Making (and Saving) Money with Open Data

Wednesday April 13th 2011 - The Studio, Birmingham City Centre

The continued push by national and local governments to release information about their services and performance in open data formats creates a significant challenge for Digital and IT companies.

The opportunities to innovate around this data and create new services are many but what are the business models that will sustain such activity? This event hears both from successful data businesses and from those working across the public and private sectors who are helping to make working with Open Data more of an opportunity than a risk.

The event, hosted by Birmingham City University, will be of interest to both owners and workers in small to medium companies wishing to engage with this agenda and to public sector managers seeking to develop new digital services that are compelling and engaging.

Agenda:

1.00pm registration

1.30pm Introductions from organisers

1.45pm Keynote: Hadley Beeman, founder at LinkedGov gives an introduction to the Open Data agenda

Hadley will share key messages about the timeliness of thinking now about how business models might change and how the opening up of public data will create opportunities for small to medium sized enterprises.

2.25pm Questions and Answers.

2.40pm Coffee break

3.00pm Breakout groups

This section involves two separate breakout sessions that will run twice - delegates will be able to attend both:

Breakout 1

Linking: Making Data Open and Useful? - hosted by Talis. The premise and promise of Open Data is that value will flow when others share, mix, and mash it.  Linked Data lowers the barriers to such innovation - why you should aspire to 5 star data?

Breakout 2

Data businesses - MusicMetric and Boilerhouse Media will look at the two sides of what data can do for you. One is about ‘making money from data’ and the other focused on how public services need to save money and how that therefore creates opportunities for business.

Coffee and refreshments available during the Breakouts

5.20pm Plenary - key points from the day. Followed by handover to the evening session.

Evening

The evening session is focused on ideas generation - what kind of Open Data projects might we want to make happen? Ones that make a contribution to society or ones that make money for businesses – is it possible to have both? There will be a prize for the best idea generated.

6.00pm Welcome (mingling with drinks and buffet)

6.20pm Ideas generation session - hosted by Speeddata 

This session will take the form of a series of project 'checkpoints’ with experts taking you through a series of stages to help shape and realise Open Data ideas. Delegates will team up with coding experts and pitch ideas to a panel.

8.00pm - Lightning pitches

3 minute pitches that sell the idea to a small judging panel and outline how the idea can be realised.

8.30pm Feedback and prize-giving from the judging panel.

9.00pm Close