eventos

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/

The State Secretariat for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda (SESIAD), together with the Public Business Entity Red.es, organize the first Hackathon of Language Technology with the goal of promoting  the development of technological applications based on the natural language processing and the automatic translation through the creation of open source prototypes with concrete functionalities related to this area.  

The competition consists of two phases: first, the participants will have to present their ideas on the theme: "How to apply Open Language Technologies", in particular, a proposal of an open source within 15 calendar days once the list of admissions is published.

The 10 best prototype proposals will go to the second phase, selected by a jury that will choose the candidates according to the criteria established in the conditions of the hackathon and assessing:

• The degree of innovation, originality and creativity in the area of language technologies.
• The feasibility of the prototype.
• The utility of the proposal, taking into account the difficulty level of the problem it solves, the number of potential recipients, etc.

The selected participants will participate, next February 27 in Barcelona, in a competition where they will develop and present, at the 4YFN 2017 event, the proposed open-source prototypes in which any programming language can be used.

The participation in this first Hackathon of Technology of Language is free and open to any physical, legal or business person who meets the terms and conditions, available on the website of Red.es, and submits the form before January 16.

The global open data community continues to mature since the last International Open Data Conference was held in 2015 in the Canadian city of Ottawa. One year later, it’s time to continue to strengthen coordination between the different open data initiatives and projects in the world with the new edition of IODC to be held, in this occasion, in Madrid. In addition, in order to broaden the dialogue, include voices of experts in several fields and delve into specific themes, different events will take place in the days before the conference.

Thus, from 3^rd to 5^th October, the Spanish capital will host thirty meetings about open data which will become the warm-up to the big open data event. Thus, they have been organized in different spaces workshops and working groups to advance and share knowledge in areas such as open data standards, open science, open linguistic data or data innovation in developing countries.

In parallel, the official headquarters of the public company Red.es is the place chosen for the different sessions that will address over three days the use of open data in extractive industries in order to discuss strategies, practices, real cases, international challenges and solutions in the field.

In addition to the above activities, the program prior to IODC 2016 also includes relevant events for both international and national open data community. This is the case of the sixth edition of Encuentro Aporta that gathers, once again, open data experts in the country to foster openness and reuse of public sector information in Spain. Moreover, in view of the occasion, the Research Symposium or Open Cities Summit will be held, this last event will analyze how urban environments are deploying open data solutions and their positive impact of the same on the daily lives of their citizens.

October 4^th is the date chosen to celebrate in the IFEMA Convention Center the FINODEX Odine meeting which will analyze the results obtained in the different open data accelerators and incubators in Europe, showing the work of the start- ups participating in the initiative. In the same space and day, the CKAN Conference, aimed at developers, will bring participants the latest news from this open-source platform and explain how to implement the tool in any organization.

Finally, on Wednesday the 2016 Open Data Leaders Summit will bring together leaders of government open data initiatives to learn from each other, and discuss strategies for the successful implementation of open data programs at local, regional and national level.

Three days full of workshops, meetings, conferences and talks that anticipate an International Conference that, under the theme "Global goals, local impact" is expected to lay the foundations for the future of the open data movement in the world; thanks to the participation of experts, users, private companies, civil organizations and citizens who are committed to the openness of information as an engine for change.

From 22 to 23 June, Valladolid hosts the 1st International Forum on Urban Forestry in Mediterranean Cities, a meeting organized by the LIFE + Quick Urban Forest project to share and discuss with researchers, urban managers and technicians about techniques and advances in planting in degraded urban areas in Mediterranean climates; while social projects and initiatives on urban forestry are show as well. 

The program includes four sessions: one on social approach, another on local politics and two technical sessions, of which one is dedicated to monitoring and intelligent data analysis. The aim is to show attendees the state of sensor technology, the importance of big data and Internet of Things and its application to interpret the results.

The forum is not only designed for technicians responsible for forestry management or researchers, the organization has also invited experts and private companies specialized in data intelligence and regional associations and members of other similar projects.