On 19th January 2016, I attended my first ‘Open Knowledge‘ meetup at the National Library of Scotland.
Link here: Open Knowledge meetup at NLS
In an informal friendly setting, with a lovely assortment of sandwiches, nibbles and drinks I was able to observe an equally lovely assortment of Open Knowledge initiatives espoused by the evening’s speakers including:
Jeremy Darot on Edinburgh Open Data Map. Utilising lots of cool data to populate OpenStreetMap. Data like planning projects, schools, GP surgeries, shops, catchment areas, air quality, green belt areas & much more besides. Phew!
Also, the University of Edinburgh’s own Professor Richard Rodger outlined the MESH project (Mapping Edinburgh’s Social History): 60,000+ properties mapped accurately by physically walking past taking a note of every garden, wall and business with the ambition to create the most accurate city map in Edinburgh. http://www.mesh.ed.ac.uk
Then there was architect Akiko Kobayashi on fabulous @fountainbridgec project: open source house designs on Commons which can be digitally fabricated & assembled easily.
Lastly, the National Library of Scotland’s own Fred Saunderson enthused about NLS’s Open Data Publication plan to publish 3-star open data (14 datasets in 2016, 8 more in 2017).
All in all, a great night of Open Knowledge initiatives. More please!