It’s three weeks since I was at this year’s Opentech conference and I haven’t written my now-traditional post about what I saw. So let’s put that right.
I got there rather later than expected. It was a nice day, so I decided that I would walk from Victoria station to ULU. That route took me past Buckingham Palace and up the Mall. But I hadn’t realised that the Trooping of the Colour was taking place which made it impossible to get across the Mall and into Trafalgar Square. Of course I didn’t realise that until I reached the corner of St James Park near the Admiralty Arch. A helpful policeman explained what was going on and suggested that my best bet was to go to St James Park tube station and get the underground to Embankment. This involved walking most of the way back through the park. And when I got to the tube station it was closed. So I ended up walking to Embankment.
All of which meant I arrived about forty minutes later than I wanted to and the first session was in full swing as I got there.
So what did I see?
Being Female on the Internet – Sarah Brown
This is the talk I missed most of. And I had really wanted to see this talk. As I arrived she was just finishing her talk, and the audio doesn’t seem to be on the Opentech web site.
Selling ideas – Vinay Gupta
I think I didn’t concentrate on this as much as I should have. It was basically a talk about marketing – which is something that the geek community needs to get better at. Vinay illustrated his talk with examples from his Hexayurt project.
RIPA 2 – Ian Brown
The 3rd year of Snowdenia — Caroline Wilson Palow
Caroline talked about Ed Snowden’s work and the way it is changing the world.
Privacy: I do not think that word means what you think it means — Kat Matfield
Kat has been doing research into how end users view privacy on the web. It’s clear that people are worried about their privacy but that they don’t know enough about the subject in order to focus their fear (and anger) at the right things.
The State of the Network Address — Bill Thompson
Bill thinks that many of the world’s woes are caused by people in power abusing the technological tools that geeks have build. And he would like us to do more to prevent them doing that.
The State of Data — Gavin Starks
Gavin works for the Open Data Institute. It’s his job to help organisations to release as much data as possible and to help the rest of us to make as much use of that data as possible. He talked about the problems that he sees in this new data-rich world.
Using data to find patterns in law — John Sheridan
John is using impressive text parsing and manipulation techniques to investigate the UK’s legislation. It sounds like a really interesting project.
Scenic environments, healthy environments? How open data offers answers to this age-old question. — Chanuki Seresinhe
The answer seems to be yes :-)
I stood as a candidate, and… — James Smith
James stood as a candidate in this year’s general election, using various geek tools to power his campaign. He talked through the story of his campaign and tried to encourage others to try the same thing in the next election.
Democracy Club — Sym Roe
The Democracy Club built an number of tools and web sites which built databases of information about candidates in the recent election – and then shared that data with the public. Sym explained why and how these tools were built.
The Twitter Election? — Dave Cross
This was me. I’ve already written up my talk.
Election: what’s next
This was supposed to follow my talk. Bill Thompson had some ideas to start the discussion and suggested that anyone interested retired to the bar. I put away my laptop and various other equipment and the set off to find them. But I failed, so I went home instead.
Yet another massively successful event. Thanks, as always, to all of the speakers and organisers.