Open data contributions welcomed at European Data Forum 2014 at lod2.okfn.org

"The value of open data is increasing as more data is being released under an open license allowing anyone to freely use, reuse and redistribute it. This provides numerous opportunities for businesses and other organisations alike, and open data is becoming one of the pillars of Europe’s data economy. Open data is therefore one of the key themes at the European Data Forum 2014, which will take place 19-20 March 2014 in Athens, Greece. We invite you to submit your contributions now and are specifically interested in innovative applications of open data. The call for Contributions is open until 10 Dec 22:00 CET. Open data is increasingly becoming an integral part of governments’ agendas. In June, the G8 launched an Open data charter, committing to the ‘open by default’ principle. The European Commission released a document demonstrating how on the Commission implements this charter. Notable initiatives are the European Commission’s own open data portal and the portal publicdata.eu which aggregates data from governments’ open data portals throughout Europe. National open data portals are becoming more and more commonplace with notable examples such as the re-launched Swedish national open data portal oppnadata.se and the German national portal govdata.de. The value that open data can bring is demonstrated in various ways. Publication of budget and spending data makes governments more transparent and allows citizens and journalists to hold their governments to account. Projects like OpenSpending are helping turn the data into meaningful visualisations and stories so that people can make sense of the data. Economic opportunities for the data are being explored by companies such as Open Corporates and start-up companies such as Nostalgeo, who make innovative use of open mapping data to integrate images of old post cards with modern maps. We invite you to submit your contribution today. There is also a Call for Exhibition (CfE) in place and and we are offering interesting sponsoring bundles for organisations, projects and enterprises. We look forward to your submission!"