Last Thursday I attended Transparency Camp in Warsaw. Its main focus was on PSI – how it is generated, where it is collected, how it is published and re-used. Let me give you a very brief report on the event or, to be more precise, on what I saw and did at the event. The event was divided into three main tracks held in three different rooms of Wisła Cinema in Warsaw. It was supposed to be opened by the main guests: Daniele B. Silva (Esfera Brasil) and Richard Stirling (data.gov.uk). Unfortunately Mr Stirling did not arrive. Daniele had an interesting talk with John Wonderlich instead sharing ideas for PSI re-use in practical and intellectual context. You can see here both John and Danielle giving short intro to what they were talking about. By the way, more video will be coming to this site in late November. Some of it may be in English so have a look. My definite “number one” among the presentations of running projects was the presentation of Moja Polis project - data sets and filtering tools which use PSI to present all sorts of data in their geographical context. The project is at its early stage but it is already very interesting and has a great potential. The author of the project, Kuba Wygnański, hopes that his project will turn into a “data-gov” project and will be continued by Polish administration. He is ready to hand it over at some point to Polish officials. I found both the project and the presentation most interesting and inspiring. Another very interesting project was sejmometr.pl which is aimed at monitoring legislative work of Polish legislative bodies. A very user-friendly interface, customizable filters and a solid data base of legal acts and activities make the project a very useful tool for all those who are interested in the activities of Polish parliament. Still at an early stage but already very attractive. I also got interested by two presentation on data visualizations. Personally I think that it is a great challenge for data re-users to make their point to a wider audience. Visualizations of data in all sorts of diagrams, graphics, drawings etc. are a great way to make the impact. I liked the presentation given by John Emerson of backspace.com. You can watch a short intro by John here. By the way, when I think of data visualizations I always think of Hans Rosling so take a look at his presentations at TED.com. I can’t describe here all the presentations I saw. The last part of TC was “Lightning talks” – short presentations on various aspects of open data, PSI, open education etc. I was glad to meet some people who were behind Polish Open Access Week (I wrote about it in my first post). The closing talk was the one given by a soltys (village administrator) of a very small villlage (170 people) who gave a really inspiring talk on how such small communitites can become communitites of communication and knowledge. The man came up with the idea of Village Center for Internet Communication – an internet to present not only main news but also important data and content both generated by the village as an administrative unit (budget, decisions, strategy etc.) but also a cultural community of its inhabitants (local cuisine, interests, families etc.). What I particularly liked about the man and his presentation was that he is a very pragmatic individual and he does in real world what many others only talk or write about. I also had a chance to give a short presentation during Lightning talks session on Open Natura 2000 project. What I missed during Transparency Camp was the idea of data driven journalism. I wrote about it in my previous post. I hoped that the issue of fact-based journalism would be a more explored territory during this event. Well, in general PSI re-use work in Poland is at its early stage. There is a lot to do in terms of a legal framework, technical solutions, publicity around the concept of open data, changing people’s mindsets etc. Another thing I missed were business models around open data. I did not see any serious ideas for doing profitable business due to the access to open data. We are not yet at the consumption phase, so to speak. But I am sure we are on the right track in Poland and the concept is treated both seriously and enthusiastically. Will keep you posted on that.