Something good is taking shape in my backyard…
From the city of Vancouver’s open data portal to Apps 4 Climate Action to the Water legislation blog, a great deal of the leadership and cutting edge work in open government is taking place in BC. Many places across the country and around the world look to what is happening on the west coast and are trying to draw lessons and see how it can be replicated.
Recognizing this fact a number of great people have been working behind the scenes for the last couple of months pulling together a conference to share this successes, talk about challenges and opportunities and generally think about what could happen next. The conference…? OpenGovWest BC.
If you are in BC and interested in open government, open data and gov 2.0, here’s a conference designed and built for you.
A number of speakers have already been publicly confirmed, others are, apparently, being held as surprises. There are also slots open for presentations if you have a project you’d like to share with the community out west.
The conference will be taking place on November 10th in Victoria, BC – if you are out west and feel passionate about these topics the same way I do, I hope you’ll consider coming.
And while we are talking about conferences, I also want to share Open Government Data Camp that will be happening in London, UK on November 18th and 19th. I’m excited to say I’ll be there with our friends from the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, along with numerous others. Harder to get too, but also likely to be quite, quite fun…
eaves.ca 
From the looks of it, OpenGovWest BC is going to be a great conference. I am happy to be going and sharing with other’s lessons that I have learned from my doings in the OpenGov and Open Data space here in London, Ontario.
That being said, I look forward to meeting all the excellent and amazing people who are helping move forward Open Government in BC. Only 27th days remaining until the event.
Looking forward to it and providing a forum for showcasing all the great work out here.
Is anyone going to link the lack of openness of the government in BC (FOI requests, etc) with this initiative?
Yes, Blair Lekstrom will be moderating the FOI and privacy panel: http://opengovwest.org/blair-lekstrom-mla-to-moderate-foi-privacy-panel/
I don’t see privacy as the issue, as it states in the linked write-up. Access to information is the issue here, and if the government is committed to being open, it has to be across the board, not just sharing some climate data. Ask Darrell Evans at FIPA how accommodating this government is… they have a dreadful record.
Actually, Blair will be *on* the panel, and I’ll be moderating. It should be an interesting talk. And I do think that privacy enters into it, if only because the ‘P’ part of FOIPA is often used as a reason to water down the ‘FOI’ part. The tension between the two is salient of OpenGov as a whole.
Hi David, attendees can get 15% off the early bird rate for the next week or so with the promo code “Nov10” and small businesses of 5 or fewer employees (perfect for consultants!) can get $55 off their registration through 11:55 pm Wednesday with the code “smallisthenewbig” Thanks for the great post!
Thank you, David, for this great post about OpenGovWest BC. We are very much looking forward to the conversations we will have on November 10. It is a great opportunity for everyone to be a part of this community we are building.
Pingback: L’opendata dans tous ses états – Veille Oct. II «