Open Knowledge Festival’s programme is amazingly diverse this year, with over 150 sessions and satellite events in 13 guest-planned Topic Streams from “Transparency and Accountability” to “Openness in Sustainability”. Around 100 OKFest organizers and Guest Programme Planners have been involved in building the programme – and even more of you are giving a presentation, participating in a panel discussion or running a workshop. This is why we think you are awesome.
It’s really the diversity and commitment of the people involved that has been the strength of this (very much community-run, on a shoestring budget!) event – the largest open data gathering we’ve ever seen. At the same time, we do realise that the vast number of organizers and speakers may create some challenges for communication – so this page will share practical information for each of you as speakers to ensure your experience is inspiring and pleasant!
If you have questions during the week that aren’t answered here, please go to the Info Desk, where #OKFestCrew and Core Crew folk will be available to help you out. If you are speaking, your Session Host should also be around to provide guidance and assistance during your session.
Best of luck, and we’ll see you in Helsinki!
(1) Morning Coffee & Speaker Reception!
Every morning between 9:00 and 10:00 (before the INSPIRE Morning Plenary), free morning coffee is served at the INSPIRE Foyer.
Mornings at OKFestival will serve as the meeting point for Session Hosts, Speakers and Invited Guests to get in contact and have a bit of a conversation before it all kicks off. There will be new people arriving to the festival every day, and we would like to make sure that the speakers find the hosts of their own Session / Topic Stream. During the morning coffee time, there will also be visible signs with Topic Stream names and details in the INSPIRE Foyer. If you are not a speaker, but want to meet the organizers or get tips for the day’s programme, you are also more than welcome to come and chat with the Topic Stream organizers and Guest Programme Planners who have made this event happen. Remember that the Morning Plenary sessions will start at 10:00 sharp.
(2) Find and Contact Your Session Host!
Generally the Session Hosts will contact Speakers for sessions, so if you have a Session Host they should have found you by now. However, if you haven’t heard from a Host, please send a short hello to them.
The OKfestival programme is build around many simultaneous sessions that last usually 1,5 hours and may contain several presentations, panel discussions or other activities. Each session has one Session Host who will make sure that their speakers find the space and feel welcome, and that the session runs smoothly. The Session Hosts will answer questions and give further guidance for the speakers. The name and contact information of the session host should be visible at the top of the session page – if not, please send email to the contact address of the corresponding topic stream to check.
(3) Presentation material
If possible, please publish your presentation material beforehand.
We strongly recommend that all presentation material would be published online (or provided for the session host to be published online) beforehand, as this would make it flexible so that your presentation can be run from different computers if needed.
To find out more about the tech specifications of your space and to see what adaptors etc are available in the room, go to the Planning Etherpad. In some rooms we’ll have projectors and cords, in other cases not – and due to this being a shoe-string run event, we unfortunately cannot offer presentation materials such as flipboards, markers and post-it notes except in special cases.
(4) Tickets and Registration
Generally, all speakers and panelists have purchased their OKfestival ticket.
Only a very few of the guest speakers have been given free entrance due to special circumstances. In this, we follow the culture of community-driven events such as Chaos Communication Camp where peers and colleagues share the same passion and get equal opportunities for exposure, choosing to come together to discuss and debate in a community-driven environment. For those who could not afford to attend otherwise, we also offered 3 different rounds of International Travel Bursaries and the #OKFestCrew Volunteer scheme.
Given this, all OKfestival participants should have either bought a ticket or registered for free ticket, unless you are leading one of the Free Hackathons or Side Events. When you arrive at the OKFestival venue, the reception desk you will have your name on the list and you will receive a beautiful, FABLab-made name badge which is your entrance pass to the OKfestival venue. If you have not either bought a ticket or registered for free entrance, please contact your session host.
(5) Permission for streaming and video recording
Do you allow your presentation to be streamed online and recorded?
Depending on the space in which your presentation will be the organizers might ask permission for live-streaming and video recording your presentation. We don’t force anybody to be on video who doesn’t want to be. See more information on streaming here.
(6) Copyright legislation in Finland
This Open Knowledge Festival, but remember to respect others copyrights
Finnish legislation does not recognize fair use, but specifically allows you to do the following with others’ material without permission (like a Creative Commons license): (I) take citations out of text, video, or audio (II) use images as citations in scientific presentations (III) make parody or satire based on others’ works. Unless your presentation is streamed and/or recorded, you can also: (IV) show online content using a web browser, excluding video content.
We ask presenters to license their materials and their spoken presentations with an open license. Creative Commons licenses CC BY and CC BY-SA are preferred.
