The world’s first Open Knowledge Festival is promising to be a week of participatory sessions, keynote lectures, workshops, hackathons and satellite events in Helsinki, organised by diverse communities from across the globe.
The 2012 theme of OKFestival is Open Knowledge in Action, looking at the value that can be generated by opening up knowledge, the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from such sharing, and the impacts that transparency can have in our societies. The organisers write: "What kinds of new professions, ideas and community initiatives can emerge within our governments, markets, networks and neighbourhoods as a result of these engagements?"
"The exploration of this theme will not only be visible in the festival’s content, but also in its implementation as the first global event of its kind. This year, OKFestival will combine two popular annual events – the Open Government Data Camp and the Open Knowledge Conference. This combination allows us to highlight a set of 13 diverse Topic Streams from open development to municipal data, all organised by global teams of Guest Programme Planners. With this collaborative format, we aim to highlight the diversity of open knowledge and data initiatives from around the world. We will bring together civil society representatives, programmers, data wranglers, designers, students, members of government, local communities and citizens for a week of building new things and sharing great ideas."
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