Hooray! The 'open events' are coming.

The start of a new year is always exciting in the open community. It's a period full of hackathons, conferences, meetups, datadives... And 2016 is no exception. There are numerous events confirmed for the next few months and we wanted you to have first pick to save the dates and register. Let's have a look at what's coming.

Saturday 23 January 2016

Missing Maps Mapathon Gent

Vredeshuis, Sint-Margrietstraat 9, 9000 Gent

The Missing Maps Project is an afternoon activity with the goal to map the most crisis-prone parts of the developing world. With your help we can directly improve the lives of some of the planet’s most vulnerable people.

Type: Active mapping party
Interesting for: From beginners with no OpenStreetMap experience to expert mappers

More information here
Free registration here

Thursday 25 to saturday 27 February 2016

Europeana Photo hack Leuven

FabLab, Celestijnenlaan 30, 3001 Heverlee

Hack Your Photo Heritage asks developers to hack the massive photographic heritage content on Europeana, ESpace and other public repositories to mash them up with user-generated smartphone photos and stories. Creating a new environment to experience our cultural past, using apps, websites and virtual environments.

Type: Hackathon
Interesting for: Developers, cultural heritage professionals, designers, creative entrepreneurs, photographers and photo-amateurs

More information here
Free registration here

Friday 26 to sunday 28 February 2016

Open Council App hackathon Antwerp

Location TBD

After a first brainstorm Open Antwerpen has a plan to make an Open City Council app, which enables citizens to have an inside view of the decision made on a day to day basis. That's why they will organise a 48 hour hackathon called #OpenStadsBestuurApp. They looking for enthusiasts with a laptop who want to spend a weekend together developing, building and scraping data out of pdf files. The found addresses will be transformed into geo-data and by visualising it on a map you can see what has been decided in your neighbourhood and by whom. And, where you can go if you have any related questions.

Type: Hackathon
Interesting for: Developers, citizen activists, designers, GIS connoisseurs, and app developers.

More information here
Registration not required

Monday 29 February 2016

Open Belgium Conference 2016

University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen

The Open Belgium conference is a community driven conference about Open Knowledge and Open Data, hosted in Antwerp this year. It’s packed with interesting talks and discussions. We debate about the openness of Belgium, from a local point of view to a European perspective. We provide national and international keynotes, cases and workshops, bringing you up to speed on new evolutions and best practices.

Type: Conference
Interesting for: Open Data owners, Open advocates, researchers, IT industry and startup members, citizen developers, datajournalists and open community members

More information here
Buy tickets here

Thursday 3 March 2016

ISA² Conference

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Rue Gineste 3, 1210 Brussels

Challenges and opportunities for the ISA² programme: interoperability, a key enabler for user-centric digital public services During the conference we will hear several testimonials from Member States and businesses, including from outside Europe, demonstrating concrete interoperability solutions that implement digital public services. The afternoon session will be particularly dedicated to cases related to the priority areas of the new ISA² programme.

Type: Conference
Interesting for: Open Data owners, Public servants, Open advocates, Interoperability researchers and startups

More information here
Free registration here

Saturday 5 March 2016

More with tourism hackathon

Thomas More campus Kruidtuin, Lange Ridderstraat 44, 2800 Mechelen

Have you every made something with touristic data of different companies and governments? No? We'll give you the opportunity to work on an exciting and innovation concept. Governments and companies have loads of data, but not much that has been done with it. We want to challenge you to make something with this data in just one day, something innovative, or an interesting business case or a technical masterpiece.

Type:Ideation hackathon
Interesting for: (Citizen) developers, Tourism experts, Designers, Students, Startups or anyone else interested in participating.

More information here (Dutch)
Free registration here

Saturday 19 March 2016

Mapps for Ghent

Artevelde Hogeschool Gent, Campus Kantienberg, Voetweg 66, 9000 Gent

The sixth Apps for Ghent is upon us. And this time we're working with everything geo and map related. Are you a professional coder, motivated civilian or student? With some coding skills, a background in design or just a great idea, you too can participate in the biggest hackathon in Belgium.Building on an application can be done individually or in a team. Registration is free but mandatory.

Type:Ideation and showcase hackathon
Interesting for: (Citizen) developers, Geo-experts, Designers, Students, Startups or anyone else interested in participating.

More information here (Dutch)
Free registration here

To be continued/confirmed:

And later this year we'll have the Benelux Diplohack at the European Council, open Summer of code 2016 and a lot more open events in Belgium.

Follow Open Belgium on Twitter to be the first to know about what's happening in Belgium.

Did we miss one of are there open events we didn't know about? Let us know by contacing pieterjan@openknowledge.be and we'll get right back to you.