WMODF Meeting – 14/10/14

OCTOBER MEETING NOTES

NOTES OF WEST MIDLANDS OPEN DATA FORUM STEERING GROUP,

14^TH OCTOBER 2014

Attended by:	Susannah Goh	(Birmingham Science City) ‑ Chair
	Andrew McKenzie	(Open Mercia)
	Paul Beckley	(Centro)
	Simon Whitehouse	(Data Unlocked)
	Chris Price	(digiconsultancy) ‑ Secretary
	Hugo Russell	(Innovation Birmingham)
	Don Dhaliwal	(BCU)
Apologies:	Pauline Roche/Ted Ryan	(RnR Organisation)
	Teresa Jolley	(Data Journalist)
	Heike Schuster‑James	(Digital Birmingham)
The Notes of the last meeting of 9thSeptember were agreed.  Paul Beckley, Head of ICT at Centro, was welcomed to the steering group.  Reflecting the absence of members, following discussion, it was agreed to move the dates of meetings to the 3rd Wednesday in the month, 16:30 to 17:45, to precede the Tech Wednesday events at Innovation Birmingham, Faraday Wharf.  HR was thanked for agreeing to arrange a room in Faraday Wharf; BCU (AA) and Centro (PB) offered to be back‑up.  There was no November event for Tech Wednesday so the next meeting of WMODF would be prior to their event on Wednesday, 10th December (NB: 2nd Wednesday) and be from 16:30 to 17:45 at Innovation Birmingham.
PB agreed to establish a Yammer group for WMODF.  CP will provide email addresses to PB and members will be encouraged to agree to join the group.
SG offered to contact steering group members (and others) to pick up activities/events.
Projects and Events
Projects:  There was a broad discussion about projects that members were aware of, including:
Birmingham Science City has produced a project pipeline summary, detailing the twelve activity streams in which its working groups are involved. SG to send to Chris Perry, Centro. The Innovation Engine project (HR is project manager) involves establishing challenges and solutions to health-related challenges of large organisations through the establishment of consortia of SMEs. The project is also looking into low-carbon challenges for activities in the near-future. Creative Digital Health Solution (ERDF funded) – see previous minutes. A new project concept, currently led by Warwick University, named ‘Centre for Education, Technology and Advanced Learning in Health’. This focusses on digital skills and training, but the ideas of including wealth creation and skills, via SME engagement and collaboration, are also being mooted. The West Midlands Academic Health Science Network is promoting the concept of a ‘Platform for Healthcare Excellence’. This will be a ‘central point’ of information, intelligence and contact where expertise from academia, research and industry can be exchanged. The point of this is to increase internal (regional) and outwards-facing awareness of areas of expertise and promote collaborations between academia, business, clinicians and patients. DCLG, under the transparency code, are holding workshops to specify what Local Government must make open with an aim to publish by December. Transport ‑ New Journey – a mindmap has been created, by Centro and collaborative partners, to map out areas of challenge and opportunity in relation to the way populations relate to physical infrastructure and modes of travel (centro.org.uk/newjourney). Centro invites the region’s innovation and business communities, who are interested in intelligent mobility, to work with them on creating challenge-based solutions using digital innovations, new business models and new ways of seeing ‘transport’.
There was a briefing by SW on the Share‑PSI project led by Digital Birmingham.  Share‑PSI is the European network for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector (www.w3.org/2013/share-psi).  Its approach is based on the European Directive on Public Sector Information and it is funding a series of workshops examining different aspects of PSI.  The output of the workshops will be an input to the W3C Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group.SW attended a workshop on behalf of Digital Birmingham and WMODF in Samos on Open Data and Efficiency within Government where 35 different partners presented their projects from across Europe.  He has written a blog post about the Samos workshop for Digital Birmingham and it is on the Smart Birmingham blog

As a result of attending the Samos Summit, SW was asked to represent the Share PSI project at the Legal Aspects in Public Sector Information (LAPSI) project meeting in Milan last week, where he delivered a presentation on the Exploitation of Cultural Data.

The next Share-PSI workshop will take place in December in Lisbon, where there will be parallel strands with the LAPSI project (http://www.lapsi-project.eu), as well as LIDER (http://www.lider-project.eu), whose “mission is to provide the basis for the creation of a Linguistic Linked Data cloud that can support content analytics tasks of unstructured multilingual cross-media content.”

There is another post about the Lisbon workshop on the Smart Birmingham website

and there are more details on the Share PSI site

http://www.w3.org/2013/share-psi/workshop/lisbon/agenda

There is also a meeting in March in Timisoara, Romania.  SW has been representing WMODF (only travel and accommodation refunded) for Digital Birmingham, who are project partners. SW encouraged other WMODF members to consider putting themselves forward to attend future workshops. Anybody interested should speak to HSJ. SW said he would be happy to talk to any one interested about his experiences to date.Events:  A string of relevant events were scheduled over the next 2 months.  SG circulated a summary list which is repeated below:Science Capital, 15^th Octoberhttp://www.sciencecapital.co.uk/2014-low-carbon/  Look out for future events.Transport and Mobility Networking Evening, 16^th October.  The Studio – 7 Cannon St, Birmingham, B2 5EP from 6:30pm.  Contact Hannah Symmonds at: HannahS@innovationbham.com/ Tel: 0121 2503515/ Mob: 07525 803123Cross-Innovation Conference, 16^th and 17^th Octoberhttp://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cross-innovation-final-conference-and-blender-workshop-tickets-7084757701Innovating for Change Health Conference, 17th Octoberhttp://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-care-surgery-innovating-for-change-tickets-13025807541?aff=es2&rank=1Transport Hack- Centro and Oxygen Accelerator, 17^th-19^th Octoberhttp://transporttech.oxygenstartups.com/Geovation Masterclass – Open Data and Housing, 28^th Octoberhttps://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/geovation-housing-challenge-open-data-masterclass-birmingham-tickets-13069769031

Look out for future events on various themes.Innovate UK 2014 Conference (London), 5^th and 6^th Novemberhttps://connect.innovateuk.org/web/innovateBirmingham Made Me SmART Mart Expo, 19^th Novemberhttp://birmingham-made-me.org/events/

Birmingham Made Me is a suite of events and activities and SmART Mart (http://birmingham-made-me.org/events/event/birmingham-made-me-design-expo-2014/ )  and the Data Divers Data Dating (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/data-divers-data-dating-an-open-mercia-event-registration-13540310433 ) events are part of a larger whole.West Midlands Academic Health Science Network Health and Wealth Summit, 21^st and 22^nd OctoberOct 21^st http://wmahsn.org/event/health-and-wealth-economic-summit-day1/

Oct 22^nd http://wmahsn.org/event/wmahsn-health-wealth-economic-summit-day2/New JourneySee above in the bullet points.The Innovation Lab for the creative companies, 4^th Novemberhttp://bit.ly/InnovLab4Nov

The lab will be an opportunity for your business to understand the challenges Birmingham City Council and the NHS Trusts face as they grapple with how best to deliver low carbon and sustainable solutions. The lab will help digital businesses identify ways they can be a part of rolling out low carbon solutions in new services and emerging low carbon markets.How to Innovate: Increase your Capabilities and Capacity to Innovate, 11 + 25 November (half‑days)http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/innovation-workshop-innovation-capabilities-capacity-improvement-2-parts-11-25-nov-registration-13576659153

A two part workshop that takes you through the 7 key stages to determine what your capabilities are, and prepare your business to address opportunities via challenges from large organisations. The workshop series is led by Professor Simon Bolton and helps delegates understand how to use innovation to adapt their existing business and current products and services to address challenges, potentially opening up a huge new market to them for the first time.

3. Other Updates

• Open Data Birmingham portal expected to be available from February next year.
• Funding has been confirmed for data surgeries in the community and these are starting,now. These are organised by Podnosh.
• Centro have uploaded open data – the issue was enabling and encouraging usage (cf Hackday).
• There is money from the Catapults to fund development of open data-based projects relating to key Innovate UK areas.

4. There was no AOB. Next meeting: 16:30, 10^th December, Innovation Birmingham.

Actions:Book meetings for 2015, 3^rd Wednesday, 16:30‑17:45 at Faraday WharfHROngoingTech Wednesday to be informed of our prior meetingSGEnd NovInform steering group members re future meetings and Yammer group membershipCPASAPSend list of email addressess to Paul Beckley to establish Yammer groupCP/PB25 OctBSC project pipeline to Chris PerrySGEnd OctSummary list of events to be circulatedSGASAPBlog post on an open data activity to be prepared, at least monthly, for the websiteSG/CPEnd OctFirst blog to focus on the Share‑PSI projectSWEnd OctContact members and others to network eventsSG10 Dec