Open Knowledge Foundation conference is OK by me

Recently I was in Berlin at OKCon organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, and I must say it was a great event loaded with presentations and workshops; 10 hours a day, for two straight days, more than 50 sessions on 5 tracks on open data, open education, open economy and much more. Below, I’ve summarized some of the sessions I attended and found worth mentioning.

Richard Stallman was one of the early presenters, but, in my opinion, he sadly misjudged his audience. He spent several minutes talking to a room full of Apple Macbooks about the evils of how closed software endangers your basic freedoms. I had the impression that most of the room, including me, value open source more for the better quality of its code, whereas Stallman appears to be more concerned with the freedom it provides. Quality of code for him seems to be merely a side benefit.

Carl-Christian Buhr presented how Neelie Kroes' digital agenda incorporates open data. He also mentioned work on a review and upate of the 10-year-old Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive. It was amusing for me to find out that there will be an update to this directive soon, given that my home country (the Slovak republic) is trying to incorporate the old one into their laws right now.