A couple of weeks ago the Open Data on the Web workshop took place in London at the Google Campus. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss how the potential of open data can be realized.

In attendance were many open and linked data enthusiasts keen to discuss the issues and challenges concerning publishing, linking and -most importantly – use of open data.

The discussions concerning open data and how to make it more accessible to all, all while standardizing the formats or otherwise using and keeping the current formats were intense and fascinating. The many presentations concerning the efforts of various governments to open their data as well as projects seeking to create practical ways of either publishing or using data were equally engaging.

GeoKnow was represented by Ontos and presented the challenges, motivations, and goals of the GeoKnow project. Feedback on the motivation for the project was positive and interest was expressed in the GeoKnow Generator as well as a possible collaboration in one of the use cases.

A further interesting development was the interest expressed by INSPIRE stakeholders for exposing INSPIRE data as Linked Open Data. This is a timely development for GeoKnow since we will be providing tools for exposing INSPIRE data as LOD with the aim of re-purposing and leveraging the EU’s growing INSPIRE geospatial data in the LOD cloud.

A big thank you to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Open Data Institute, and the Open Knowledge Foundation for making the event happen. Another big thanks goes out to Google for hosting the event and providing the much appreciated sustenance and coffee over the two days!