An interview with Professor Nigel Shadbolt, adviser to the government on the Open Data initiative, on the launch of the Midata scheme, which will allow consumers to have access to personal data held by a range of private sector organisations. 26 companies, including a number of household names such as Google, MasterCard and British Gas, have already signed up to the scheme.
Nigel Shadbolt gave a keynote talk on Open Government Data in the U.K. (slides available here) at the Open Government Data Camp.
The event took place in Warsaw on the 20th and 21st of October. It is the world’s largest gathering for discussing Open Data, with approximately 400 people attending from over 40 countries, spanning all continents.
Professor Shadbolt discussed the importance of Open Government Data and the successes and challenges encountered. He also described policy and technology requirements.
The conference took place form the 22nd to the 24th of September and the talk was entitled “Open Data, the UK experience.”
The Open World Forum (OWF) is a global summit where leading decision-makers, researchers and developers meet to exchange ideas on technological initiatives.
It is an annual event which first took place in 2008 but which has grown fast, with over 160 speakers and 1,400 delegates attending in 2010.
Research paper by Igor O. Popov, M. C. Schraefel, Wendy Hall and Nigel R. Shadbolt on a new tool for exploring and displaying graph based data sets. It will be presented at the International Semantic Web Conference from the 23rd to the 27th of October in Bonn, Germany.
Professor Shadbolt comments on Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude’s plans for changing the rules regarding Freedom of Information requests.
The 8th International Summer School on Information Retrieval (ESSIR) took place from the 29th of August to the 2nd of September.
The ESSIR is the only word-wide school for Information Retrieval (IR). It offers a programme of lectures on the management of information on the Internet for a range of people, including students, researchers and people in industry.
In his keynote lecture Professor Shadbolt discussed the challenges of Information Retrieval and Web Science.
The 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) took place in Bonn in Germany from the 23rd to the 27th of October.
The ISWC is the leading conference on the Semantic Web. The programme included tutorials, workshops and presentations on the latest research and innovations.
The conference took place from the 26th of June to the 1st of July. Professor Shadbolt discussed the Open Government Data initiative and crowdsourcing, which is the outsourcing of a large task to a group of people via an open call.
The conference, which is held every 4 years and was opened by acclaimed BBC reporter Kate Adie, is a forum for debate on geographical information for chief executives of national mapping organisations and other interested parties.
Professor Shadbolt discussed the transformative potential of open data.
The conference took place at the Swiss Federal archives in Berne and was attended by parliamentarians, senior administrators and representatives of business, academia and the media.
The conference took place on the 30th of June and 1st of July and the subject of the talk was “The Power, Promise and Perils of Open Government Data.”
The Open Knowledge Foundation is an international not-for-profit organisation and was set up in 2004 to promote open knowledge.
In the talk the Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives were introduced and the lessons learnt and the challenges for the future were discussed.