#OKFest. Arriving at Helsinki
Some of you may already know this, but iRail and OKFN are visiting the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki. Lieven (in the picture) was able to fix a nice 6 bed apartment. (IKEA is everywhere.) We arrived yesterday evening to have a spare day and as always we are doing last-minute work on a sunday. Some of us still have to finish their preparations for their talks and workshops at the festival. In a few days I will report back to you with accomplishments, pictures and other news!
Let this picture speak for itself.
#iSoc12 Labs For VDAB
Hi there, all!
Just two weeks ago Miet called me. She —as the first iRail employee— was looking for a project manager for a last-minute project. Lieven Janssen from OKFN Belgium and the ‘we open data’-movement arranged a collaboration with VDAB. For those of you who are not familiar with the VDAB, it is the public employment service of Flanders. The innovation unit inside VDAB thinks opening up job data is a good way for them to reach their goals, and they would love to convince the rest of VDAB of this.
Enter OKFN & iRail.
With a small budget, they wanted an external company to prove you can build apps with their open data. In particular, apps that would never be developed by VDAB, because of budgetary reasons. The goal was to prepare a presentation for the board of directors in which we showcase one or more applications as a proof of concept. We were provided with 5000 open vacancies. To succeed in our mission, we first figured out what kind of apps that might not be a priority for VDAB: apps built for minorities and apps that focus on playification. The first would be a website accessible for blind people, or a job website for a niche market. Building a website for blind people might seem to be easy, except for some guidelines (in dutch), but a small concept is being drawn out as we speak.
The latter: a web-app to make searching for a job more playful? We didn’t build the world’s most exciting job applying platform, but completing my own curriculum vitae has never been more rewarding than when we made SMAIL (pronounce like ‘smile’ in English). However, we do apologize in advance. The job data are not open data yet, for legitimate reasons, so there is no way to find out exactly how rewarding it would feel for you. But please enjoy the screenshots:
All credits to Michael and Jeppe! After coding smail in just over 2 working days, they are now (14/09/2012) competing in the Apps For Flanders student hackathon, as a dedicated team for VDAB.
During these days we also tested some new features of The DataTank version 1.2.0 to be sure it is/was bug free for Apps For Flanders. And after just a few weeks of collecting feedback, we will be presenting our achievements to VDAB’s board of directors. Let’s hope for a positive outcome for open data!
Mapnificent: simple tool, magnificent impact
Hi all,
Meet Mapnificent. Mapnificent is a tool created by Stefan Wehrmeyer which maps the distances from a certain location to its surroundings. The interesting part about this is that the distance isn’t measured in kilometers or miles, but in minutes it would take you to go there using public transport.
Impact of open transport data
It is a simple tool, but the idea behind it is an opportunity for a million use-cases. Distance gets a new meaning: instead of looking for a job in a radius of 10km from where you live, you could be looking for a job you can reach by public transport in 15 minutes.
Current status
Currently De Lijn is the only Belgian dataset on mapnificent. Wouldn’t it be nice if we also could add NMBS/SNCB, MIVB/STIB and TEC? The technology is simple, an open data policy is apparently a little difficult to push through a Belgian organisation, sadly.
– Pieter
#iSoc12 part II — #code9000 and VDAB!
A few weeks ago #iSoc12 ended. The whole group looked back on three wonderful weeks and everyone is proud about what they accomplished and learnt in those weeks.
But it isn’t over yet — we just couldn’t get enough! The students Nicolas, Lieven and Sam are finishing the #code9000 project this week — you’ll hear about it soon enough. We also started Bouncy Castle a new project, thanks to the people of VDAB. They offered us a chance to build something exciting with their data. Jeppe, Hannes and Michael are working on this new project right now, to build something useful in just 4 days. They only have 2 days left and we’re all very excited to find out what they are building.
Sneak preview of the new VDAB project…
We’ll keep you posted!
Apps For Flanders: Student hackathon
Dear students, researchers or just graduated techies ,
On Friday September 14th 2012 we Jumping Castle are organising a Hackathon at the IBBT in Ghent.
Are you someone who can’t help writing a couple of lines of code when you should actually be studying or sleeping? Are you someone who hates comic sans and wants every application to look shiny? Are you a hacker at heart? Then you should participate in Apps For Flanders and seize the opportunity to win the Citadel On The Move price worth €2000. Your assignment is to work with data opened by the Flemish and Belgian government and transform it in something useful for the Flemish.
You can register at http://appsforflanders.be
