NTI Birmingham (New Technology Insititute) part of Birmingham
City University positioned themselves at the centre of the open
data agenda by teaming up with Speeddata to host an event called
'Making (and Saving) Money with Open Data'; exploring ways business
can make money through the influx of public data being released by
government.
Opportunities to innovate and create new services around this
data are many but what are the business models that will sustain
such activity? The University recognised this is a huge challenge
facing digital and IT companies and in response invited successful
data businesses to speak to those working across public and private
sector, to help make working with Open Data more of an opportunity
than a risk.
Hadley Beeman founder at LinkedGov kicked off the session by
sharing thinking on how business models might change with the
opening of public data and opportunities it creates for small to
medium sized enterprises.
Music Metric, Tallis and Boilerhouse Media gave perfect examples
of how data driven businesses operate, sharing experiences on how
to turn raw data into something more meaningful.
Marie- Alicia from Music Metric said "The open data event was an
incredibly productive experience that not only proved how far and
wide the challenges of data permeate through all areas of business,
but as a company focussing primarily in entertainment, just how
similar the challenges that are being faced across any number of
verticals and government organisations.
"The call for standardisation across open data is a highly
relevant and pivotal discussion. Semetric looks to create such
standards within entertainment and work with our clients to unearth
from the digital landscape the questions most relevant to ask of
the data in order to surface the correct conclusions."
The event attracted a mix of owners and workers in small to
medium companies wishing to engage with this agenda and to public
sector managers seeking to develop new digital services that are
compelling and engaging.
The evening session gave delegates a technical insight into Open
Data projects. Podnosh and Substrakt teamed up to collaborate under
the Speeddata banner to deliver a hands on workshop, aimed at
developing ideas for useful, commercial and social open data
projects.
Each small group was asked to come up with an idea. Get help
refining it. Discover data sources. Understand the technological
approach and tools available. See how the idea can be visually
represented effectively and then practice a pitch in readiness for
the panel of judges.
At the end, each group pitched their idea to a judging panel:
Dave Harte, Award Leader, MA Social Media at Birmingham City
University and Simon Jenner of Adventures in Business and founder
of Urban Coffee Company.
Gavin Wray, Client Liaison and Support at Podnosh Ltd said "It
was great to see a wide range of ideas coming out of the SpeedData
evening session: a tool to aid investment choices related to land
and buildings in the EU; experimental work on mapping third places;
and a website to help construction developers make smarter
purchasing decisions and increase efficiency in new builds.
The winning idea, pitched by Chris Waring, creative lead for
Kasabi at Talis, was helping patients find their best hospital for
treatment using an application based on open government data."
Dave Harte, Senior lecturer in MA Social Media said "Our event
showed that there is a real appetite amongst creative companies to
work on innovate open data projects and that they see the
university as playing a key role in helping them identify project
ideas and develop business cases for them. At the event, the
community of open data activists in Birmingham have showed that
this is an agenda in which collaboration and the open exchange of
ideas is crucial."