What People Said
Open Knowledge Festival aims to encouraging people to plan seeds of discussion, talk together, learn from each other and exchange helpful feedback. That’s why is this section we take a look (and a read) at what has been written and said about OKFestival 2014 – your reflections, thoughts and words. From major newspapers to influential blogs and great tweets, here’s the place to walk the talk!
Survey
Thanks to the over 1095 participants who attended the Open Knowledge Festival 2014. We conducted a post-event survey, which received about 162 responses which is about 15% return rate. The following are some survey results and quotes - the best bits.
Why did you decide to attend OKFestival?
OKfestival was a successful learning and networking space based on the majority of OkFestival survey responses. Open Knowledge is the network and movement. The majority of respondents considered it important to attend to network.
Some of the other reasons that people provided were: “to learn what happens in the world”, “to hear about overall development in the field”, “Volunteer”, “To help out and to learn”, “to influence the open movement”, “facilitate a session”, and “to be part of this amazing network.”
Overall, how well did the festival meet your expectations?
For 85% of respondents, OKFest met or exceeded their expectations.
What did you MOST enjoy at the Festival?
Most of the respondents cited networking as the main point of enjoyment for OKfest. Some people did cite the venue as great. There were some comments about keynotes/fireside chats including mentioning Neelie Kroes and Ory Okolloh as favourite speakers. Some of the programme content highlighted included Flashhacks, the unconference, Artists without a Cause (AWAC), the graffiti wall and Peng Collective.
The ability to experience, connect and have dialogue with people who have different background, knowledge & skills within Open Knowledge & Open Data!
The diversity of people attending; the range of interpretations of 'open'; the positive energy and atmosphere of people wanting to change the world.
Meeting so many great people and my fellow Ambassadors and people from the Working Groups.
People from different projects talking together in and out OKFestival specially biergarten; some workshops like e-waste, very well done, or mine organized by Milena about how to teach open data.
I LOVED the interactive sessions. It was also an absolutely great sponsorship experience. Food trucks were fun. Location very good. Thanks for a great conference!
And, what did you LEAST enjoy?
The wifi and venue were cited as the top items that respondents least enjoyed. As well there were some comments about the programme organization or content concerns.
What I enjoyed the least was the location. It was the most amazing locations to look at, but the worst for these workshops. Too loud, the cardboard boxes were a visual aid to seperate the rooms, but not acoustically. Workshop spaces were not air conditioned, which in some cases became dangerously hot and uncomfortable. I'm glad nobody fainted. Also some of the rooms had soundsystems that were not used. Too bad because some of the people, especially those who are not natively English didn't catch all the information. Look for a space with more smaller rooms in stead of bigger ones in the next years. Keynote room, fair and outdoor foodcourt were amazing though.
Crowded, noisy and hot session spaces, which made it sometimes difficult to participate in the sessions
What was the most valuable thing you learned at the Festival? e.g. that you might pass on to someone else.
That starting with open data is the wrong way to go. Start with problems that people face and then see whether/how open data can help.
Need to channel the great skills and enthusiasm of the movement into a strategic policy agenda.
That participants in the Open Movement have made their minds up about a lot of topic positions and that people new to the movement won't neccessarily (sic) find it easy to find out why these conclusions have been reached or reopen these discussions. That there is still a huge amount of work to be done making the open movement mainstream and accessible.
The critical parts: be careful, #OKohno, how just 'open data' is not enough anymore.
I learned more about different cultures and the way things are run in different countries. I had a chance to talk with representatives from so many other countries and learnt from them the common problems that we face. We did a few brainstorming sessions together and tried to find out the best possible ways of handling the challenges that we face.
It is easy to get involved with the open movement, and it is a supportive and thriving community.