[Foundation-l] Open Knowledge 1.0: London, Saturday March 17th 2007

[Rufus Pollock]

Dear All,

List members might be interested in this Open Knowledge event we are 
organizing which will take place in London in March. One of our 
particular aims is to keep space (physical and temporal) at the event 
for 'extra', and perhaps unplanned, presentations, demos and workshops. 
So if you are working on something related to open knowledge that you'd 
like to tell people about please let us know and come along.

Regards,

Rufus Pollock

                     Open Knowledge 1.0
             Saturday 17th March 2007, 1100-1830
                     Limehouse Town Hall
                 http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
           Organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation

   * Programme: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme/
   * Registration: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/
   * Wiki: http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/

On the 17th March 2007 the first all-day Open Knowledge event is taking 
place in London. This event will bring together individuals and groups 
from across the open knowledge spectrum and includes panels on open 
media, open geodata and open scientific and civic information.

The event is open to all but we encourage you to register because space 
is limited. A small entrance fee of £10 is planned to help pay for costs 
but concessions are available.

## Speakers

### Open Scientific and Civic Data

   * Tim Hubbard, leader of the Human Genome Analysis Group at the 
Sanger Institute
   * Peter Murray-Rust, Professor in the Unilever Centre for Molecular 
Science Informatics at Cambridge University
   * John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the Office of Public Sector 
Information

### Geodata and Civic Information

   * Ed Parsons, until recently CTO of the Ordnance Survey
   * Steve Coast, founder of Open Street Map
   * Charles Arthur, freeourdata.org.uk and Technology Editor of the 
Guardian

### Open Media

   * Paula Ledieu, formerly Director of the BBC's Creative Archive 
project and now Managing Director and Director of Open Media for Magic 
Lantern Productions
   * Fleur Knopperts of DocAgora
   * Zoe Young of http://www.transmission.cc/

## Theme: Atomisation and Commercial Opportunity

Discussions of 'Open Knowledge' often end with licensing wars: legal 
arguments, technicalities, and ethics. While those debates rage on, Open 
Knowledge 1.0 will concentrate on two pragmatic and often-overlooked 
aspects of Open Knowledge: atomisation and commercial possibility.

Atomisation on a large scale (such as in the Debian 'apt' packaging 
system) has allowed large software projects to employ an amazing degree 
of decentralised, collaborative and incremental development. But what 
other kinds of knowledge can be atomised? What are the opportunities and 
problems of this approach for forms of knowledge other than Software?

Atomisation also holds a key to commercial opportunity: unrestricted 
access to an ever-changing, atomised landscape of knowledge creates 
commercial opportunities that are not available with proprietary 
approaches. What examples are there of commercial systems that function 
with Open Knowledge, and how can those systems be shared?

Bringing together open threads from Science, Geodata, Civic Information 
and Media, Open Knowledge 1.0 is an opportunity for people and projects 
to meet, talk and plan things.