When I decided to apply to be Open Knowledge Foundations (now Open Knowledge International) Ambassador in Sweden 2,5 years ago, I was dreaming to create something that have influence in the OK ecosystem. I was sure I was dedicated but I was not sure what I should do but I knew I wanted to test whether I could create an organization that could be vital part of Open Knowledge ecosystem in Sweden. Anyhow. application and acceptance process took a bit long after several online and f2f interviews, I got accepted.
I did not want to move very fast to register an organization because I wanted to be sure that I would have committed team members therefore I took that part slowly and we started to do some open data meetups, seminars, press releases and volunteer projects, presented ourselves different meetups and hackatrons.
In 2015 I founded and then registered our organization as NGO and I was elected to be Chairman of this organisation. The same year we received support from Vinnova and EU. Both are on going projects FragaStaten.se and http://clarity-csa.eu/. Furthermore we became responsible from Open Data Indek and Census and then Local Data Index. We have organized hackhatrons or supported competitions/ hackatrons such as wiki data visualization challenge, hack4heritage etc.
The main reasion that I write this blog post is about the last event, last project we had. It was my 2 year dream to launch Open Knowledge Awards in Sweden in order to provide recognition to people and organizations that contribute open knowledge in Sweden. We know there are many, but they are not appreciated enough. Can we create an annual award that people/ organizations should friendly compete and contribute to open knowledge and also receive recognition?
We had our prize ceromony/gala at Royal Institute of Technology in collaboration with KTH Industrial Marketing and Entrepreneurship Division and with support from Wikimedia. It was a fantastic event with lots of participants and interest. Our two Moderators Jessica Cederberg Wodmar, and Prof Terrence Brown added so much value to the event, besides being jury members. In addition to them, we had Peter Krantz and Annika Lidne as other jury members. Winners were very happy that jury recognized their contribution. I think almost all nominees deserved a prize but of course nothing can be 100% objective when there is human factor. Based on number of press releases I see by winners, I think we were able to find good jury members, we were transparent with our nomination and evaluation process therefore we put our flag at the OK Ecosystem in Sweden with a pride!.
Asmen Gul, Project Manager of OKAwards did a fantastic job during the whole process, I hope he is going to continue with this role and make it even better next year. If you would like to know more about the award, jury members and the team please check www.okawards.org
I am very happy that we are running multiple projects in prallel, of course it would not be possible with contribution of my team members Asmen, Mattias, Aylin, Fredrik, Toni, Alla, Kristina, Adrian, Per Fredrik
We have many nice developments coming. Stay tuned.
// Some press releases after our event
http://flov.gu.se/aktuellt/Nyheter/fulltext//anslagstavleforskning-fick-open-knowledge-award.cid1416155
I am presenting how Open Knowledge can change peoples life, including mine
Project Manager Asmen Gul, our two Moderators Jessica Cederberg Wodmar, and Prof Terrence Brown
Winners and Team
Patrik Westander took his Best Transparency award from Jury member Peter Krantz
