[FOSS4G2016] Key Topics: open data

Tue Dec 29 05:59:51 PST 2015

Hi all,

I think it is a highly appropriate theme and I am 100% up to support and 
to get actively involved in making open data a key topic for foss4g 
2016, as I was saying the first time we talked about the matter in 
September. I am just copy-pasting my initial email here

"Hi Bart and everyone,

Thank you for raising that question.

As Gert already pointed out, we had a dedicated Open Data track at the 
FOSS4G Europe 2015 in Como. As Chair of that track, I can say that the 
response of the community was far from faded. We had more papers 
submitted than expected and even had to redirect some towards the poster 
session. In my personal humble opinion, this was a very clear sign of 
the growing interest in open (geo)data and, even more, that there are 
activities already reaching maturity around the topic.

To better understand what we wanted to do, would be to read the call for 
papers [1] we put out for this track.

This was not a singular communion though that I was part of. In 2013, at 
FOSS4G Central Easter Europe [2], we organized an open data side event 
[3] with representatives from Open Government Partnership [4] and Open 
Knowledge [5].

IMHO, the conferences and events around open data are not less abundant 
than at the start of this initiative. I think we are experiencing a 
coagulation of the open data related events. The topic has been 
constantly expanding in complexity, as it bares many facets, from 
economic to social, from legislative to transparent and accountable gov 
administration and so on. The number of organizations around the world 
that are actively working, supporting and promoting the open data 
movement is ever growing. Even more, EU and not only is heavily 
investing in the topic, most often related to the idea of smart cities, 
ex: [6]. Furthermore, all sorts of indexes giving ranks to countries, 
regions or cities as "how open they are", or indexes of how, where, with 
what social/ economic impact open data is used, have already been around 
for 3-4 years [7], [8], [9], [10].
Furthermore, European agencies, such as the European Space Agency has 
implemented an open data policy for Sentinel data products acquired 
through Copernicus program [11]. Building on that, EU is launching calls 
[12] to support smart applications that use the open data made available.
As a significant amount of data that an entity (nation, city, community, 
agency) produces and/or collects is spatial, a lot of applications tend 
to be geo-based. And behold, a beautiful connection to FOSS4G. The 
cultures of open source and open data are very closely related indeed 
and I couldn't agree more that we should keep the momentum built at 
FOSS4G Europe 2015. Furthermore, I would be very happy to be part of the 
open data team, as I have some experience in the area by being part of 
the GEOIDEA.RO [13] project and actively collaborating with Open 
Knowledge for some time now.

Best regards,
Codrina

[1] http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/Call_opendata-track
[2] http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/
[3] http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/program/opendata
[4] http://www.opengovpartnership.org/
[5] https://okfn.org/
[6] cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/191779_en.html
[7] http://index.okfn.org/
[8] http://barometer.opendataresearch.org/index.html
[9] http://www.epsiplatform.eu/content/european-psi-scoreboard
[10] http://www.opendata500.com/
[11] https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/sentinel-data-access
[12] http://digitalearthlab.jrc.ec.europa.eu/mygeoss/
[13] http://geoidea.ro/
"

Enjoy your winter holidays!
Codrina

On 28/12/15 17:22, Steven Feldman wrote:
> Pretty much the same in the UK. OpenData is a good theme or topic for a FOSS4G, it can include OSM and other activity as well
> ______
> Steven
>
>
>> On 28 Dec 2015, at 15:06, Gert-Jan van der Weijden (OSGeo.nl) <gert-jan at osgeo.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Hi LOClist,
>>
>> In order to finalize our key topics (before 7th January!) list I'd like to know your opinion on "open data" as one of the key topics.
>> My perspective is mainly dutch, and in Holland I notice a few things:
>> 1) "open data" in mainly a "geospatial data" topic (by the way: same goed for "linked data")
>> 2) "open data" is mainly regarded as data provided by governments
>> 3) the "open data"-community and the FOSS4G communities have a very large overlap
>>
>> I was wondering if the situation in others countries (especially the D-A-CH) in comparable to the Netherlands.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> GJ
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> till.adams at fossgis.de schreef op 18-12-2015 15:25:
>>> Hi list!
>>> I just finished the minutes for our yesrterday IRC chat here:
>>> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2016_Meeting_minutes#Agenda
>>> For those, who don't read the minutes, one important point here (;-)):
>>> In order to get PR&M in motion we need contents, as we do not have
>>> program contents until may, we need to fix keynoters and also
>>> key-topics, which then should be stressed by a keynote as early as
>>> possible. Until now, we made some efforts in this direction, but it
>>> didn't work correctly.
>>> Yesterday we decided the following:
>>> 1. Key Topics must be fixed until 7th of January 2016
>>> 2. Proposed topics up to now are:
>>> -Remote Sensing/Copernikus
>>> -Open Data
>>> -Land Information
>>> List is here: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/2016_Key_Topics
>>> topics also discussed here: http://foss4g2016.org/redmine/issues/64  -
>>> there are several more named key-topics, mostly derived from former
>>> conferences like Development, Use, Big Data/Open Data, SDI, 3D/SfM,
>>> Web, Standards, also we discussed about CMS.
>>> I suggest also the following:
>>> - at least we shouldn't have more than 4-5 key-topics. I think 4 is a
>>> good number, remember, we time for around 6 keynotes in general.
>>> - for every key topic, there is one LOC-person in power, that
>>> "manages" this key topic. Means planning all activities like keynotes,
>>> workshops, topic-talks and so on related to this key-topic.
>>> - as I already started lots of effort in direction of remote
>>> sensing/Copernikus I would take the hat for this key-topic.
>>> Please comment on the latter!
>>> Till
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> FOSS4G2016 mailing list
>>> FOSS4G2016 at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2016
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