The University of Alicante will host the International Congress on Open Data and Reuse of Public Sector Information. The event will focus on the role of open data and its potential reuse to achieve improvements in several key areas for our country, such as tourism and the economy. It will also address the analysis and legal implications of Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information.

This conference is part of the Project "Challenges of the Ministry PID2019-105736GB-I00DER: Open data and reuse of public sector information in the context of its digital transformation: adapting to the new regulatory framework of the European Union", whose principal investigators are Julián Valero Torrijos and Rubén Martínez Gutiérrez, and the Transparency Agreement between the University of Alicante and the Department of Participation, Transparency, Cooperation and Democratic Quality 2021.

Timetable and agenda

The Congress will take place on 23 and 24 September 2021 in online and face-to-face mode.

The opening will be given by Rosa Pérez Garijo, Councillor for Participation, Transparency, Cooperation and Democratic Quality of the Generalitat Valenciana, and Amparo Navarro Faure, Rector of the University of Alicante.

Next, Kiko Llaneras will be in charge of the inaugural conference with his speech "Open data and the reuse of public sector information: experiences from practice". Kiko Llaneras is known for his articles on data journalism in El País, where he analyses certain aspects of political, social and economic current affairs based on indicators, statistics and surveys, among other data sources.

The congress will then be based on 4 round tables, titled:

• Open Data in Tourism
• Contracting and the economic value of data
• Open Data and the Environment
• Comparative Law. Open Data and RISP in the EU context.

Each of these round tables will be attended by experts and professionals from the public, private and academic sectors. You can see the full programme here (only available in Spanish).

Do you want to participate in the Congress? There is still time to send your papers

The Congress is open to the participation of citizens and companies that want to share their knowledge and experience. Proposals related to the four round tables can be submitted, although free themes will also be accepted as long as they are in line with the objectives of the congress.

Papers must be submitted before 15 July using this form. The application consists of an abstract of a maximum of 400 words detailing the proposal. On the 21st of the same month, the organisers will send notification of acceptance of the papers, which must be defended publicly.

How to attend?

The event is free of charge, but places are limited. In order to attend, this form must be completed before 20 September 2021 at 23:59 hours. Admitted participants will receive confirmation of their registration by email.

When pre-registering, you must indicate whether you wish to attend in person or virtually. Those who choose the online option will receive an email with the link to the video call platform.

If you have any questions, you can write to cursos.deje@ua.es for administrative matters and to ruben.martinez@ua.es for academic matters.

2021 has been the year chosen by the Publications Office of the European Union to organize the first Open Data Days of the European Union. Under the name EU Open Data Days, they will take place from November 23 to 25 with the aim of “promoting the value of open data in Europe and highlighting the opportunities they offer to different business models”. The event, which will be virtual, is made up of two proposals:

• EU Dataviz 2021. On November 23 and 24 there will be a conference program focused on open data and visualizations. This program is currently in the definition phase of the agenda, seeking proposals that contribute to enhancing the digital future of Europe.
• EU Datathon 2021. On November 25, for its part, the final of the EU Datathon 2021 will be held. Through this competition, which is now in its fifth edition, the Publications Office of the European Union seeks to promote the creation of products based on open data, such as mobile or web applications, that offer a response to different challenges related to EU priorities.

The registration period to participate in the EU Dathaton has recently been opened, which will run until May 21 (for more information you can read this article). At the same time, as we anticipated, the deadline has been opened to seek speakers for the EU Dataviz, as we will see below.

Who can submit a proposal to EU Dataviz?

The call is aimed at citizens around the world interested in open data, regardless of the sectors to which they belong: academics, private entities, journalists, data visualization professionals, graphic designers and officials of international organizations, from the EU and national, etc.

Proposals submitted to EU Dataviz 2021 should be oriented towards two specific topics:

• 30-45 minute plenary speeches presenting good practices, new use cases and emerging trends on the development of open data and / or data visualizations.
• Thematic sessions of 45 to 60 minutes (including questions and answers) with a practical approach that show initiatives and results, practices to follow and practical advice.

These sessions will have to be related to the topics included in the two days of presentations.

How will the EU Dataviz 2021 conference program unfold?

The event will be divided into two days, one more focused on open data and the other on visualizations:

Day 1: Open Data - November 23, 2021

During this first day it will be revealed how open data can contribute to the digital future of Europe. The challenges and benefits of data reuse and how to make it interoperable will be discussed, along with related topics such as:

• Open data initiatives that support policy making.
• Use cases and good practices of international, national and regional entities.
• How to improve data quality, interoperability and linked open data.

Day 2: Data Visualization - November 24, 2021

The second day will be dedicated to showing examples and good practices on the presentation of data in an attractive, efficient and ethical way. In addition, the different methods of applying data visualization techniques and some related topics will be discussed, such as:

• State-of-the-art tools and technologies in data visualization
• Emerging trends in data visualization
• Powerful visualization in the age of big data

How are the proposals presented?

To participate it is necessary to fill in this form. The deadline for submitting proposals is May 21.

How will the proposals be chosen?

Proposals received will be evaluated by the EU DataViz 2021 Program Committee, according to 4 criteria.

1. Relevance of the proposal to the EU DataViz Conference, i.e. whether it can be implemented at the EU level to help shape the digital future of the region and improve the lives of its citizens.
2. Clarity and quality of the proposal.
3. Innovative approach or professional experience of the collaborator.
4. Applicability to the EU public sector and / or use of EU or European open data in the proposal.

Each criterion will be valued for a maximum of 25 points each, with 100 being the maximum possible score.

Whether you are a public body that has launched an open data initiative, a company with innovative solutions based on data or a visualization professional, from datos.gob.es we invite you to present your proposal. Good luck to all participants!

After having been postponed due to the confinement before the Covid-19, last Thursday 24 September the XVII edition of Databeers was held by videoconference, in the framework of the Hackaton Copernicus Malaga. The event could also be followed by streaming via Youtube, maintaining the open and free character of the community meetings, which started in Malaga five years ago. This new format aroused the interest of the audience, with more than a hundred people registered and a wide repercussion on social networks.

A new format with many advantages

Held in the context of the Hackaton Copernicus Malaga, this edition of Databeers focused on the projects and applications based on open data and services from the European Earth Observation Programme Copernicus.

There were five talks, all of them of short duration, informative tone and close to pecha-kucha format, given by prestigious national and international experts. A tasting of different varieties of beer was interspersed with these talks. San Miguel, a brand that has supported Databeers Málaga since 2018, brought the beers to the homes of those attending the event.

The event began with a presentation by María Sánchez, coordinator of the Initiative, who highlighted that this edition meant a great challenge in terms of organisation, given the need to carry out the event safely, but without losing its essence "through a screen, beer and networking included, differentiating us from the many webinars held nowadays". Although - commented Sánchez - the screen limits the interaction and experience that takes place in a bar, the virtual format opens up new possibilities, and made it possible to have speakers from different geographical locations and to connect many people beyond Malaga.

5 interesting talks on applications of Copernicus data

The opening speaker for this Databeers Málaga Copernicus special was Kevin Ramírez, Copernicus coordinator at Climate-KIC, who showed the potential of the initiative and its data as a tool to support a sustainable future. He was followed by Felipe Fernández, head of the Information Technology and Supercomputing Group at IHCantabria, who shared the results of the ApliCop project, designed to identify the actors in Copernicus Spain and to promote their collaboration and innovation through projects with data, some of which we have already covered in this article.

In this sense, from GMV Aerospace and Defence S.A.U., Jesús Ortuño and Julia Yagüe presented their work with remote data for sustainable forest management, while Juan Arévalo Torres, director of the Malaga-based company Randbee Consultants, focused on the way in which content and stories can be constructed, through storytelling and different visualisation techniques, to make the data attractive and understandable for citizens.

The event was closed by Sonia Castro, coordinator of open data at the public entity Red.es, who explained to those present the role of the Aporta Initiative in promoting interaction and citizen participation in the generation, use and reuse of open data. During her presentation, she toured the different sections of datos.gob.es, highlighting its usefulness for users who want both to locate new datasets and to identify use cases and keep up to date with all the new developments in the open data ecosystem in Spain. She also highlighted the guides we offer users and the interaction channels through which they can send us their requests and suggestions.

As usual, the event was recorded thanks to the collaboration of David Bueno (CEMI Málaga) and is available through the Databeers Málaga Youtube channel. Recordings of the talks and presentations used will soon be shared via www.databeersmlg.com. In this space you can find a lot of material, from this and other events, whose license allows its use and reuse. It is a good way to generate knowledge beyond the face-to-face events and the local environment.

On June 5th, the TourismKG 2018 will be held in Cáceres. It is the first international workshop that will address the application of knowledge graphs on the travel and tourism sector. This event is organized by Ontology Engineering Group, responsible for DBpedia of Spanish, the biggest semantic dataset in our language, together with TAIGER and ODI Madrid.

Knowledge graphs allow to link concepts through the integration of datasets. For this, it is necessary to represent knowledge using Semantic Web techniques, such as ontologies or vocabularies, to result in machine-readable data. Knowledge graphs are used by search engines such as Google or applications such as Siri, to improve the effectiveness of their response to users’ searches or questions.

While this technology has already been implemented in multiple domains, such as medical or e-commerce, its full potential has not yet been exploited in the field of tourism, a sector that represented 11.1% of the Spanish economy in 2016, according to OECD data.

To shed light on this topic, TourismKG 2018 will have researchers, experts and professionals who can share their knowledge. The idea is to have a debate on the challenges, opportunities and possible use cases of knowledge graphs in order to optimize this sector.

The agenda of the event has been developed in a collaborative manner, to create an inclusive event where attendees can express their concerns and solve their doubts. During the month of April, a “call for papers” was opened for all those who wished to share their work during the event. These papers should revolve around 4 possible topic of interest: "Open data, proprietary data, semantic web and tourism", "Ontologies and vocabularies for Travel and Tourism", " knowledge graphs generation and completion for Travel and Tourism", and "Techniques and applications of knowledge graphs for Travel and Torurism".

The TourismKG 2018 is a full-day workshop at the ICWE 2018 (18th International Conference on Web Engineering), that takes places at San Francisco complex in Cáceres. In its 18th edition, this event, focused on the field of design, creation, maintenance and usage of Web applications, will revolve around the theme "Enhancing the Web with Advanced Engineering".

The interest in open data is growing and proof of this is the large number of events around this subject that will be held in our country during the coming months. Here we summarize the most important ones.

A must-attend event is the Open Gov Week, which will take place from May 7th to 11th. This international event is promoted by the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative of 76 countries, including Spain, to "promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance". The activities include courses, seminars, public debates, presentations, open days, contests and hackathons, among other activities (you can see all the activities here).

Public information opening, to promote its reuse and generate valuable services for citizens, is one of the topics that will be addressed. The opening session, entitled The Open State: Main Challenges and Opportunities for Public Authorities and Civil Society, include a panel discussion where representatives of public authorities, experts and civil society will share their vision on the value of open data and the need to protect information. This session will take place on Monday, May 7th from 9:00 a.m.

In addition, during the Open Gov Week, different activities have been organized to promote some of the Spanish open data portals. This is the case of Madrid City Council Open Data Portal. During 2 sessions - on Thursday, May 10th at 3:30 p.m. and Friday 11th at 12:00 p.m. – the people in charge of the service will explain how they manage public information access. This activity is aimed at teachers of secondary school and university.

The Transparency and Data Protection Council of Andalusia will also promote its Open Data Portal, in a session that include, among other things, simple examples of public information reuse. The event can be followed by streaming or in-person on Friday 11th at 10:30 a.m.

But not only public administrations promote events around open data, but also we increasingly see private events that address this topic, among other issues. On June 6th and 7th, the OpenExpo Europe 2018 will be held in Madrid, where experts will share the latest trends in Open Source, Free Software and Open World Economy (where open data has a prominent role). It is a professional event where companies linked to technological innovation from different fields, such as Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, cybersecurity or IoT, will showcase their innovations and technological solutions.

Finally, it is also important to highlight the activities aimed at promoting the use of open data among the youngest citizens. On the 3rd of May, the final presentation of a pilot project of the City Council of Barcelona is held. Through a contest, 3rd and 4th ESO students have learned to use analysis tools and to elaborate proposals based on data from Open Data BCN. Another example is the Open Summer of Code, an international program to be held in July in Spain and Belgium with the aim of "providing students with the training, support and network necessary to transform open innovation projects into powerful real-world services".

These are just some of the appointments that will take place in the coming months, but every day there are more and more activities designed to give citizens an understanding of open data world, spreading its value and promoting its reuse.

Tus Datos, Mis Datos, Nuestros Datos meeting will be held next Wednesday, February 14, in the Auditorium of Medialab Prado, Madrid, from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. Organized by Iniciativa Open Data, the event will cover the massive use of data in today's society, from different perspectives.

The event will begin with an open day session where attendees - prior registration - can visit three thematic spaces. In the first one, some national data catalog novelties (datos.gob.es) will be exposed, including information about which datasets are most used by citizens. Subsequently, Adolfo Antón, responsible for Datalab, will dedicate the second thematic space to address the key aspects for open data reuse. The third and last thematic space will be aimed at presenting the importance of data to move the city. This third space will be led by Ángeles Navarro of OpenDataSoft.

The second part of the meeting will be the Seminar Data, aimed at data managers of the Public Administration, open data professionals and digital rights and/or transparency experts. Given the target audience, access to this event will be invitation-only; although a score of places will be opened to the public the day before. The data seminar consists of a speech marathon where seven different profiles will present 7 miradas a los datos (7 looks at the data), a debate to discuss its importance, ownerhip, legal framework and opportunities for entrepreneurs and citizens, among others.

Then, there will be a round table discussion, focused on the socio-economic potential of open data, as well as the right to privacy and value generation at local level. This space will have the assistance of Juan Tomás García, from OpenSistemas, Borja Adsuara, digital strategy, public and regulatory affairs consultant, Helen Darbishire, from Access Info Europe and Elisa de la Nuez, from the Fundación ¿Hay derecho?, four experts to discuss open data as a wealth generator.

Finally, the day will end with a debate, with more than twenty renowned experts in data field. Participants will share their knowledge to develop a rights commandments based on institutional framework, in order to take advantage of data value in society.

This event´s aim is to promote open data knowledge, reuse and training among the citizens, while supporting entrepreneurial projects. An open space to reflect on governance, digital rights and data use in society to, in subsequent days, implement the conclusions to general public.

For more information, visit www.nuestrosdatos.es

The deadline to register for the ninth International Conference on the Reuse of Public Sector Information organized by ASEDIE is now open. The event will take place on November 30 at the headquarters of the National Geographic Institute, in Madrid.

Here we review the main conclusions taken from the 7th Aporta Meeting, which took place on October 24 at the headquarters of SESIAD and where national and international experts from the open data sector met.

With the title ´The value of data in the global ecosystem´, this year’s edition focused on analysing the benefit of opening up data for the economy, society, or the research field. Also, the evolution of the international open data roadmap was reviewed; and new technology linked to data was discussed, such as the internet of things, natural language processing and big data.

The Director of Red.es,  José Manuel Leceta, who opened the meeting, referred to data as the catalyst for the 21st century and the body that aims to be “a meeting point for initiatives of the sector”. Equally, the willingness to continue expanding the catalogue from datos.gob.es and to adopt what is stated by the International Charter for Open Data, as well as “other initiatives that may continue to generate value, such as carrying out studies or sectorial meetings of this type”.             

The first of the three blocks which the meeting was structured around analysed the value of data, which the project manager of the European Data Portal, Wendy Carrara, quantifies as 325 billion euros in Europe, with a return of 14 euros for every euro invested. In terms of its use, she believes that the true value lies in the combination of different types of data and sources, “there is no data that is more important than the other”, and encourages publishing everything possible so that third parties can decide how to capitalise this volume.

For his part, the president of the Multisectorial Association of Information (ASEDIE), Dionisio Torre, shared data from the Spanish infomediary sector, which has a turnover of almost 1.705 billion euros, especially related to geographical information. Also as the general director of Axesor, Torre commented on different data exploitation models, such as the development of tools for clients risk management, that help to reduce losses due to non-payments and to decrease management times. Other examples shown included indicators for valuing housing, local shops and estates, or linked to the consumption of different products; analysing market niches, with algorithms that locate areas where the demand of products and services is high; calculating commercial routes; analysing the overlapping of areas of influence; or establishing relations between those who can help us to discover business networks.

The discussion also included participation from the executive director of the Latin American Open Data Initiative (ILDA), Fabrizio Scrollini, who wanted to highlight the social value of data, which he sees as “living infrastructures, which have a cost that does not always give an immediate return, but does have social benefits. Data can help to combat, for example, domestic violence, which is important”, and he encouraged public administrations to think about the social value of data, proposing key issues such as what social problem am I trying to solve? Or what is my hypothesis for how to add or create value by using data?

The permanent professor from the Library science and Documentation of UC3M department, Eva María Méndez, shared her vision from a research perspective, asking how much data from researchers end up in the EU portal and how many create airtight research portals. Also, she showed her concern over what she considers a gap between research data and data to research, highlighting that the European Commission is preparing an initiative to re-use data for administration and those finances with public funding, that helps both communities to converge

The second of the blocks, mostly made up of international experts, reviewed the advances in the road map, after the 4th International Open Data Conference was held last year in Madrid. Stephen Walker, of the Open Data for Development (OD4D), gave an overview of how the movement of open data has evolved, demonstrating the need to further analyse the impact achieved in the last year, to highlight “what has been done up until now and how has it been achieved”. This way, he numbered seven areas of work identified, which included searching for greater political commitment, especially in countries that before were leaders but are now stagnating or even decreasing in their push on open data policies; revising standards; capacity building in terms of leaders who help to educate about data culture; the effort of collaboration networks; approaching specific problems; decision-making and how to use data to support the sustainable development agenda.

For his part, Szymon Lewandowski, Legal/Policy Officer of the European Commission, called for specific regulation and funding models to help Europe reach the 4% GDP growth by 2020. Lewandowski also shared figures from the European Open Data Portal which demonstrate the sound progress of the sector’s economy, “there is a lot of potential in the data and reasons to undertake initiatives in European policy”. The speaker also highlighted the Commission’s commitment for 2018 through the concept “Data package”, which encompasses a diverse group of data, such as Business Data, Government Data and Scientific Data, which will help to stop thinking about open data as an independent group of data, so that it can be integrated and attain value in data across different sectors.

The head of Open Data for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Bárbara Ubaldi, praised the work done in Spain which had allowed it to reach sixth position in the Open-Useful-Reusable data Index (OUR Data Index). For the speaker, the re-use of data is essential as “it has a high opportunity cost that is shown in the form of economic interest, efficiency of the public sector and social value, to empower citizens”. Also, she believes that “data can increase its value if it is standardised” and she demonstrates that “the aim of the Charter is to build a common framework between countries freely, to avoid the digital divide”. Also, to promote co-creation, the number of datasets has to increase but, also, these have to be made accessible. Salvador Soriano, from the Secretary of State for Information Society and Digital Agenda (SESIAD), agreed that this data is positive for Spain, “those who have contributed to the Aporta Initiative and the National Data Catalogue of Datos.gob, which is fuelled by regional data (48%), local governments (28%) and the General State Administration (24%), mainly INE and CSIC, some 16,000 datasets in total”. Salvador recognised that, “we have to measure the economical -because it is easy-” but also we have to find out “how it impacts on society”. Finally, he encouraged those attending to “make the data economy a major asset for the country”.

The final block was dedicated to new technology used for open data. For the head of Territorial Analysis at BBVA Data & Analytics, Juan Murillo, it is clear that we all leave a digital footprint, therefore, it is important to work openly so that data can be re-used and, above all, analysed. Also he wanted to translate two clear messages. Encouraging management based on proof and the ability to measure everything through different sources in order to have a global vision.

From a business perspective, the Head of Innovation&Discovery at AURA/CDO from Telefónica, Antonio Gúzman, pointed to security as an inherent factor in opening and exploiting data. Also, he referred to four fundamental factors in treating data: volume, variety, speed and veracity, emphasizing the importance of the final factor. So that companies can make better decisions based on reliable data analysis, it is necessary to provide them with “infrastructure that lowers the access and exploitation of information”.

Other speakers, the coordinator for the Area of Technology for the Office of SESIAD, David Pérez, focused on natural language technologies, calling for more text corpora, abstract and taxonomies to enable the training of these multilingual classification systems. For this, he called for common repositories, although he did highlight the immense richness of current resources, such as those provided by public administrations. However, he recognised that semantic resources are very expensive and, therefore, he believes it is necessary to reach international agreements and common projects. In the third discussion, the executive partner of the consultant Gartner, Javier González Marcos, also participated and shared a very positive perspective on the sector, which he said was “in vogue”. He also wanted to make some recommendations so that all bodies and companies who want to undertake projects to open up their data, such as having a scalable budget, monitoring advances that arise in the platforms and technology, controlling costs, security and strategy, and not to rely solely on our infrastructure and searching for cloud solutions.

The final part of the event was dedicated to the presentation of the conclusions drawn from the previous events to Aporta 2017, which took place in Madrid during the whole month of October. Before closing, the awards were handed to the winners of the Aporta Challenge 2017: The value of data for Government and the Aporta Awards 2017, which recognise the best projects on the re-use of data and apps designed to improve the efficiency of public administrations in Spain.

Galery of the event pics 

The International Open Data Day is celebrated on Saturday 4 March. For the fifth time in history, organizations around the world and local groups will create different events, conferences, workshops and activities in their community to show the benefits of open data and their re-use while promoting the adoption of open data policies in governments, companies and civil society.

In Spain, the institutions Open Knowledge España, ODI Madrid and Medialab-Prado organize the Open Data Day Madrid. It is an open data hackathon where developers, programmers, designers, journalists and users have the opportunity to participate in different projects to re-use open data.

In this edition, the international organization will focus on four key areas in which open data play an important role: Open research data, tracking public money flows, open data for environmental and open data for rights humans. In addition to these issues, the Madrid call will include in its agenda a workshop on data journalism: La España Vacía (The Empty Spain). This activity, organized by MediaLab-Prado, is aimed at data journalists, statisticians or analysts who re-use the data to elaborate a journalistic story related to demographic flows in Spain, spatial planning or differences between rural or urban areas, among others.

Since 2 February, the call for proposals is open, participants have to collect and analyse data from reliable and localized sources, presenting their projects with an open license that allows their reuse and distribution. The selected projects will be advised by national and international media professionals and experts in data analysis, treatment and visualization.

MediaLab-Prado also invites the participants to show their projects in the event Open Data Day Madrid, so the rest of attendees have the opportunity to enrich the data sources of the projects before the submission deadline, on 12 March.

Those people who want to work on one of the projects selected during one of the three sessions of the workshop that will take place in April, May or June may register as collaborators in the Medialab-Prado website from March 6. The rest of the open data community that wants to attend or share their ideas during the Open Data Day Madrid can join the Medialab list on data journalism or contact OKFN Spain sending an email to okfn@okfn.es or via their official Twitter account @okfn_spain.

In 2011 the project Sharing is caring was born in Denmark. An initiative  to organize different national seminars that promote the openness of the information of the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives and museums).

The first event took place in November 2011 bringing together a large number of participants from all over Denmark, from large and small institutions, museums, libraries, archives, educational institutions and members of the Wikipedia community. Such was the success of this initial call that Sharing's Caring also attracted assistants of other Nordic countries, working together in the development of a technological framework that allowed to share the digitized collections with the rest of the world, promoting the international cooperation for the development of the  GLAM sector in the XXI century.

Desde entonces, Sharing’s Caring organiza cada dos años una conferencia donde se abordan diferentes aspectos relevantes en la apertura de los datos culturales que incluyen desde casos reales que muestran el impacto de la digitalización de contenidos hasta paneles específicos donde artistas, profesionales del sector y expertos en copyright debaten sobre arte contemporáneo, medios digitales y derecho de propiedad.

Since then, Sharing's Caring has organized a conference every two years where different aspects of the open cultural data are discussed, including real cases that show the impact of the content digitization and specific panels where artists, professionals and experts in Copyright discuss on contemporary art, digital media and property rights.

Digitization and social impact?

As digitalisation has become an important task for the cultural sector, more and more institutions are providing access to their collections in digital format. However, open data goes beyond the mere online access to information, it involves sharing the authority to interpret those assets and encourage their re-use.

In this context, the following questions arise: How can open data in the GLAM sector become a joint advantage for institutions, as well as for their public and society in general? What are the challenges faced by the movement in terms of copyright, institutional policies and social impact? These issues will be answered at the next two conferences that Sharing is Caring has organized this year.

For the first time in its history, the initiative crosses its borders in April 2017 to hold an extension of its national conference in the city of Hamburg. With the collaboration of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and the University of Hamburg, from 20 to 21 April there will be different talks and workshops where participants will share their experiences and knowledge about open access to cultural content.

Moreover, the fifth edition of the Sharing is Caring seminar will be held in Aarhus (Denmark) in November, where, under the same motto as the German call, the role of the open cultural data in citizen participation and its impact on society will be discussed. 

Would you like to assit? For more information on each event, visit the official Sharing's Caring website: http://sharecare.nu/