Festival shows the promises and perils of open data - 25 July 2014 - New Scientist

"From science journals to research data, there is a movement towards setting data free for everyone to use. It is a fine idea, but how we get from A to Z is quite another issue. This was the main theme of this year's Open Knowledge Festival, which ran from 15 to 17 July at Berlin's Kulturbrauerei cultural centre in Germany. Scientists, activists, NGOs, artists, law-makers and policy wonks all descended on the second festival hosted by Open Knowledge, a non-profit organisation that promotes the open availability and distribution of information. There have been many open data, activism and hacking conferences over the last few years, but the atmosphere of this one was electric. For once, people believed that they might actually succeed in changing the status quo. Industry is clearly paying attention, with sponsorship from Google and the investment firm Omidyar Network, and a keynote speech from Eric Hysen, Google's programme manager for elections and civic engagement. Businesses are also looking at the commercial opportunities afforded by open data. Take, for example, Nostalgeo, which maps old photographs onto modern day sites to see how their locality has changed over the decades, or Parkopedia, which maps street parking from open data and went on to secure deals with Lexus, Audi and BMW ..."