With the 2012 theme “Open Knowledge in Action”, getting involved is one of the most important parts of the OKFestival experience. This week is about looking at the value that can be generated by opening up knowledge, the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from such sharing, and the impacts that transparency can have in our societies. With an ever-increasing list of (free!) public hackathons, satellite events and hands-on workshops, there are many ways to get more involved. Organising an event you want to included? Let us know.

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	Dis-information-visualization workshop This all-day workshop on Saturday 22.9., from 10-20, will attempt to problematize and re-politicize the practice of information visualization by deliberately skewing and manipulating the image. In the process we will survey several loopholes in information design methodologies and learn how they can be exploited. Participants are invited to bring their own data sets, statistics and quantifiable stories as a starting point towards a somewhat more sinister use of the information. Participants are also invited to base their projects on existing work and use it as an opportunity for reflection. More information.
	Helsinki University Library Tour For those interested in an intimate tour of the beautiful new Helsinki University City Centre Campus Library (Kaisa House, which has just opened this month), OKFestival participant Richard Ackerman has organised a small viewing on Mon 17 Sept in the morning before festival events start. Join him and other open publishing enthusiasts for an informative and interesting outing! Contact Richard via Twitter or email to join.
	Crowdsourced & Satellite Evening Events Evening receptions and activities during the OKFest week are now being finalised, and we want you to get involved! Current events being planned include an OKFest Welcome Reception, a Hacks & Hackers meetup, a craft beer festival, a Helsinki bar hop, a Proactum Meetup for “Open Source-minded people”, the Open Sauna scheme and a series of Thematic Dinners based on the Harvard Berkman Centre model. Get involved now by hosting a thematic dinner or another event on the collaborative planning pad.
	Data Journalism Hackathon A day to design and build a functional news application from open government data. Finland’s biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, invites coders, designers and journalists to its Data Journalism Hackathon. Using data from the World Bank and other groups, you will be able to create a working app or visualization from scratch. Space is limited and registration closes Sept 10th, so please RSVP online.
	Take Action Lightning Talks Are you involved with an organization, project, or personal goal to increase gender diversity in open stuff? The Wikimedia Foundation wants you to share your experience in 5 minutes! TAKE ACTION, a set of public lightning talks with 12 spots on Wed 19 Sept, is now open for contributors – sign up at http://piratepad.net/TAKEACTION
	Data Cuisine Workshop You’re invited to the world’s first open data cuisine workshop, the “Art of Data Cooking“. This workshop is a collaborative research experience, blurring the boundaries between teachers and participants, data and food. At its end, an open data menu will be created and publicly tasted. Send an email to opendatacooking (AT) pixelache.ac. Capacity is limited.
	Culture & Science Hackathon Cultural Heritage and Science meet for a joint Culture and Heritage Hackathon on Tues 18th Sept. Join a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, work with newly released datasets, develop a brand new PyBossa app or hack for Louhos research software libraries – plus much more! All ideas welcome – if you have a hackday activity, please share it. Numbers are limited – please use the sign-up form to get involved.
	Open Peer Learning Workshop Outside of open communities, few people know how to apply “open” tools, practices, and standards to their work. Creative Commons, P2PU, and the Open Knowledge Foundation will introduce the School of Open and the School of Data, followed by a Q&A and a hands-on, creative workshop to prototype “open” challenges and courses. Particpants will take an “open” learning challenge and design their own in culture, education, research, or data. Space is limited – please use sign-up form to RSVP.
	Open Development Hackathons On Thurs 20th Sept, Open Dev planners will be hosting the third event in the series of 2012 Development Data Challenges – a hackathon. As this is an open (and free!) event, coders and interested folk are invited to create new ideas for making aid and development data more accessible. There will also be an exciting opportunity to hack land data, hosted by the folk at the Land Coalition, and to join in with the Helsingin Sanomat hackathon on Fri 21 Sept. All hackathons are explained further on the OKFestival site. Space is limited – email opendevelopment (AT) okfestival.org to RSVP.
	OKFest Helsinki Photowalk On Sunday you will get the chance to see the most of Helsinki through your own lens during the OKFest photo walk. Organisers Peter and Irmeli will take you to several beautiful and historical places in Helsinki. The day will start with an interactive lecture on the meaning of mindful seeing and noticing within curation, utilization and collaborative (re)construction of open knowledge. Space is limited and registration closes Sept 15th, for more info see the Public Pad. And make sure to bring your camera!
	Open Transport Workshop On 17th Sept, the ePSIplatform team in conjunction with the Open Cities Topic Stream is hosting a sectoral workshop on Transport Data with a focus on fuelling future mobility and smart cities. The workshop is a round table meeting of transport data holders (ao HSL, Trafi, SNCF), open data policy makers (ao DG MOVE) and (new) re-users (ao OSM, iRail, Trafiklab, Samtrafiken, Google Transit). Interested in getting involved? There are still a few seats left – register today!
	Survey on OKFest Diversity The organisers of the Gender & Diversity Topic Stream session “Exclusive Diversity: A Conversation” have prepared a short online survey to get anonymous data on the backgrounds of OKFest participants for use in their session. Your contribution would be very much appreciated, and useful for efforts to make future Open Data “crowds” more inclusive.
	Green Hackathon Come along and take part in opening up knowledge about sustainability to make it more accessible and useful. Two days of working hands-on to improve and disseminate sustainability data, as part of the Green Hackathon series of events taking place across Europe. It will begin with a short presentation on Wednesday morning (Sept. 19) and end with a Show-and-Tell (Sept. 20). Many different contributions are welcome, including coders, designers, data specialists, economists or sustainability thinkers. For practical information and registration: http://okfestival.greenhackathon.com
	App Contests Organizers Meetup By now we’ve seen many app contests, in many forms, all around Europe. In a way, this continuous sprawl is a success in itself. However, there is a demand and a need to learn from each other and design our the next steps. This session will bring together seasoned and aspiring app contest organisers, and provide an open space to discuss. Please join us on Thursday 20th September, at 11:30 – 13:00 for our App Contests Organizer Meetup. The location of this meetup is at Kääntöpaikka, a 5 minute walk from the main OK Festival venue. Registration: http://apps4europe.eventbrite.com
	Datavaalit – Data Elections – Launch Datavaalit (Data Elections) is network of people, project and website with the aim of gathering elections related data sets into one place in open and easy to use format. Project is based on crowd-sourcing (anyone can contribute to the data bank) and the target audience are the data journalists and open democracy application developers. The Datavaalit -site will be launched during the OKfestival on Friday 21.9. at 9:00 in the HACK -space.