Keynotes

Andreas Both

Unister

Dr. Andreas Both is head of research and development at Unister, a leader in the e-commerce B2C market in Germany. He received a PhD in Computer Science for his research on component-based systems and service-oriented architectures. At Unister his work is focused on modern web technologies. In particular, data-driven processes and data integration are the main topics. His group commits itself to advance in using the Internet as knowledge base and developing the next generation of Internet applications.

"From data-driven startup to large company in a decade"

Márta Nagy-Rothengass

Head of unit "Technologies for Information Management" in EC DG Information Society and Media

Márta Nagy-Rothengass graduated and received doctor degree in Economics and she was awarded MBA.
She has broad working experience Europe wide in business and public environment. She dealt with initiation and transaction of trade agreements, taught Business Studies, managed social association and did consultancy work. She gathered her interest on ICT while establishing "New Media" by a traditional German manufacturing company.
She joined the EC in 2005 as the Head of Unit of "ICT for the Environment" in DG INFSO and developed her Unit further to "ICT for Sustainable Growth" linked to the integrated climate and energy policy. Since 2008 Márta is working as Head of Unit "Technologies for Information Management" in Luxembourg. Her Unit manages and co-funds research and development projects on innovative ICT technologies dealing with creation of intelligent digital objects and knowledge management, supporting knowledge exchange and "semantic web". Main focus of her work is effective and efficient management of extremely large scale data including Open Data and establishment of open data portals.

"Leveraging the data potential in Europe"

Nigel Shadbolt

University of Southampton

Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Southampton and Head of the Web and Internet Science Group. He is a Director of the Web Science Trust, and of the Web Foundation - both organisations have a common commitment to advance our understanding of the Web and promote the Web's positive impact on society.
In June 2009 together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee he was appointed an Information Advisor by the Prime Minister to help transform public access to Government information. A major output of this work has been the widely acclaimed data.gov.uk site - a single point of access for all Government non-personal public data. In May 2010 he was appointed by the Coalition Government to the Public Sector Transparency Board responsible for setting open data standards across the public sector and developing the legal Right to Data. He also Chairs the Local Data Panel seeking to promote and develop open data approaches within Local Government.

"Transparency and Open Data. Why bother?"

Data is the new raw material of the 21st Century a resource that gets more plentiful every day. Generated and disseminated by users of the Internet and World Wide Web a data deluge is changing our world. Data drives transactions and decisions of every kind. Transport, retail, health, education, leisure along with every aspect of our lives depends on an evolving data ecosystem. The science and engineering of data is fundamental to the modern world.
The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a new strain of data - Open Government Data (OGD). Nation states, regional authorities and cities are all setting up OGD programmes. The reasons are numerous and compelling; transparency and accountability, the drive to improve public services, the creation of social and economic value are all seen as reasons to publish public sector information. The UK is a pioneer in this work having put thousands of datasets online. These range from maps tospending data, crime to education data. New engineering and technological approaches have emerged to open data - this linked data capability is a next stage in the development of the Web.
This talk will examine the rapid emergence of open data and the technologies that support it. It will explore how government, business and higher education will benefit from open data and the threats on the horizon.

Rufus Pollock

Open Knowledge Foundation

Dr. Rufus Pollock is co-Founder and Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, and an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge. He has worked extensively as a scholar and developer on the social, legal and technological issues related to the creation and sharing of knowledge.

"Open Data: Where We Are and Where We're Going"

Over the past few years, there has an explosive growth in open data with significant uptake in government, research and elsewhere. Open data has the potential to transform society, government and the economy, from how we travel to work to how we decide to vote. But we have only just begun down this road, and the going, even so far, has not always been easy.

This talk will introduce the idea of open data, explain how, and why, we are where we are today, and, finally, look to the future of the rapidly evolving open data ecoystem.

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European Data Forum 2012