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Open Knowledge Scotland event

The first Open Knowledge Scotland event took place on 13th May at the contemporary InSpace area of the Informatics Forum. It was organised and supported by iDEAlab and EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, and by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

In the true spirit of openness and exchange participants were invited to offer contributions on any aspect of creating, publishing or reusing open content in accordance with the guiding principles laid down here:

Guiding principles

The event thus brought together open knowledge practitioners from a diverse range of organisations and institutions, including academia, local government, libraries and information services, and the general public. It was full to capacity, with additional virtual viewing of a live video stream and active Twitter hashtag.

The afternoon opened with 17 ‘lightning’ talks, arranged into three topical groupings: Open Research Practice; Open Data for Scotland; and Open Knowledge and Linked Data.

Talks addressed various aspects of open data issues from very different perspectives. Highlights included:

  • Research Information Network insights into data and research sharing practice and support requirements in UK Academia;
  • a Mr Benn-inspired talk on how open knowledge and collaboration can inspire school pupils to ‘try on’ various career and educational possibilities;
  • an overview of current National Library of Scotland open mapping projects, including the new NLS Maps API;
  • a request to the Scottish Government asking for more efficient data sharing;
  • the value of open data and innovation, highlighted via discussion of the forthcoming Digital Strategy for Scotland;
  • different approaches to realising the benefits of context-rich open linked data.

The event culminated in an ‘Open Data Licensing: Legal Challenges’ clinic session where Charlotte Waelde and Andres Guadamuz of SCRIPT answered questions on the legalities and restrictions of sharing data.

Forum

Anyone interested in joining in the Open Knowledge discussions or events can join the Open Knowledge Scotland discussion forum by joining the ok-scotland list here:

Presentations

Presentations are available here:

Videos

Videos of presentations are available here:

Tweets

The tweets from the event are archived here:

Special interest group

There is an initiative to set up a Scottish Linked Data Interest Group.

Item originally published in August 2010.

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