the working group and the support of NLnet.
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New Release: 2nd Edition of the State of Open Data
Are we realising the full potential of open data? Join Renata Ávila and Tim Davies as they examine the impact and barriers of open data initiatives in various sectors. "Open data ultimately remains, and in most cases, is something seen as primarily technical, niche, and ‘behind the scenes’, rather than integral to a holistic vision of a good digital society. Its impact on the public at large is mostly indirect. Early hopes that open data could help usher in a new era of widespread data literacy are mostly unrealised."
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What Next for Digital Justice?
Our International Network Lead Sara Petti participated in the Global Digital Justice Forum, organized by IT for Change, Third World Network (TWN), and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). This three-day event held on March 3-5 in Penang, Malaysia, aimed at collectively envisioning the future of digital justice and chart pathways for civil society engagement with relevant stakeholders. There is a strong need for more effective coordinated collective action to push for the technology we truly desire – one that is fair, open, sustainable, developed with and for the people, and not to the detriments of the people.
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Check out the latest highlights from our global movement.
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In Scotland, Code the City ran a Democracy Hackathon on 16-17 March 2024. The event page has notes, videos and Github links.
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Open Knowledge Brasil (OKBR) continues with the efforts to develop and maintain Diário do Clima (Climate Diary), a platform that opens information from official gazettes (with environmentally themed filter) in an easy, quick and accessible way.
They also announced the dates of the regional version of their Conference on Data Journalism and Digital Methods (Coda Amazônia): it will take place in Belém, Pará, Brazil from 26 to 28 June 2024.
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Open Knowledge Nepal (OKN) successfully co-organised the Women in Data Conference 2024 on March 5, where they delve into the theme, "Ctrl+Z: Rewriting Gender Paradigms in Data and Tech."
On March 9, to celebrate Open Data Day 2024, OKN organised "Data Expedition" in Janakpurdham, where participants collaborated in teams to brainstorm ideas for addressing local issues using open data.
The new phase of the Integrated Data Management System (IDMS) for local government is starting with funding from the Data for Development (D4D) Programme, where the project team will be supporting local governments with data management, evidence, use cases, and data stories.
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“Data for the common good – Learn, share, and empower”: The Opendata.ch/2024 Forum is Switzerland’s leading conference on open data and data use in the public interest. On 24 May, their 14th conference will bring together experts and enthusiasts from government, research, business, and civil society at the University of Fribourg to ignite discussions, network and learn from each other.
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csv,conf,v8
Puebla, Mexico
29-30 May
The most beloved community conference for datamakers is back in May 2024, now in Mexico! Here are the keynote speakers confirmed so far.
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Wikimania 2024
Katowice, Poland
7-10 August
This 19th edition will be a collaboration among volunteers, chapters and user groups, and the hub of the Central and Eastern Europe region.
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About us.
Open knowledge is any content, information or data that people are free to use, re-use and redistribute — without any legal, technological or social restriction.
The Open Knowledge Foundation's mission is to create a free, fair and open future, advancing open knowledge as a design principle beyond just data. We do it by creating tools, developing models, harnessing communities and advocating for standards and policies in a sustainable, ethical and agile manner.
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