Blog

Rufus Pollock a hit in Sunny Brisbane

In an overnight trip to sunny Brisbane Rufus Pollock delivered an interactive session attended by 30 people at QUT on Friday night and on Saturday morning gave the plenary talk for the Queensland Government Open Data Mixer day to about 150 people (and livestreamed to 3 cities where concurrent Open Data Mixer days were being […]

Rufus Pollock takes Sydney by storm!

Brilliant 2 days of talking about Open Knowledge and getting things launched in Sydney!  Rufus has been on fire! Monday night’s public lecture was brilliant – the most engaging public forum I’ve personally ever heard.  We were honoured to be inundated with many thoughtful questions from people who are clearly very intelligent and care a […]

Event GovHack – Beautiful Data

As most of you will have heard, the Australian Government’s annual ‘open data’ event (GovHack) is taking place across the country this year with prizes from $500 to $5000 on offer!  GovHack this year has recruited 8 cities including our fair city of Melbourne!  Naturally, many in the Open Knowledge community are already involved around […]

Data.Hack.Map Art Gallery (& ‘Data Carpentry’ Course)

“After doing this ‘Data Carpentry’ course module, I went back to use Google Maps for getting some directions, and I realized how much more beautiful a map can be; being taught TileMill gave me a whole new easy to use set of tools for building beautiful maps from open data.”  (Participant at #DataHack) The catalyst […]

The Final Frontiers: an A-Z of ‘open knowledge’

Open Knowledge is naturally a very difficult thing to define, especially since it is defined by a community of people whose view of Open Knowledge is naturally kaleidoscopic. When people ask me what the OKFN community in Australia does, I often refer to the mission of those aboard the Stark Trek Enterprise (being a geek […]

What did Aaron steal?

Tax-payer funded research is just that: funded by the taxpayers. But the outcomes of that research are conveyed through papers in academic journals that cost money to access. Why can’t the public view these papers for free? Through research we discover things about the universe that are fascinating and useful in equal measure. Those of […]

Monthly Melbourne Open Knowledge Meetups

It’s getting closer to that time of Year… ride my bike more, go on a crazy shake diet, stop smoking, etc – Welcome to the New Year’s resolution countdown. Just mentioning these things makes me want to procrastinate… But why do we so often break our resolutions? Perhaps because we don’t really believe in them, […]